Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
Plate stacked with sugar cookies.

The First Girl Scout Cookie Was Surprisingly Boring

No coconut, chocolate, or mint in sight.
A photo collage of African American activists.

Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh

Radio and the Rise of Conservatism

Right-wing radio stations are tied to an increase in conservatism among listeners.
Train cars between drifts of snow up to the top of the engine, with onlookers watching

The Monster Blizzard That Turned Kansas Into a Frozen Wasteland

The 1886 blizzard imperiled settlers and left fields of dead cattle in its wake.

At Supreme Court, Corporations Misuse History in Cases on Agency Power

A pair of lawsuits claim that courts were a strong check against federal agency power in early America, but history shows otherwise.

When Kansas Was Bleeding

How the territory became the frontline of the battle for abolition.
Collage depicting shipping containers, a scale weighing American dollars, and a screen of numbers and percentages

Free Trade's Origin Myth

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.
A nearly gutted department store escalator in Owings Mills Mall in Owings Mills, Maryland.

The Life and Death of the American Mall

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.
A man making fists, ready to box.

Storm of Blows

In the 1890s, boxing went from lower class brawling to upper class show of masculinity.
John Mitchell's 1755 map of the British colonies in North America.

Defining the Northwestern Limits of the New Republic

John Mitchell's renowned 1755 map was a part of King George III's extensive collection of topographical charts that helped shape American designs on Canada.
Eartha Kitt engaged in conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House

When Eartha Kitt Disrupted the Ladies Who Lunch

The documentary short “Catwoman vs. the White House” reconstructs an unexpected moment of activism during the Vietnam War.
Sly Stone with daughter Nove, ca. 1980.

On the Sly

A memoir of the Family Stone.
Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman, the Prizefighter

The economist’s lifelong pugilism wasn’t in spite of his success—it may have been the key to it.
Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Was Extremely Racist — Even By the Standards of His Time

He called black people "an ignorant and inferior race," and it gets worse.
Methodist Episcopal Church leaders: five white men and one Black man.

Black Methodists, White Church

How freedmen navigated an unofficially segregated Methodist Episcopal Church.
A group of Transappalachain migrant workers in Department 312 of the Anderson Delco-Remy plant pose for a photograph in February 1953.

On the New Book, "Hillbilly Highway"

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.
Black legislators behind the title "The Future of Reconstruction Studies."

The Future of Reconstruction Studies

This online forum sponsored by the Journal of the Civil War Era features 9 essays and a roundtable on the future of Reconstruction Studies.
A newspaper photograph of a man kneeling beside H. Lawrence Nelson's gravestone, which reads "Dec 16, 1880 - Sept 25, 1906, murdered and robbed by Hamp Kendall and John Vickers."

A Murderous Gravestone Grudge Carved a New Law Into Stone

When murder won’t rest in peace.
Robert Frost.

Belief is Better

Robert Frost’s correspondence on teaching, writing and having fun.
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during an interview for CBS, November 11, 1973.

US Media Talks a Lot About Palestinians — Just Without Palestinians

Although major U.S. newspapers hosted thousands of opinion pieces on Israel-Palestine over 50 years, hardly any were actually written by Palestinians.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines

The U.S. Has Never Forgiven Haiti

What 220 years of Haitian independence means for how we tell the story of abolition and the development of human rights around the world.
The cover of Behold, a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper.

The Conspiracist Manual That Influenced a Generation of Rappers

How "Behold a Pale Horse" found its way to the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, Busta Rhymes, Tupac Shakur, NAS, and more.
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
Pneumatic tube station

Something Old, Something Pneu

Pneumatic tubes offered a leap forward in business and communications, in the office and across the city.
A kickline of five Asian American dancers at the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco.

Americanism, Exoticism, and the “Chop Suey” Circuit

Asian American artists who performed for primarily white audiences in the 1930s and ’40s both challenged and solidified racial boundaries in the United States.
The Confederate States Almanac

On Harvests and Histories

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.

