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Sign reading "Welcome to the People's University for Palestine" at Harvard protest encampment

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.
by Erik Baker via Boston Review on April 25, 2024
Student protesters at Columbia University in 1968.

“The Whole World Is Watching”: An Oral History of the 1968 Columbia Uprising

In April 1968, students took over campus buildings in an uprising that caught the world’s attention. Fifty years later, they reflect on what went right and what went wrong.
by George Pataki, Mark Rudd, Nancy Biberman, Juan González, Hilton Obenzinger, Paul Auster, Clara Bingham, Robert Friedman, Eleanor Stein, Stuart Gedal, Arnim Johnson, Brian Flanagan, Raymond Brown, Karla Spurlock-Evans, Tom Hurwitz, James Branch, Michelle Patrick, Stephan Salisbury, Vaud Massarsky, Michael Rosenthal, Richard Eagan, Mike Reynolds, Gary Beamer via The Hive on March 26, 2018
Keith Haring standing shirtless in front of one of his paintings.

Angels with Dirty Faces

How Keith Haring got his halo.
by Zack Hatfield via Bookforum on April 12, 2024
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No Place to Make a Vote of Thanks

On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.
by Marc Blanc via HNN on April 23, 2024

“All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture”

An interrogation of The New York Times’ archive reveals a sordid record of support for American wars, right-wing dictatorships and U.S.-backed regime-change.
by Writers Against the War on Gaza via The New York War Crimes on November 29, 2023
People on a porch in Fort Verde, Arizona, 1886.

Arizona’s 1864 Abortion Law Was Made in a Women’s Rights Desert – Here’s What Life Was Like Then

Abortions happened in Arizona, despite a near-complete abortion ban enacted in 1864. But people also faced penalties for them, including a female doctor who went to prison.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via The Conversation on April 25, 2024
Girls and boys in a 19th century classroom.
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The End of Men, in 1870

In 1790, U.S. men were about twice as likely as U.S. women to be literate. But by 1870, girls were surpassing boys in public schools.
by Livia Gershon, David Tyack, Elizabeth Hansot via JSTOR Daily on December 2, 2019
Photograph of a children's choir singing within the outlines of the United States.

How “Fifty Nifty United States” Became One of the Greatest Mnemonic Devices of All Time

How you, your friends, and Lin-Manuel Miranda all learned this catchy, state-naming tune.
by L. V. Anderson via Slate on November 30, 2015
Helen Keller, circa 1954.

Did Helen Keller Really “Do All That”?

A troubling TikTok conspiracy theory questions whether Keller was “real.”
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on February 26, 2021
Tucker Carlson wearing a t-shirt with a photograph of Abraham Lincoln on it.

The Right May Be Giving Up the “Lost Cause,” but What’s Next Could Be Worse

The GOP’s new embrace of Lincoln, emancipation, and Juneteenth is no sign of progress.
by Rebecca Onion, Matthew Karp via Slate on June 25, 2021
Search bar for "Green's Dictionary of Slang; Five hundred years of the vulgar tongue"

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

A web dictionary devoted to historical English slang—five hundred years of the vulgar tongue.
by Jonathon Green on October 12, 2016
U.S. presidential seal

Founding-Era History Doesn’t Support Trump’s Immunity Claim

Historians Rosemarie Zagarri and Holly Brewer explain the anti-monarchical origins of the Constitution and the presidency.
by Rosemarie Zagarri, Holly Brewer via Brennan Center For Justice on February 21, 2024
The Man of Signs page of Young's 1848 almanac.

Reading the Man of Signs, or, Farming in the Moon

What did the signs and the phases of the moon mean to moon farmers in the 1840s?
by Emily Pawley via Commonplace on July 1, 2014
A historical marker outside Fendall Hall, a plantation.

Historical Markers Are Everywhere In America. Some Get History Wrong.

The nation's historical markers delight, distort and, sometimes, just get the story wrong.
by Laura Sullivan, Nick McMillan via NPR on April 21, 2024
The island of Molokai, where the Ball Method successfully treated leprosy sufferers.

A Young Black Scientist Discovered a Pivotal Leprosy Treatment in the 1920s

Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.
by Mark M. Lambert via The Conversation on April 12, 2024
Book cover of "Cold War Country" by Joseph M. Thompson.

