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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.
by Lydia Moland via Aeon on March 27, 2023
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.
by Eric C. Miller, Alex Zakaras via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on February 21, 2023
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?
by Ed Ayers on January 23, 2023
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.
by Daniel T. Fleming via Made By History on January 16, 2023
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.
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on August 15, 2022
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.
by Liz Tracey, Harvey Milk via JSTOR Daily on June 13, 2022
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.
by Joanna Scutts via Literary Hub on June 10, 2022
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An unpublished memoir reveals how the world’s most famous child actress became a star of the environmental movement.
by Claudia Kalb via Smithsonian on May 23, 2022
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.
by Joseph Stieb via Made By History on April 1, 2022
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.
by Lydia Moland via Made By History on March 28, 2022
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.
by Beverly Gage via The New Yorker on March 4, 2022
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.
by Ian Tyrrell via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 26, 2022
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.”
by Robert Greene II via Black Perspectives on January 17, 2022
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.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on January 4, 2022
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.
by Jon Tracey via Emerging Civil War on December 16, 2021
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.
by Kyla Schuller via Slate on October 25, 2021
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.
by Noah Kulwin via The American Prospect on October 22, 2021
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.
by Madeline Bodin via Narratively on October 21, 2021
Black and white photo of Fannie Lou Hamer in her rocking chair.

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.”
by Keisha N. Blain, Jamil Smith via Vox on October 21, 2021
Booker T. Washington giving his Atlanta speech.

From the Recording Registry

On the anniversary of Booker T. Washington’s historic Atlanta speech, we look back at the rare 1908 recording so that his words would not be lost to history.
by Cary O'Dell via Library of Congress on September 18, 2021
RFK speaking at the Ambassador Hotel in LA, moments before he was shot on June 5, 1968.

How Robert F. Kennedy’s Assassination Derailed American Politics

The idealistic presidential candidate was on the verge of seizing control of the 1968 race just as Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet struck.
by Larry Tye via Politico Magazine on September 2, 2021
A cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Johnson as a king and the race riots that occurred at a Radical Republican convention in New Orleans.

‘The Failed Promise’ Review: The Mad King and the Lost Cause

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.
by Randall Fuller via The Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2021
Scottsboro Boys standing

Ada Wright, The Scottsboro Defense Campaign, and the Popular Front

The Scottsboro Case quickly became one of the most infamous international spectacles that would eventually define the interwar period.
by Ashley Everson via Black Perspectives on July 13, 2021
Illustration of Jon Meacham

The Man Who Loved Presidents

A review of Jon Meacham's newest book and documentary.
by Thomas Frank via Harper’s on June 10, 2021
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s Rowdy America

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on April 29, 2021
Patchwork collage of Joe Biden

All the President’s Historians

Joe Biden has met with scholars to discuss his presidency and likely legacy—but what are we to make of his special relationship with historian Jon Meacham?
by Daniel N. Gullotta via The Bulwark on April 20, 2021
Richard Wright

When Richard Wright Broke With the Communists

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.
by Colin Asher via The New Republic on April 19, 2021
Nancy Reagan standing behind a railing.

Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis

The former first lady fought the conservative Reagan administration in an attempt to get her husband to pay more attention to the deadly pandemic.
by Karen Tumulty via The Atlantic on April 12, 2021
Joe Biden surrounded by words emanating from a book.

Can America’s Problems Be Fixed By A President Who Loves Jon Meacham?

How a pop historian shaped the soul of Biden’s presidency.
by Kara Voght via Mother Jones on April 2, 2021
Black-and-white photograph of Louis Agassiz sitting in chair, looking through a magnifying glass at a sea urchin.

Louis Agassiz, Under a Microscope

The two prevailing historical visions of Louis Agassiz — one gentle and reverential, the other rigid and bigoted — may simply be two sides of the same coin.
by Saima S. Iqbal via The Harvard Crimson on March 18, 2021
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