Telling the Untold History

When Civil War reenacting began, it was largely the province of folks who wished to uphold the Old South myth. Now, a more diverse group of reenactors is pushing back.
Migrant women and children
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Never Never Land

The legacy of Operation Pedro Pan, a plan to save Cuban children from communist indoctrination by leaving their families and resettling in the United States.
Chickens and eggs.

The Unending Quest To Build A Better Chicken

Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat.
The cover of Exodus by Leon Uris.

How Americans Were Taught to Understand Israel

Leon Uris's bestselling book "Exodus" portrayed the founding of the state of Israel in terms many Americans could relate to.
A participant in the Tuskegee syphilis study sits on steps in front of a house in Tuskegee.

The US Once Withheld Syphilis Treatment From Hundreds of Black Men in the Name of Science

The archival trove chronicles the extreme measures administrators took to ensure Black sharecroppers did not receive treatment for the venereal disease.
A baby awaiting adoption near Guatemala City.

Guatemala’s Baby Brokers: How Thousands of Children Were Stolen For Adoption

Baby brokers often tricked Indigenous Mayan women into giving up newborns; kidnappers took others. International adoption is now seen as a cover for war crimes.
Illustration of enslaved persons singing and dancing

Teaching White Supremacy: U.S. History Textbooks and the Influence of Historians

The assumptions of white priority and white domination suffuse every chapter and every theme of the thousands of textbooks that have blanketed the schools of our country.
Henry Grady’s Vision of a “New South.”

Civil War Memory, Reconciliation, and Social Media: A Cautionary Tale

The importance of contextualization and critical evaluation in historical analysis.
Claudine Gay.

First They Came for Harvard

The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one.
Living history interpreter demonstrating a mortar and pestle in a historic kitchen.

The Countercultural History of Living Museums

In the 1960s and ’70s, guides began wearing period costumes and farming with historical techniques, a change that coincided with the back-to-the-land movement.

It Will Take More Than Congress to Cure America’s War Addiction

All that talk about "reclaiming" congressional war powers? Historically, Congress has applauded presidential wars.
Illlustration: Mrs. Auld teaches fredrick Douglass to read

A Frederick Douglass Reading List

Reading recommendations from a lifelong education.

A Brief History of Mostly Terrible Campaign Biographies

“No harm if true; but, in fact, not true.”
A collage of Meir Kahane, a pistol, and the outline of Israel and Palestine on a yellow background.

The American Origins of Israel’s Armament Campaign

How Kahanism infiltrated the political mainstream.
A photograph of four people on donkeys from the late 1800s.

A Question of Legacy

Some of my ancestors had money, and some held awful beliefs. I set out to investigate what I once stood to inherit.
A view of the Grand Canyon.

When the Government Tried to Flood the Grand Canyon

In the 1960s, the government proposed the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon, potentially flooding much of Grand Canyon National Park.
John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray.

Before Taylor and Travis, There Was Helen and John

She was an actress. He was a shortstop. What we can learn from the press parade around this 19th-century power couple.
Statue of Pocahontas.

Pocahontas, Remembered

After 400 years, reality has begun to replace the lies.
Ivy League presidents testify before Congress about campus antisemitism.
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What Today’s University Presidents Can Learn From the 1st Modern Expulsion Over Campus Hate Speech

A 1990 case from Brown University was the first time a modern university expelled a student for a violation of a "hate speech code.”
Suburban cul de sac.

How Fear Took Over the American Suburbs

On the rise of suburban vigilantes and NIMBYs in the late 20th century and their enduring power today.
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How Liberal Policymakers and White Suburban Parents Drove the War on Drugs

A Q&A with Matthew Lassiter about how liberal policymakers and white parents drove the escalation of the War on Drugs.
Johnny Cash.

Far From Folsom Prison: More to Music Inside

Johnny Cash wasn't the only superstar to play in prisons. Music, initially allowed as worship, came to be seen as a rockin' tool of rehabilitation.

The Long Summer of Love

Historians get hip to the lasting influences of ’60s counterculture

Why Did American Music Festivals Almost Disappear in the 1970s and ’80s?

In a few short years, American festivals went from cultural phenomena to endangered species.
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