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The Compassionate Historian

History’s academic study is now deeply politicized, with partisan views shaping beliefs and debates over even basic historical facts.
by Daniel Sonnenfeld via National Affairs on June 26, 2025
A collage of pages from the National Park service website, including one about Appomattox Court House and one about the Underground Railroad, showing language stricken out since Donald Trump's innauguration in 2025.

Amid Anti-DEI Push, National Park Service Rewrites History of Underground Railroad

Since Trump took office, the park service — charged with preserving American history — has changed how it describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow.
by Jon Swaine, Jeremy B. Merrill via Washington Post on April 6, 2025
Beverly Gage with Joe Biden and others in the oval office.

Beverly Gage's Bizarre Apologia for J. Edgar Hoover

What’s going on here, and are we ever going to talk about it?
by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on December 27, 2024
Two drawn caricatures of Ronald Reagan's face.

I’m a Historian of the ’80s. I Cannot Tell You How Bizarre the New Ronald Reagan Movie Is.

There’s hagiography, then there’s...whatever this is.
by Paul M. Renfro via Slate on September 3, 2024
A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. stands larger than life in the center of the frame; two small figures view it in the foreground

The Struggle for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Memory

How political misappropriations of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy fuel right-wing movements.
by Hajar Yazdiha via Contexts Magazine on January 15, 2024
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
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.
by Josephine Lee via Texas Observer on May 15, 2023
Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 22, 1956, two months after refusing to give up her seat in a bus for a White passenger.
partner

Pitting Rosa Parks Against Claudette Colvin Distorts History

A new documentary explores the origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott — with lessons on how we see movements.
by Jeanne Theoharis, Say Burgin via Made By History on October 19, 2022
A book labeled "history" begin painted white to represent revisionism.

Right-Wing Nationalists Are Marching into the Future by Rewriting the Past

Fights over history like those in the U.S. are happening all over the world.
by Ishaan Tharoor via Washington Post on February 11, 2022
This 1925 painting depicts an idealized version of an early Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth.

How to Tell the Thanksgiving Story on Its 400th Anniversary

Scholars are unraveling the myths surrounding the 1621 feast, which found the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag cementing a newly established alliance.
by David Kindy via Smithsonian on November 23, 2021
President Donald Trump speaking at a podium at the National Archives
partner

Revisionist History is an American Political Tradition

The founding generation revised the country’s history to make the new nation work.
by Michael D. Hattem via Made By History on September 23, 2020
Painting of Santa Claus giving a sword to a Confederate cavalryman next to a dinosaur.

What Is Revisionist History?

What is revisionist history--and is it dangerous?
by Erin Bartram via Contingent on August 8, 2019

Pride and Prejudice? The Americans Who Fly the Confederate Flag

A listening tour in Mississippi asks flag supporters why they still support a symbol that represents pain, division and difficult history.
by Donna Ladd via The Guardian on August 6, 2018

Forrest the Butcher

Memphis wants to remove a statue honoring first grand wizard of the KKK.
by Liliana Segura via The Intercept on September 2, 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, W. 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

The Heritage of Dylann Roof

Ten years after the Charleston massacre, reverence for the Confederacy that Roof idolized is going strong.
by Elizabeth Robeson via The Nation on June 17, 2025

George Floyd and the Writing of the Final Chapter of Richmond's Confederate Monuments

Do we as Americans have the strength to confront our complicated past?
by Kevin M. Levin via Civil War Memory on May 25, 2025
John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1819.

Who Invented the “Founding Fathers?”

The making of a myth.
by George Dillard via Looking Through The Past on May 21, 2025
Trump from behind, and the Washington monument.

How Trump Wants to Change History

Late last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to restore “truth and sanity to American history.”
by Adam Rowe via Compact on April 24, 2025
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
partner

The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
by Eran A. Zelnik via HNN on April 15, 2025

At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History

The urge to police the past is hardly an invention of the Trump Administration. It is the reflexive obsession of autocrats everywhere.
by David Remnick via The New Yorker on April 6, 2025
Exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

A Truly Patriotic Education Tells Many Stories

Trump’s executive orders can’t define diversity out of history.
by David M. Perry via Foreign Policy on March 31, 2025
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

‘It Reminds You of a Fascist State’: Smithsonian Institution Braces for Trump Rewrite of US History

Normally staid historians sound alarm at authoritarian grasping for control of the premier US museum complex.
by David Smith via The Guardian on March 30, 2025
Boston’s Faneuil Hall at night.

When Is History Advocacy?

Advocacy should not be a dirty word.
by Nick DeLuca via Contingent on March 30, 2025
Richard Nixon scowling.
partner

The Alarming Effort To Rewrite the History of Watergate

For decades, politicians distanced themselves from Nixon's Watergate legacy. Now, some are advancing a new history.
by Michael Koncewicz via Made By History on March 24, 2025

‘This Land Is Yours’

The missing Black history of upstate New York challenges the delusion of New York as a land of freedom far removed from the American original sin of slavery.
by Nell Irvin Painter via New York Review of Books on March 9, 2025
A group of demonstrators at the Stonewall National Monument carrying transgender flags and signs.

No History Without the T

When the National Park Service removed trans people from the webpages of the Stonewall National Monument, it echoed one of the darkest chapters of the queer past.
by Hugh Ryan via Slate on February 16, 2025
A flag depicting a hand pulling back the American flag to reveal a Confederate flag.

Patriotic Education and the End of History

Or, a brief history of today's erasure of history.
by Jeff Sharlet via Scenes from a Slow Civil War on January 30, 2025
Colorful, brightly lit interior of Washington Cathedral.

Reclaiming Medievalism

Washington Cathedral’s break with Confederate memory.
by Richard Utz via Medievalists.net on January 14, 2025
A still of Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan overlaid on the seal of the United States.

The Thin Line Between Biopic and Propaganda

The success of “Reagan” reflects the market demands of a more fragmented moviegoing public—and reality.
by Zach Schonfeld via The Atlantic on November 18, 2024
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