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Beyond Dispossession

For generations, depictions of Native Americans have reduced them to either aggressors or victims. But at many public history sites, that is starting to change.
by Ed Ayers on December 6, 2023
A photograph of the back of a woman's head, superimposed over a photograph of a body of water as if looking out over it.

What if Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be?

As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.
by Thomas Mallon via The New Yorker on November 20, 2023
A man wearing a cowboy outfit shoots at a series of targets in a sand pit

Home on the (Firing) Range: Gunfight Reenactments, “Old West” Competitive Shooting, and the Myth of Authenticity

Reenactments of the frontier west, complete with cowboy shootouts on main streets, reproduce a narrative of history that is widely accepted by millions.
by Jennifer Tucker via The Panorama on November 15, 2023
Article about the KKK from an old copy of the Atlantic

What The Atlantic Got Wrong About Reconstruction

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Collage of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet, waving, and smoking, and a picture of his home in Queens.

Louis Armstrong Gets the Last Word on Louis Armstrong

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.
by Ethan Iverson via The Nation on October 30, 2023
Lou Reed with sunglasses on. A glare reflects off of the sunglasses.

The Least-Known Rock God

A new biography of the Velvet Underground founder, Lou Reed, considers the stark duality of the man and his music.
by Will Hermes via The Atlantic on October 8, 2023

Memorializing Racial Terror

An interactive map of lynching markers in the United States.
by Gianluca de Fazio via James Madison University on October 5, 2023
Destroyed buildings and streets in the aftermath of the Chicago fire.

What Really Started the Great Chicago Fire?

The famous disaster razed a metropolis and spread a pack of colorful lies. To sift through the ashes today is to encounter some uncomfortable truths.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on October 2, 2023
The Devil Presenting St. Augustine with The Book of Vices by Michael Pacher, 1471-1475

St. Augustine's 9/11 Anniversary

Lord, implored President Biden, let us "turn the page" on the War on Terror. Just not yet.
by Spencer Ackerman via Forever Wars on September 11, 2023
Smoke pours from La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace, during the military coup.

50 Years After “the Other 9/11”: Remembering the Chilean Coup

Some personal reflections on history, memory, and the survival of democracies.
by Ariel Dorfman via The Nation on September 11, 2023
Salvador Allende campaigning before Chile’s parliamentary elections, Santiago, February 1973.

Defending Allende

On September 4, 1973, an enormous multitude of Chileans poured into the streets of Santiago to back the besieged government of Salvador Allende.
by Ariel Dorfman via New York Review of Books on August 24, 2023
Hip hop nightclub.

Golden-Era Rap Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition

In Hip hop’s “golden era,” the period from 1987 to 1994, rappers used their platforms to bring attention to issues plaguing poor and working-class Black communities.
by Antoine S. Johnson via Black Perspectives on August 15, 2023
Winding section of Highway 42 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin's Long and Winding Road Has a Secret Past

For decades, locals believed landscape architect Jens Jensen designed this twisty stretch of Highway 42—the real history is even more serpentine.
by Tea Krulos via Atlas Obscura on August 15, 2023
Men hearing testimony at the courts marshal of 64 African American soldiers in Houston in 1917.

How Fake History Gets Made

A minor incident gets distorted in order to provide a desired racial story.
by Helen Andrews via The American Conservative on June 27, 2023
Empty, dimly lit interior of shopping mall.

Nostalgia's Empire

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.
by Grafton Tanner, Johny Pitts via Public Books on June 8, 2023
Collage of Juneteenth-related images.

The Story We’ve Been Told About Juneteenth Is Wrong

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.
by Peniel E. Joseph via Texas Monthly on May 18, 2023
Chainlink fence in a desert with a danger sign warning of arsenic poison

The Toxic Legacy of the Gold Rush

Almost 175 years after the Gold Rush began, Californians are left holding the bag for thousands of abandoned mines.
by Leah Campbell via Gizmodo on May 15, 2023
A portrait of Jackie Robinson in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, circa 1945.

Jackie Robinson Was More Than a Baseball Player

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.
by Michael Arria, David Naze via Jacobin on May 12, 2023
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Grappling With the Overthrow of Reconstruction

Two new books ask us to shift our attention away from the white vigilantes of Jim Crow and instead focus on what it meant for the survivors.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on March 23, 2023

A Known and Unknown War

Twenty years later, I am living through the making of the Iraq War as history.
by Michael Brenes via Contingent on March 20, 2023
Collage of famous historical sites around the world.

The Future of Historic Preservation: History Matters … But Which History?

The complicated and visceral issue of how we preserve our history offers an opportunity for meaningful discourse.
by Jennifer Tiedemann via Discourse on February 28, 2023
Rap group Public Enemy: (Clockwise from bottom left) Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, Terminator X, S1W, and Chuck D

How Rap Taught (Some of) the Hip Hop Generation Black History

For members of the Hip Hop generation who came of age during the Black Power era, “reality rap” was an entry into the political power of Black history.
by Julia Métraux, Daniella Ann Cook, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie via JSTOR Daily on February 26, 2023
Waco City Hall and a historical marker for the lynching.

Inside the Decades-long Effort to Commemorate a Notorious Waco Lynching

After years of opposition and delay, Waco finally has posted a historical marker about the 1916 murder of Jesse Washington.
by Will Bostwick via Texas Monthly on February 23, 2023
Illustration of Abraham Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham Lincoln Is a Hero of the Left

Leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who helped vanquish chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today within the radical democratic tradition.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on February 20, 2023
Rob McKuen infront of a background composed of spines of his books.

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
by Dan Kois via Slate on October 10, 2022
Crowds of people filling Ellis Island Immigration Station

Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.
by James McAuley via The New Yorker on September 18, 2022
New York, 1929, men pointing to a sign reading "No Booze Sold Here"

Freedom From Liquor

Ken Burns’ account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Aeon on September 6, 2022
Actor Tom Hanks and President George W. Bush stand on stage at the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004.

Destructive Myths

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.
by Jeff Faux via Dissent on August 30, 2022
Cora Tyson, 99, stands by the historic marker in front of her home in St. Augustine, Fla., on July 15.

The Hatred These Black Women Can’t Forget as They Near 100 Years Old

Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city.
by Martin Dobrow via Washington Post on August 28, 2022
Black and white photos of (from left to right) Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, and Toni Morrison

African-American History Finally Gets Its Own AP Class

'Nothing is more dramatic than having the College Board launch an AP course in a field,' says Henry Louis Gates Jr., who helped develop the curriculum.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on August 22, 2022
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