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Slave auction in the United States.

How a Group of 19th-Century Historians Helped Relativize the Violent Legacy of Slavery

On the scholarship and intellectual legacies of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, William Dunning and other academics.
by Scott Spillman via Literary Hub on March 10, 2025
AHA executive officers, 1889

White Supremacy in the Academy: The 1913 Meeting of the American Historical Association

The historical interpretations crafted by the men of the Dunning School might now be largely discredited and discarded. But their legacies remain.
by Bradley D. Proctor via The Activist History Review on December 6, 2019

How Hillary Clinton Got On The Wrong Side of Liberals' Changing Theory of American History

What she doesn't get about race and the Civil War.
by Matthew Yglesias via Vox on January 26, 2016

Hillary Clinton Goes Back to the Dunning School

How do you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding its actual history?
by Ta-Nehisi Coates via The Atlantic on January 26, 2016
Three black students holding hands though the smoke during the Children's Crusade

The Authoritarian Right’s 1877 Project

As the GOP undermines Black political rights in the present, some right-wing intellectuals are rationalizing Black disenfranchisement in the past.
by Eric Levitz via Intelligencer on December 14, 2021
1619 Project cover

The NYT’s Jake Silverstein Concocts “a New Origin Story” for the 1619 Project

The project's editor falsifies the history of American history-writing, openly embracing the privileging of “narrative” over “actual fact.”
by Tom Mackaman via World Socialist Web Site on November 24, 2021

The Author of a New Book About Andrew Johnson on the Right Reasons to Impeach a President

Johnson’s impeachment was driven by his refusal to rid the country of the lingering effects of slavery.
by Brenda Wineapple, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on May 8, 2019

Let’s Relitigate the Civil War

There can be no "compromise" with the false view of America's past from Trumpists and pop historians alike.
by Jeet Heer via The New Republic on November 1, 2017

The Unlikely Paths of Grant and Lee

The two men met at Appomattox. The loser would become a role model, the victor an embarrassment.
by Jamelle Bouie via Slate on April 9, 2015
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
The Fisk Jubilee Singers.

How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music—And America Itself

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
A collage in which a photograph of Blanche Ames Ames is superimposed on a photograph of John F. Kennedy.

How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause

And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it.
by Jordan Virtue via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Black-and-white photograph of black students sitting in a classroom at the Tuskegee Institute.

The Complicity of the Textbooks

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.
by Eric Foner via New York Review of Books on September 5, 2022
Black and white photo of children holding signs about remembrance, at a depot in New York City to greet their parents after a mass strike parade in 1911.

The Building Blocks of History

A lively defense of narrative history and the lived experience that informs historical writing.
by Walker Mimms, Richard Cohen via The Nation on August 17, 2022
Illustration of W.E.B DuBois

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Abolition Democracy

The enduring legacy and capacious vision of Black Reconstruction.
by Gerald Horne via The Nation on May 3, 2022
Four members of House committee on Jan. 6. U.S. Capitol Riot, sitting in a hearing.
partner

What History Says About The Jan. 6 Committee Investigation

The importance of an unambiguous report that cannot be weaponized by Trump supporters.
by Stephen A. West via Made By History on March 13, 2022
Thaddeus Stevens

The Radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens understood far better than most that fully uprooting slavery meant overthrowing the South’s economic system and challenging property rights.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on March 1, 2021

Racist Litter

A review of Eric Foner's The Second Founding.
by Randall Kennedy via London Review of Books on July 30, 2020

The History That James Baldwin Wanted America to See

For Baldwin, the past had always been bent in service of a lie. Could a true story be told?
by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. via The New Yorker on June 19, 2020

A Matter of Facts

The New York Times’ 1619 Project launched with the best of intentions, but has been undermined by some of its claims.
by Sean Wilentz via The Atlantic on January 22, 2020

The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts

A dispute between some scholars and the authors of NYT Magazine’s issue on slavery represents a fundamental disagreement over the trajectory of U.S. society.
by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on December 23, 2019

An Unfinished Revolution

A new three-part PBS documentary explores the failure of Reconstruction and the Redemption of the South.
by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on November 21, 2019
Protester at an "America First" rally.

The Great-Granddaddy of White Nationalism

Thomas Dixon’s racist discourse lurks in American politics and society even today.
by Diane Roberts via Southern Cultures on September 18, 2019

“I Lifted Up Mine Eyes to Ghana”

W. E. B. Du Bois died on this day in 1963. Few figures were more influential in shaping the struggle against colonialism.
by Keisha N. Blain via Jacobin on August 27, 2019

The Legacy of Black Reconstruction

Du Bois's "Black Reconstruction in America" showed that the black freedom struggle has always been one for radical democracy.
by Robert Greene II via Jacobin on August 27, 2018
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.
by Donald Yacovone via Medium on March 6, 2018
partner

We Need a New Museum that Tells Us How We Came to Believe What We Believe

The answers are just as important as the stories that our history books tell.
by T. J. Stiles via HNN on August 27, 2017
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.
by Eric Foner, Nancy Bercaw, Fitzhugh Brundage, Thomas J. Brown, Mark A. Noll, Thomas C. Holt, Lisa Tetrault, Martha S. Jones, Kidada E. Williams, Salamishah Tillet, Adrienne Petty, Luke E. Harlow, Elliott West, David M. Prior, Beverly Bond, Jennifer W. Taylor via Muster on August 1, 2017
National Park Service ranger presented with Senate resolution for new monument.

Monumental Effort: Historians and the Creation of the National Monument to Reconstruction

Two historians weigh in on President Obama's move to designate a national monument to Reconstruction in South Carolina.
by Kate Masur, Gregory P. Downs, Kritika Agarwal via Perspectives on History on January 24, 2017

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