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Collage of photos of the Briggs family and the Brown family.

The Price of Being First: Effort to Rename Brown v. Board Reveals Family’s Pain

A failed quest to rename the famed school desegregation case for the South Carolina family who filed first is about more than legal recognition.

How to Forget

A review of Lewis Hyde’s “A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past.”

The Confederate General Who Was Erased

There's a reason you won't find many monuments in the South to one of Robert E. Lee's most able deputies.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Rediscovered Novel

A new publication obscures the canonical writer.
Drawings of Sadie James and Charles Page over a map of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The True Story of Tulsa’s Forgotten Antihero, Sadie James

And a walk downtown in search of her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.

Infectious Diseases Killed Victorian Children at Alarming Rates. Novels Show the Fragility of Health

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
A drawing of a skeletal hand erupting from the ground and separating a house with a Harris/Walz sign and a house with a Trump/Vance sign. Face masks float in the wind.

There’s a Very Specific Issue Haunting This Election. No One Is Talking About It.

You can bury it. But you can’t escape it.
Photo of 5 skeletons controlling panels.

Notes from the Cold War Underground

The weapons infrastructure of the Cold War is now getting rented out on Airbnb or memorialized as patriotic kitsch.
Still from Midnight Cowboy of a man with a gun in Times Square.

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

Times Square’s decline can be dated to the Depression, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the bottom fell out.
Edward Allan Poe.

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane

If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," is that book.
A photograph of Waverly Woodson Jr. in his U.S. Army uniform.

The Forgotten Hero of D-Day

Waverly Woodson treated men for 30 hours on Omaha Beach, but his heroism became a casualty of entrenched racism, bureaucracy and Pentagon record-keeping.
Pope Francis.

Whatever Happened to the Language of Peace?

Pope Francis is the only world leader who seems prepared to denounce war.
Old picture of four Japanese American girls in Manzanar prison camp.

Preserving Memories of a Japanese Internment Camp

A poignant connection between the erosions of landscape and memory at a former Japanese internment camp in California.
Alexandria Park School in Sydney, Australia, is built on Aboriginal land.

Overlooking the Past

Land acknowledgments amount to the hollow incantations of hollow people.
A photograph of the SS Eastland.

Checking out Historical Chicago: Cynthia Pelayo's "Forgotten Sisters"

The SS Eastland disaster and Chicago's ghosts.
Grave marker for "Special Case - Baby 1."

The Search for Special Case–Baby 1

Who was buried in the lonely grave in New York’s potter’s field? The year-long search led to a lost world in the history of AIDS.
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.
Content of Frank B's suitcase. A luggage tag, a black and white photograph of a young man in military uniform, a notebook with Frank's name written, a guide to Brooklyn, a copy of the Gospel of John, and an address book.

Tales From an Attic

Suitcases once belonging to residents of a New York State mental hospital tell the stories of long-forgotten lives.
A bedroom decorated with Bob Marley merchandise and the Jamaican flag.

Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Is One of the Bestselling Albums Ever. But Does It Tell His Full Story?

After 40 years and more than 25 million copies sold, what story does ‘Legend’ tell us about Bob Marley and the people listening to it?
American and Israeli Jews protest outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's New York hotel in support of democracy for all in Israel-Palestine, September 19, 2023.

The Forgotten History of American Jewish Dissent Against Zionism

In resurrecting stories of non- and anti-Zionist critics, a new book shows American Jews how questioning Israel is deeply rooted in their community.
Virginia Kraft holding a hunting rifle, sitting on a dead elephant.

Sports Illustrated's Forgotten Pioneer

In the Mad Men era of magazine journalism, Virginia Kraft was a globe-trotting writer and a deadly shot with a rifle. Why hasn't anyone heard of her?
Sparkles in light coming through windows of an empty room.

Signs of Ghosts

What do we do when there are whole cities full of ghosts, each one with their own unique story to tell, each one with something left undone?
Elizabeth Rose Poole's death record.

Invisible Women, Invisible Abortions, Invisible Histories

One La Jolla family’s story illuminates a persistent gap in our collective memory.
Martha Hodes (left) and her sister, Catherine, joint passport photo.

The Historian Who Lost Her Memory of a Hijacking

At 12 years old, Martha Hodes was on board a hijacked plane and was taken hostage for a week. How did she forget much of the experience?
Aftermath of a riot in Washington, D.C., following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in 1968. Photography by Warren K. Leffler, via the Library of Congress.

After the Murder

Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was the fateful moment that the wave of hope finally broke for Black America.
Empty, dimly lit interior of shopping mall.

Nostalgia's Empire

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.
Anna Rosenberg talking to Lyndon B. Johnson.
partner

One of the Most Important Women in American History Has Been Forgotten

Anna Rosenberg had massive influence in American politics for 40 years. Remembering her story offers a guide for solving problems today.
Inside Bryan's Museum, with a mannequin dressed as a Texas Ranger.

Those Who Don't Know the Past…

The outcome of a fight to control a nonprofit group could shape the teaching of history in Texas.
A drawing of St. Johns, Canada, beside a river.

Remember Baker

A Green Mountain Boy's controversial death and its consequences.
Ken Burns speaking into a microphone.

Shaming Americans

Ken Burns’s "The U.S. and the Holocaust" distorts the historical record in service of a political message.

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