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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.
The author (left) talks with a student at the dedication ceremony for Annette Gordon-Reed Elementary School, October 2022.

A Historian Makes History in Texas

In the 1960s, Annette Gordon-Reed was the first Black child to enroll in a white school in her hometown. Now she reflects on having a new school there named for her.
Street signs on the corner of Rosa L. Parks Avenue and North Jeff Davis Avenue.

Atlas of Southern Memory

An interactive map of public commemoration of the Civil War and the civil rights movement in the South.
Building with sign reading " Elaine: Motherland of Civil Rights"

Arkansas' Phillips County Remembers the Racial Massacre America Forgot

The recent commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the bloody Elaine Massacre sought to correct the historical record and start hard conversations.

The Battle Over Confederate Heritage Month

A Southern governor proclaimed April Confederate Heritage Month. Will slavery be mentioned?

By Retiring a Seal, Harvard Wages War on the Dead — but to What End?

Rather than censuring the legacies of our ancestors, we should work to make our descendants proud.
A Freedmen’s Bureau office, Richmond, Virginia, 1866.

One Brief Shining Moment

Manisha Sinha’s history of Reconstruction sheds fresh light on the period that fleetingly opened a door to a different America.
Lindsey R. Peterson.

'Home Builders': Free Labor Households and Settler Colonialism in Western Civil War Commemorations

On the gendered dimensions of trans-Mississippi Civil War memory, the idea of the single-family household, and the politics of expansion and settlement.
Painting of Casimir Pulaski on a horse in battle.

Discover the Short Life and Long Legacy of Casimir Pulaski

On the first Monday in March, Pulaski Day festivities at Chicago’s Polish Museum of America honored the “Father of American Cavalry,” 280 years after his birth.
Protestors use the celebrated Hamilton lyric, “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done” to protest the first inauguration of President Donald Trump.

“The Premise of Our Founding”: Immigration and Popular Mythmaking

On the tension between celebratory rhetoric and restrictive policy surrounding immigration.
Colonial building on the coast.

1619 in Global Perspective

And why we need to study the history of slavery and the African diaspora globally.
Soldiers walking past a sign that says Fort Liberty.

Pete Hegseth Just Did the Funniest Thing Imaginable

It’s Fort Bragg again. So why are Confederate heritage groups so mad?
1999 Yugoslavian stamp depicting a NATO jet launching a missile at an oil refinery.

Stamps Capture Unchanging Face of U.S. Violence Abroad

Countries have also used their postal systems to fight back against aggression.
Kimonos hanging on a clothes line at an internment camp.

The Secret History

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.
Frances Perkins
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Frances Perkins, Modern Politics, and Historical Memory

The current political moment is reshaping the narrative about the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet.
The Eagle Hotel in July 1913 decorated for the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.

Battle Hymns

Charles Ives and the Civil War.
Juneteenth celebrations.

Before Juneteenth

A firsthand account of freedom’s earliest celebrations.
A soldier walking an old woman through a destroyed city.

D-Day’s Forgotten Victims Speak Out

Eighty years after D-Day, few know one of its darkest stories: the thousands of civilians killed by a carpet-bombing campaign of little military purpose.
Normandy American Cemetery.

Who Were the Americans Who Fought on D-Day?

A new exhibition seeks to understand the young soldiers who came ashore at Normandy.
Postal stamp featuring Benjamin Franklin.

Why We Still Use Postage Stamps

The enduring necessity (and importance) of a nearly 200-year-old technology.
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.
Alexandria Park School in Sydney, Australia, is built on Aboriginal land.

Overlooking the Past

Land acknowledgments amount to the hollow incantations of hollow people.
The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

Five Centuries Ago, France Came to America

This is the story of Giovanni da Verrazzano, who never reached Asia, but became the first European to set foot on the site of the future city of New York.
A black man peeking out from behind a door with bullet holes by a broadside schedule of Black Panther Party events.

Landmarking The Black Panther Party

In Chicago, preservationists have launched an unusual effort to explore the radical history of the 1960s civil rights group through the city’s built environment.
Charles Tiffany superimposed on handwriting and map of the transatlantic cable.

How the Tiffany & Co. Founder Cashed In on the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Craze

Charles Lewis Tiffany bought surplus cable from the venture, turning it into souvenirs that forever linked his name to the telecommunications milestone.
Two men hiking.

Jews in the Wilderness

One man's role in shaping the nation's best-loved long-distance footpath reminds us of the close bonds that Jews have formed with the North American landscape.
Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech.
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The Problem With Comparing Today's Activists to MLK

Media coverage of the civil rights movement is a reminder that the deification of King has skewed public memory.
Book cover of "Living the Dream" by Daniel T. Fleming.

Fighting to Desegregate the American Calendar

As a versatile but complex hero, King led a life open to interpretation by politicians and activists of all types who fiercely debated his legacy.
Mirror images of General James Longstreet.

How a Die-Hard Confederate General Became a Civil Rights–Supporting Republican

James Longstreet became an apostate for supporting black civil rights during Reconstruction.
Barbed wire, and participants on the 2014 community pilgrimage to Tule Lake.

Why the Language We Use to Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

A descendant of concentration camp survivors argues that using the right vocabulary can help clarify the stakes when confronting wartime trauma

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