Memory

“I’ve learned, through hundreds of interviews and years of research, is that what crack really did was expose every vulnerability of society.”

The esteemed labor historian reflects on his life and career, including Berkeley in the 1960s, Walter Reuther, the early UAW, Walmart, Bill Clinton, and more.

When all the bad things America did are true, but none of the good things, something is amiss.

The Founding Fathers made startlingly progressive statements that didn’t make it into popular history.

"Outlander" challenges the myth of American exceptionalism at the root of much U.S. popular culture.

The long-term impact of Quarles’s work.

We're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn all wrong.

The arson attack on a New Orleans nightclub was the largest massacre of queer people in 20th-century America—and it remains relevant to our present moment.

The way we learn about our collective past is under attack thanks to new leadership at the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).

A conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Black studies, white supremacy, and capitalism.

It would be a mistake to think of the current wave of attacks on “critical race theory” as a culture war. This is a political battle.

Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis say they would restore the Fort Bragg name if elected. Its namesake was a “merciless tyrant” who helped lose the Civil War.

How the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom.

James Forten was one of Philadelphia’s most distinguished and important citizens.

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.

“Queer” has experienced a loss of meaning and a curdling of political potential. To reinvigorate it, we need a new approach to history.

The last relics of ‘lost cause’ ideology are being removed, as a federal panel renames US military bases that honored Confederate generals.

Portraying a 19th-century president.

The kinds of narratives historians tend to fall back on constrain our ability to imagine alternatives to the way things have been, and to the way things are.

The genocide of Native Americans was nowhere more methodically savage than in California. A new state initiative seeks to reckon with this history.

The more that historians make their own experiences an explicit part of their work, the harder it will become to let the sources speak clearly.

On teaching in a red state, the silences in our history lessons, and all I never learned about my hometown.

One of the thousands of white Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War and a rare example of a slave owner who changed his views on race.

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.

Reflections from the Naming Commission, and the front lines of the army's war on the Lost Cause.

How a folklorist encourages people to experience the past and present of a place.

Ron DeSantis, who has attacked Florida history lessons and aims to run for president, dismisses slavery in his 2011 book as a “personal flaw” of the Founding Fathers.

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.

New evidence suggests that Sacagawea had a longer life than most historians have believed — fifty-seven years longer.

The state removed the educational marker after Concord Republicans complained about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's communist ties.