Person

David W. Blight

Related Excerpts

Emancipation Memorial seen through fence grating

What Frederick Douglass Had to Say About Monuments

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth'
6 Black Americans celebrating Juneteenth in 1900.

Reunion, Juneteenth and the Meaning of the Civil War

What would it mean to define the Civil War as a necessary and crucial final step in the long, even more tragic history of slavery in America?
Photo of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: The Most Photographed American of the 19th Century

Be Woke presents Black History in two minutes (or so).
African Americans gather near a Confederate monument.

The Confederacy’s Long Shadow

Why did a predominantly black district have streets named after Southern generals? In Hollywood, Florida, one man thought it was time for change.
Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass Railed Against Economic Inequality

Never-before-transcribed articles from Frederick Douglass’ Paper denounce capitalism and economic inequality.

The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts

A dispute between some scholars and the authors of NYT Magazine’s issue on slavery represents a fundamental disagreement over the trajectory of U.S. society.

White Supremacy in the Academy: The 1913 Meeting of the American Historical Association

The historical interpretations crafted by the men of the Dunning School might now be largely discredited and discarded. But their legacies remain.

How the South Won the Civil War

During Reconstruction, true citizenship finally seemed in reach for black Americans. Then their dreams were dismantled.

America’s Original Sin

Slavery and the legacy of white supremacy.

Ira Berlin, Transformative Historian of Slavery in America, Dies at 77

He “put the history of slavery at the center of our understanding of American history.”

Frederick Douglass Is No Libertarian

It’s the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’s birth, and some on the right have been crashing the party.
Robert E. Lee statue

The Fight Over Virginia’s Confederate Monuments

How the state’s past spurred a racial reckoning.

We Legitimize the ‘So-Called’ Confederacy With Our Vocabulary, and That’s a Problem

Tearing down monuments is only the beginning to understanding the false narrative of Jim Crow.
Violence during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.

Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?

The recent unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a white-supremacist rally has stoked some Americans’ fears of a new civil war.
Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, and Mayor Hartsfield at the Cyclorama

Cyclorama: An Atlanta Monument

The history of Atlanta's first Civil War monument may reveal how to deal with them in the present.

The Myth of the Kindly General Lee

The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.

Our Commemoration of the Civil War’s End Celebrates a Myth

The emancipation of black Americans has been written out of our celebration of the Civil War's end.
Lyndon Johnson looking unimpressed with what Martin Luther King Jr. is saying.

Feeling Versus Fact: Reconciling Ava DuVernay’s Retelling of Selma

“There has never been an honest movie about the civil rights movement,” says civil rights leader Julian Bond.