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An illustration of blurry Korean people in the ruins of a city after a nuclear bombing.

The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims

Survivors of the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still fighting for recognition.
by E. Tammy Kim via The New Yorker on June 16, 2025
Frances Thompson holding an umbrella.

Frances Thompson Survived a Race Massacre and Bravely Testified to Congress. Then She Was Slandered.

A Black transgender woman’s testimony helped ratify the 14th Amendment. Then conservatives began attacking her identity.
by Chelsea Bailey via CNN on February 16, 2025
Two women protesting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

Disposable Heroes

Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir captures the hazards of “coming forward.”
by Moira Donegan via Bookforum on July 2, 2024
Jim LaBelle, 76, an Indian boarding school survivor.

‘12 Years of Hell’: Indian Boarding School Survivors Share Their Stories

Forced by the federal government to attend the schools, generations of Native American children were sexually assaulted, beaten and emotionally abused.
by Dana Hedgpeth via Retropolis on August 7, 2023
Outline of Henry Kissinger with his face made of skulls.

Blood on His Hands

Survivors of Kissinger's secret war in Cambodia reveal unreported mass killings.
by Nick Turse via The Intercept on May 24, 2023
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Grappling With the Overthrow of Reconstruction

Two new books ask us to shift our attention away from the white vigilantes of Jim Crow and instead focus on what it meant for the survivors.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on March 23, 2023
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9/11 Heroes: Surviving the Biggest Attack on U.S. Soil

First responders who survived 9/11 don’t want the day to be forgotten.
via Retro Report on August 25, 2021
Greenwood in ruins after the Tulsa Race Massacre

The Women Who Preserved the Story of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Two pioneering Black writers have not received the recognition they deserve for chronicling one of the country’s gravest crimes.
by Victor Luckerson via The New Yorker on May 28, 2021
Survivors of Hiroshima

Daughters of the Bomb: A Story of Hiroshima, Racism and Human Rights

On the 75th anniversary of the A-bomb, a Japanese-American writer speaks to one of the last living survivors.
by Erika Hayasaki via Narratively on August 5, 2020

Birmingham’s ‘Fifth Girl’

Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the 1963 church bombing that killed her sister and three other girls. She's still waiting on restitution and an apology.
by Sydney Trent via Washington Post on March 6, 2020

We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

Millions of American children were placed in orphanages. Some didn’t make it out alive.
by Christine Kenneally via BuzzFeed News on August 27, 2018

Remembering One of America’s First Modern School Shootings, 50 Years Later

A teacher tells the story of 1974’s Olean, New York High School murders.
by Sally Ventura via Literary Hub on June 23, 2025
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What Japan’s Atom Bomb Survivors Have Taught Us About the Dangers of Nuclear War

Japanese survivors recall the day the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and warn of future risks.
via Retro Report on April 10, 2025
A view of a pool of lava on a snowy day in Yellowstone National Park.

A Geological Time Bomb: Remembering the Night That Yellowstone Exploded

Considering the impact of the 1959 earthquake that shook our most famous national park.
by Randall K. Wilson via Literary Hub on October 24, 2024
A drawing of a crowd of people standing around the Wakasa stone in a crate.

The Recollector

How the Wakasa stone, a memorial to a Japanese man murdered in a Utah internment camp, became the flash point of a bitter modern dispute.
by Pablo Calvi via The Believer on July 11, 2024
A Taliban soldier standing on the ruins of the Bala Hissar fortress, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2021.

The Price of American ‘Safety’

New books on the War in Afghanistan endeavor to tell the realities of occupation and the "war on terror."
by Suzy Hansen via New York Review of Books on February 20, 2024
Scene from "Schindler's List."

How 'Schindler's List' Transformed Americans' Understanding of the Holocaust

The 1993 film also inspired its director, Steven Spielberg, to establish a foundation that preserves survivors' stories.
by Emily Tamkin via Smithsonian on December 14, 2023
Cover of the book "When Crack Was King," and Donovan X. Ranmsey.

A History of the Crack Epidemic From Below

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.
by Donovan X. Ramsey, Naomi Elias via The Nation on August 4, 2023
Boys at Kamloops Indian Residential School, probably before the 1920s.

We Must Not Forget What Happened to the World’s Indigenous Children

Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard.
by Steve Minton via Aeon on July 21, 2023
People walk amid the destruction in Rosewood.

How History Forgot Rosewood, a Black Town Razed by a White Mob

A century ago, a false accusation sparked the destruction of the Florida community.
by Craig Pittman via Smithsonian on January 4, 2023
The author, as a young girl, standing in front of a wall.

As If I Wasn’t There: Writing from a Child’s Memory

The author confronts the daunting task of writing about her childhood memory, both as a memoirist and a historian.
by Martha Hodes via American Historical Review on September 19, 2022
Crowds of people filling Ellis Island Immigration Station

Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.
by James McAuley via The New Yorker on September 18, 2022
An aerial view of a firebombed area in Tokyo in 1945.

When Tokyo Burned

“Paper City” explores the forgotten firebombing of Japan’s capital.
by Spencer Cohen via Foreign Policy on May 29, 2022
Mushroom cloud of nuclear bomb.

Forgetting the Apocalypse

Why our nuclear fears faded – and why that’s dangerous.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Guardian on May 12, 2022
Portrait photograph of John B. Cade.

John B. Cade's Project to Document the Stories of the Formerly Enslaved

There are revelations in a newly digitized collection of slave narratives compiled by a professor and his students during the Great Depression.
by Susanna Ashton via JSTOR Daily on January 26, 2022
Black and white photograph of Lucille Clifton.

Lucille Clifton and the Task of Remembering

The poet’s memoir Generations is both a chronicle of her ancestral lineage and lesson in the centrality of Black women to the story of American history.
by Marina Magloire via The Nation on January 12, 2022
Memorial for the massacre at El Mozote, a stone wall with lists of names.

The Battle over Memory at El Mozote

Four decades on, the perpetrators of the El Mozote massacre have not been held to account.
by Nelson Rauda via The Baffler on December 15, 2021
Japanese migrants gather in Lima, Peru, in December 1941

America’s Forgotten Internment

The United States confined 2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. They’re still pushing for redress.
by Jesús A. Rodríguez via Politico Magazine on December 5, 2021
Thirteen incarcerated children at Manzanar's Children's Village.

Manzanar Children’s Village: Japanese American Orphans in a WWII Concentration Camp

In June 1942, Kenji and just over one hundred other children were taken from their parents and relocated to Manzanar.
by Natasha Varner via Tropics of Meta on November 19, 2021
Concrete wall with painted silhouettes of people holding hands
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Lessons From the El Mozote Massacre

A conversation with two journalists who were among the first to uncover evidence of a deadly rampage.
by Raymond Bonner, Clyde Haberman via Retro Report on November 11, 2021
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