Memory

An interview with Woody Holton on his new book, "Liberty is Sweet."

Why are so many songs of the Confederacy indelibly inscribed in my Yankee memory?

Philadelphia gave America its flag, along with other enduring icons of nationhood. But for many, the red, white and blue banner embodies a legacy of injustice.

On Martin Luther King's use of radical ideas to create an understanding of the history of America.

Woody Holton’s "Liberty is Sweet" charts not only the contest with Great Britain over “home rule” but also the internal struggle over who should rule at home. 

In her thirty-two years as the keeper of Lime Rock Lighthouse, Ida Lewis challenged gender roles and became a national hero.

Nikole Hannah-Jones' new book sidesteps scholarly critics while quietly deleting previous factual errors.

The attacks on CRT have terrified our educators. But the public school system has always made it hard to teach controversial subjects.

Historian Daryl Scott weighs in on the 1619 Project and the "possibility that we rend ourselves on the question of race."

How shall a generation know its story, if it will know no other?

A single reference in the historical record has spawned an array of adaptations, most of which overstate the anonymous figure's role in the Culper Spy Ring.

Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer--she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln--enraged audiences.

From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.

We often associate dance with art and performance, but it is also a way that humans document, interpret, and create history.

A century ago, pundits, special interests, and politicians weighed in on what should and shouldn't be taught in history and social studies courses.

The scholar has changed the way Black authors get read and the way Black history gets told.

In both versions of this question, the assumption is that there’s a pure history out there somewhere, perhaps with answers in the appendix.

The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.

The 1619 Project and contested foundings.

McCarthy imagined a vast border region where colonial empires clashed, tribes went to war, and bounty hunters roamed.

The fevered hunt for basic symbols.

College student essays from 1961 underscore why our current trajectory could be devastating.

The life of Judah Benjamin, a Southern Jew who served in the Confederate government, can tell us only so much about the American Jewish encounter with slavery.

Explorer Tara Roberts took up diving to learn about the human side of a tragic era. She wound up connecting with her family’s inspiring past.

A Southern Poverty Law Center study identified over 1,500 publicly-displayed symbols of the Confederacy in the South and beyond.

Black history lives in memories and minds. COVID-19 has endangered those traditions.

What else is lost when an object disappears?

On Raoul Peck's "Exterminate all the Brutes" and the limits of rewriting the narrative.

The erasure of Black leaders from the most misunderstood period in American history.

Nothing could be more toxic to our ongoing effort to build a multiracial democracy than to cast any race as a perennial hero or villain.