Big Government Country

Connie B. Gay and the roots of country music militarization.
by Brock Schnoke via UNC Press Blog on April 11, 2024
A line of prisoners picking cotton in Huntsville, Texas.

The Oil Boom’s Roots in East Texas Cotton Farming

Oil’s rise was as dependent on the old as much as the new. The industry also benefited from changes in agriculture.
by Scot McFarlane via Texas Monthly on November 1, 2017
Book cover of Counterrevolution by Melinda Cooper.

A Tax Haven in a Heartless World: On Melinda Cooper’s “Counterrevolution”

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.
by Sarah Brouillette via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 15, 2024
Richard Slotkin.

“A Theory of America”: Mythmaking with Richard Slotkin

"I was always working on a theory of America."
by Kathleen Belew, Richard S. Slotkin via Public Books on April 19, 2024
Solidarity book cover and photos of authors Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor.

Talking “Solidarity” With Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix

A conversation with the activists and writers about their wide-ranging history of the politics of the common good and togetherness.
by Astra Taylor, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on April 23, 2024
Blue-print style sketch of a suburban home, with sidewalk, driveway, and garage

How the Suburbs Became a Trap

Neighborhoods that once promised prosperity now offer crumbling infrastructure, aged housing stock, and social animus.
by Caitlin Zaloom via The New Republic on April 18, 2024
At nighttime, the levels inside the Milton S. Eisenhower Library light up the windows, showing stacks of books and the silhouettes of students working at tables and lounging at chairs, from A Level to B Level and M Level at the top, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 1965.

The Education Factory

By looking at the labor history of academia, you can see the roots of a crisis in higher education that has been decades in the making.
by Erik Baker via The Nation on April 22, 2024
Binary information.

A Brief History of Character Codes

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.
by Steven J. Searle via TRON Web on August 6, 2004
Oneida Community members outside their mansion house, ca. 1865-1875.
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When We Say “Share Everything,” We Mean Everything

On the Oneida Community, a radical religious organization practicing “Bible communism,” and eventually, manufacturing silverware.
via BackStory on November 17, 2016
Henry Clay's body in his death bed, surrounded by mourners.

All That Remains of Henry Clay: Political Funerals and the Tour of Henry Clay's Corpse

Clay embodied both union and conflict. He had been the subject of political pageantry as politics and popular culture developed alongside one another in the early nineteenth century.
by Sarah J. Purcell via Commonplace on April 2, 2012
A photograph of Billie Holiday singing.

The Perfectionist Tradition

The African American perfectionists offered “faith” instead of “hope”—emphasizing the struggle to realize a vision of justice.
by William P. Jones via Dissent on February 6, 2024
Waiter taking a plate of calas on from the counter to serve

Meet The Calas, A New Orleans Tradition That Helped Free Slaves

A path to freedom for enslaved blacks, an engine of economic independence, a treat for Mardi Gras revelers.
by Maria Godoy via NPR on February 12, 2013
Woman walking past a mural of Frederick Douglass
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Lessons for Sustaining Black Businesses After a Crisis

Private coalitions alone aren’t enough to address racial wealth gaps.
by Alyssa Ribeiro via Made by History on July 13, 2020
Lincoln Center on the opening night of the Met Opera, 1966.

Curtains for Lincoln Center

On the falsification of Lincoln Center’s history.
by James Panero via The New Criterion on April 17, 2024
Smiling man in front of a microphone

Fats Domino: Rock'n'Roll’s Quiet Rebel Who Defied US Segregation

The groundbreaking musician who inspired Elvis and The Beatles.
by Brian Ward via The Conversation on October 26, 2017
“Mrs. Lavin coming out of shul in fur,” 1952.

At the Lower East Side Passover Parade, Immigrants Created New American Identities

Some accounts suggest that the Passover Parade was even more glamorous than its famous counterpart, the Easter Parade.
by Yael Buechler via Forward on April 10, 2022
Collage of security camera image and newspaper articles from the Columbine shooting.

The Columbine-Killers Fan Club

A quarter century on, the school shooters’ mythology has propagated a sprawling subculture that idolizes murder and mayhem.
by Dave Cullen via The Atlantic on April 19, 2024
CNN studio with monitor in the foreground and anchor at desk in the background.

