Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 151–180 of 234 results. Go to first page
Bayard Rustin speaking at an event.

Eclipsed in His Era, Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Ours

The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?
A political cartoon of Spiro Agnew holding an axe behind his back.

Oh, We Knew Agnew

On Spiro Agnew's lasting legacy.
A multi-colored print of James Garfield and his family in their library

A President of Many Talents

James Garfield is known primarily for being assassinated. But his life reveals the character of nineteenth-century America.
Daisy Bates speaking at the March on Washington.

How Might the Civil Rights Movement Looked Different With Women at the Forefront?

Why women civil rights organizers marginalized at this event, and how that affects our collective memory of the struggle.
Cover of the book "24/7 Politics," featuring photos of Nixon and Carter.

The Battlefields of Cable

How cable TV transformed politics—and how politics transformed cable TV.
Cover image from the first edition of Thoreau’s Walden
original

The Book Read ‘Round the World

Literary history is packed into Concord’s “Old Manse,” but the tiny abode of Walden’s author proves the highlight of our New England trip.
Mabel Ping‑Hua Lee holding flowers.

The Revolutionary Chinese Suffragette Who Challenged America’s Politics

The story of Mabel Ping‑Hua Lee.
George H.W. Bush, wearing a Yale baseball uniform, receives the manuscript of Babe Ruth’s autobiography.

In Babe Ruth’s Final Steps on Public Stage, Two Brushes With History

Babe Ruth's final days revealed his mortality, and made more history, when he encountered a future U.S. president.
Illustration of a person reading, sitting on a giant stack of books.

Is Writing History Like Solving a Mystery?

Why historians like to think of themselves as detectives.
A photograph of Josephine Herbst overlaid on a newspaper article she wrote titled "The Soviet in Cuba."

How Josephine Herbst, 'Leading Lady' of the Left, Chronicled the Rise of Fascism

During the interwar years, the American journalist reported on political unrest in Cuba, Germany and Spain.
Abraham Lincoln.

Abe’s Ambitious Religious Creed

Through the tragedies and uncertainties of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln may have found a deepened connection to his religious faith.
Portrait of Lydia Maria Child reading a book. Courtesy the Smithsonian/NMAAHC

Lydia Maria Child and the Vexed Role of the Woman Abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today.
Painting of "The County Election" by George Caleb Bingham.

The Myth of American Individualism

How the utopian notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy became so ingrained in the American psyche.
original

No Better Soil

In the first half of the 19th century, upstate New York was a hotbed of movements for reform. How visible is that history today?
Tourists taking photos at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
partner

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Coca Cola Strategy: Selling King’s Dream to the World

Martin Luther King’s words are available publicly — for a price.
Black-and-white grainy photograph of Eugene Debs speaking and gesturing with his hands
partner

In The Debs Archive

The papers of American labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) offer a snapshot of early twentieth-century politics.
Harvey Milk (left) at Gay Pride, San Jose, California 1978.
partner

Harvey Milk’s Gay Freedom Day Speech

Five months before his assassination in 1978, Harvey Milk called on the president of the United States to defend the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.
Early 20th-century women sitting with tea and a guitar.

Secret, Unruly, and Progressive: The History of the Heterodoxy Women’s Club

Bohemian Greenwich Village and the secret club that sparked modern feminism.
Shirley Temple Black speaking at the 1969 U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Shirley Temple Black's Remarkable Second Act as a Diplomat

An unpublished memoir reveals how the world’s most famous child actress became a star of the environmental movement.
Then-President George W. Bush meets with his father, former president George H.W. Bush, and former president Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 2005.
partner

Biden’s Putin Comments Could Warp U.S. Policy

The lesson of the first Gulf War and its aftermath for handling Russia.
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs behind President Biden in the State Dining Room of the White House
partner

Activists Have Always Been Frustrated at Allies’ Insistence on Gradual Change

Why abolitionist Lydia Maria Child raged at President Lincoln’s political calculations.
U.S. President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, sit in the back seat of a car.

Harry Truman Helped Make Our World Order, for Better and for Worse

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.
Pastoral landscape with classical architecture. Copy after Thomas Cole’s “Dream of Arcadia”, by Robert Seldon Duncanson, 1852.

An Ugly Preeminence

On the devout abolitionists who excoriated American exceptionalism.
MLK receiving an honorary degree from the Free University, Amsterdam, October 20, 1956.

The International MLK

“The social revolution which is taking place in this country is not an isolated, detached phenomenon. It is part of a worldwide revolution that is taking place.”
Screen capture of Martin Luther King Jr. giving a press conference.

What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About the Filibuster: ‘A Minority of Misguided Senators’

The context in which King shared his views on the filibuster is the same one in which the Senate now finds itself: amid battles over voting rights legislation.
The Virginia monument, an equestrian statue on a pedestal with solders at its base.

The Contested Origins of Gettysburg’s Virginia Monument

Jon Tracey discusses the history of the creation of the Gettysburg Virginia Monument and the true reason it was erected.
A woman in a horse-drawn wagon in the American west.

For Me, but Not for Thee

How white feminism failed Native Americans in the late-19th century.
Two men watch a bank of televisions showing Colin Powell testifying before the UN

Invisible General: How Colin Powell Conned America

From My Lai to Desert Storm to WMDs.
Illustration of Achsa Sprague by Fan Pu

She Spoke to the Dead. They Told Her to Free the Slaves.

In 1850s Vermont, Achsa Sprague swore that the spirits who helped her walk again also possessed her with a crucial mission: freeing every soul in America.
Fannie Lou Hamer.

Why Fannie Lou Hamer’s Definition of "Freedom" Still Matters

The human rights activist and former sharecropper once said that “you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person