Memory

The arson attack on a New Orleans nightclub was the largest massacre of queer people in 20th-century America—and it remains relevant to our present moment.

The way we learn about our collective past is under attack thanks to new leadership at the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).

A conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Black studies, white supremacy, and capitalism.

It would be a mistake to think of the current wave of attacks on “critical race theory” as a culture war. This is a political battle.

Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis say they would restore the Fort Bragg name if elected. Its namesake was a “merciless tyrant” who helped lose the Civil War.

How the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom.

James Forten was one of Philadelphia’s most distinguished and important citizens.

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.

“Queer” has experienced a loss of meaning and a curdling of political potential. To reinvigorate it, we need a new approach to history.

The last relics of ‘lost cause’ ideology are being removed, as a federal panel renames US military bases that honored Confederate generals.

Portraying a 19th-century president.

The kinds of narratives historians tend to fall back on constrain our ability to imagine alternatives to the way things have been, and to the way things are.

The genocide of Native Americans was nowhere more methodically savage than in California. A new state initiative seeks to reckon with this history.

The more that historians make their own experiences an explicit part of their work, the harder it will become to let the sources speak clearly.

On teaching in a red state, the silences in our history lessons, and all I never learned about my hometown.

One of the thousands of white Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War and a rare example of a slave owner who changed his views on race.

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.

Reflections from the Naming Commission, and the front lines of the army's war on the Lost Cause.

How a folklorist encourages people to experience the past and present of a place.

Ron DeSantis, who has attacked Florida history lessons and aims to run for president, dismisses slavery in his 2011 book as a “personal flaw” of the Founding Fathers.

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.

New evidence suggests that Sacagawea had a longer life than most historians have believed — fifty-seven years longer.

The state removed the educational marker after Concord Republicans complained about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's communist ties.

The outcome of a fight to control a nonprofit group could shape the teaching of history in Texas.

Jackie Robinson is popularly portrayed as the man who broke baseball’s color line by quietly enduring racist abuse. But that narrative is much too narrow.

Creating a personal myth allows celebrities to create just that—a myth.

Historian Ned Blackhawk’s new book stresses the importance of telling US history with a wider and more inclusive lens.

Americans have often been politically divided. But have the divisions over how we recount our history ever been so deep?

A new book considers the possible alternative outcomes of the battles in America's war for independence.

Historians haven't only underestimated the sheer number of underage Union soldiers, they've also overlooked the internal battles those youths provoked.