From TV News Tickers to Homeland: The Ways TV Was Affected By 9/11

There is a long list of ways America was transformed by the terrorist attacks. But the question of how TV itself was changed is more complicated.
by Eric Deggans via NPR on September 10, 2021
A photograph of Death Row within a prison.
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How and Why Public Opinion on the Death Penalty Changed

A look at the American public's ambivalent opinion of the death penalty.
by Angela Chen, Hans Zeisel, Alec M. Gallup via JSTOR Daily on October 12, 2015
The Mount Carmel Center in Waco, Texas engulfed in flames
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How Religious Literacy Might Have Changed the Waco Tragedy

Religious scholars argue that the Waco raid was not justified and that with more understanding of theology, the loss of life could have been avoided.
by Peter Feuerherd, Jean E. Rosenfield, Mary Zeiss Stange, Ivan Strenski via JSTOR Daily on April 19, 2017
A photograph of a tree's rings.

The Fellowship of the Tree Rings: A ClioVis Project

The disparate and intriguing connections found in environmental history, one tree ring at a time.
by Aidan Dresang via Not Even Past on February 20, 2024
Girls reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Betty Smith Enchanted a Generation of Readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.
by Rachel Gordan via The Conversation on February 27, 2024
Man laughing.

The Most Hated Sound on Television

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.
by Jacob Stern via The Atlantic on April 15, 2024
Painting of Emily Dickinson writing at a desk outside.

Eternity Only Will Answer

Funny, convivial, chatty—a new edition of Emily Dickinson's letters upends the myth of her reclusive genius. 
by Maya C. Popa via Poetry Foundation on April 8, 2024
Sign on fence reading "This is a D.A.R.E. drug free school zone."

D.A.R.E. Is More Than Just Antidrug Education—It Is Police Propaganda

DARE lost its once hegemonic influence over drug education, but it had long-lasting effects on American policing, politics, and culture.
by Max Felker-Kantor via Public Books on April 17, 2024
Continental Currency $20 banknote with marbled edge (May 10, 1775).
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Marbled Money

Marbled paper was a way to make banknotes and checks unique—a critical characteristic for a nascent American Republic.
by Katrina Gulliver, Jake Benson, John Craig via JSTOR Daily on March 14, 2024
Couriers’ duties included fetching patients from cabins, weighing babies, delivering medicine, cleaning saddles and bridles, and escorting any guests who rode the routes between FNS outposts.

Why Debutantes Volunteered to Be Horse-Riding Couriers in Rural Kentucky

Between the 1920s and 1940s, wealthy young women signed up to run errands and carry messages for the Frontier Nursing Service.
by Eliza McGraw via Smithsonian on March 28, 2024
Two young people working construction through AmeriCorps.

Creating AmeriCorps

The bipartisan push to create AmeriCorps, and the community service organization's impact.
by Catherine Milton via HistPhil on April 4, 2024
A pile of hand-written zines in colorful designs.

Queer Teenage Feminists on the Printed Page, 1973 to 2023

How lesbian teenagers forged community bonds and found connection through magazines.
by Kera Lovell via Nursing Clio on April 10, 2024
Alexandria Park School in Sydney, Australia, is built on Aboriginal land.

Overlooking the Past

Land acknowledgments amount to the hollow incantations of hollow people.
by David Eisenberg via Law & Liberty on April 15, 2024
A burning candle in front of the American flag.

The Origins of Conservatism’s ‘Gnostic’ Meme

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on April 12, 2024
The Hollywood sign replaced with the words "The End."

The Life and Death of Hollywood

Film and television writers face an existential threat.
by Daniel Bessner via Harper's on March 21, 2024
A brown rat standing on its hind legs.

How Big Rats Took Over North America

Rat bones collected from centuries-old shipwrecks tell a story of ecological competition and swift victory.
by Lauren Leffer via Popular Science on April 3, 2024
Robert Frost on his farm near Ripton, Vermont.

America’s Great Poet of Darkness

A reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on March 26, 2024
Uncle Sam on ladder hanging up Postal Savings Bank sign
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A People’s Bank at the Post Office

The Postal Savings System offered depositors a US government-backed guarantee of security, but it was undone by for-profit private banks.
by Matthew Wills, Christopher W. Shaw via JSTOR Daily on April 16, 2024
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