Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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American Progress painting by John Gast.

Getting Out of the White Settlers’ Way

Re-telling the arrival of settlers on the prairie.

Quacks, Alternative Medicine, and the U.S. Army in the First World War

During WWI, the Surgeon General received numerous pitches for miraculous cures for sick and wounded American soldiers.

The Old Culture War Over Bible Reading in Public Schools is Starting Again

It was among the first social issues to split American Protestants into liberal and conservative camps.
Pinkerton detectives.

Who Were the Pinkertons?

A video game portrays the Wild West’s famous detective agency as violent enforcers of order. But the modern-day company disagrees.
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Black History Month

What does Black History Month leave out?

The Destruction of Black Wall Street

Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was a prosperous center of Black wealth. Until a white mob wiped it out.

The Decline of Historical Thinking

For the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.

The Making of an Iconic Photograph: Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother

The complex backstory of one of the most famous images of the Great Depression.

A Brief History of Guantanamo Bay, America’s “Idyllic Prison Camp”

A hundred years at the edge of empire.

Model Metropolis

Behind one of the most iconic computer games of all time is a theory of how cities die—one that has proven dangerously influential.
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The Troubling History Behind Ralph Northam’s Blackface Klan Photo

How blackface shaped Virginia politics and culture for more than a century.

The Racial Symbolism of the Topsy-Turvy Doll

The uncertain meaning behind a half-black, half-white, two-headed toy.
Black sailors among the crew of a Union Naval vessel.

Slaves and Sailors in the Civil War

The enlistment of black soldiers in the Union Army is well-known, but their Navy counterparts played an integral role, too.

The Forgotten Story of Pure Hell, America’s First Black Punk Band

The four-piece lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious, but they’ve been largely written out of cultural history.

Say Goodbye To Your Happy Plantation Narrative

Only a small percentage of historical interpreters are black, and Cheyney McKnight is trying to change that.

The Role of Water in African American History

Have historians privileged land-based models and ignored how African Americans participated in aquatic activities?

Negro League Baseball

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

AOC Thinks Billionaires Are a Threat to Democracy. So Did Our Founders.

The idea that democracy and billionaires are incompatible might seem radical to conservatives. But to America’s founders, it seemed like common sense.
Men observing teams of horses and mules.

Andrew Jackson and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal

How the so-called champion of the common man set a precedent for using federal troops to quash labor unrest.

AOC and the American Founding

The problem with progressive intellectuals looking to the nation's founders for progressive models.

Who Segregated America?

For all of its strengths, Richard Rothstein’s new book does not account for the central role capitalism played in segregating America's cities.

Black History Is American History

What is the greatest libertarian accomplishment of all time? The abolition of slavery.

The Premiere of 'Four Women Artists'

In this 1977 documentary, the spirit of Southern culture is captured through four Mississippi artists who tell their stories.

The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show Lives on in the Internet Archive

Episodes from the infamous hip-hop radio show of the '90s.

How the Midlife Crisis Came to Be 

The midlife crisis went from an obscure psychological theory to a ubiquitous phenomenon.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Meaning of Emancipation

He was a revolutionary, if one committed to nonviolence. But nonviolence does not exhaust his philosophy.

Revolution and Repression: A Framework for African American History

Running through all of historian Gerald Horne's books are the twin themes of revolution and repression.

The World Through the Eyes of the US

The countries that have preoccupied Americans since 1900.

Lightning Struck

How an Atlanta neighborhood died on the altar of Super Bowl dreams.

The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson's Archives

On a presidential paper trail.

Foreign Interference in US Elections Dates Back Decades

2016 was not the first election in which a foreign power tried to interfere – Nazis and Soviets tried it too.
American Indian woman and children.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

“Our cultures are not dead and our civilizations have not been destroyed. Our present tense is evolving as rapidly and creatively as everyone else’s.”
Detail from the newsletter "Interrupt," featuring a raised fist and the slogan "Computers serve the landlords."

Mainframe, Interrupted

A member of the 1960s-70s collective Computer People for Peace talks about the early days of tech worker organizing.

How Air Traffic Controllers Helped End the Shutdown — and Changed History

It shows that labor still has some power, at least when public opinion is on its side.

Bias Training at Starbucks Is a Reminder That the History of Racism Is About Who Belongs Where

A central component of the history of racism is the intersection in which geography and race collide.

When Walt Whitman’s Poems Were Rejected for Being Too Timely

"1861" is just so 1861.

How Mini-Golf Played a Big Role in Desegregating Public Rec Spaces

In the summer of 1941, a group of black men came to play golf at the whites-only East Potomac Park.
Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The Afro-Pessimist Temptation

An examination of the tragic echoes of Reconstruction-era politics following Obama's presidency.
An integrated classroom in Anacostia High School, Washington, D.C. in 1957.

The Radical Supreme Court Decision That America Forgot

In Green v. New Kent County, the Court saw school desegregation as a reparative process.
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Susan Fenimore Cooper, Forgotten Naturalist

Susan Fenimore Cooper is now being recognized as one of the nation's first environmentalists.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was More Radical Than You Think

On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s time to remember who he really was.

Does Journalism Have a Future?

In an era of social media and fake news, journalists who have survived the print plunge have new foes to face.

We’re the Good Guys, Right?

Marvel's heroes are back again, but with little of the subversive aura that once surrounded them.

Back to the Women’s Land

A new book looks at four different experiments in feminist separatism.
Senators Joseph McCarthy and Kenneth Wherry.

The Lavender Scare: When the U.S. Government Persecuted Employees for Being Gay

From 1947 until the 1990s, an estimated 10,000 LGBTQ people were pushed out of government and military positions.

Before Black Lung, the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster Killed Hundreds

A forgotten example of the dangers of silica, the toxic dust behind the modern black lung epidemic in Appalachia.

The Unbelievable Story of the Plot Against George Soros

How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Row of suburban houses.

The Myth of "We Don't Build Houses Like We Used To"

The comment lament misses crucial context about the style trends and building materials of the past.

An Itinerant Photographer's Diverse Portraits of the Turn-of-the-Century American South

A new exhibit features photos by Hugh Mangum, whose glass plate negatives were salvaged from a North Carolina barn.

The Tragic Story of the Man Who Led the Occupation of Alcatraz

A new book traces the role of Richard Oakes in the turbulent but transformative civil rights era of the 1960s and '70s.
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