Memory

Do we give the activist groups of the 1960s more credit than they deserve?

Conflict between American settlers/revolutionaries and the Cherokee nation erupted in the early years of the Revolution.

The conservative hysteria over critical race theory is a refusal to acknowledge that American schools have always taught a white-centric view of U.S. history.

In 1871, the Wisconsin town Peshtigo burned to the ground, killing up to 2,500. But due to another event at the time, many have never heard about the disaster.

Banning such teaching isn’t colorblind; it would erase Black people from history and maintain White cultural dominance.

The Left once tried to own the legacy of America’s Bicentennial, but ran into ideological and structural roadblocks all too familiar today.

We do our children no favors if we only feed them a steady diet of fairy tales that sidestep life’s complexities.

Learning the history of Mexico can help Americans better understand themselves.

"By not showing up in American history, by not hearing about Asian Americans in schools, that contributes to that sense of foreignness."

History classes made it seem like young girls wouldn't ever change the course of the world. These books taught them that they could.

The debate over how to teach the history of race in the U.S. is entangling local school boards and engulfing national politics.

There is no American history without the histories of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. And this past has consequences today.

The battles over Critical Race Theory and Southern heritage are really about a narrow, exclusionary reading of our past.

What’s new about the controversy over the Alamo’s history, and how the way Texans tell its story relates to how Americans see each other.

Even as they tell others’ stories, historians often write about their own lives.

The Trumpist wing of the GOP uses history as a bludgeon, without regard to context, logic, or proportionality.

In our flattened historical imagination, pictures of atrocity and those of progress can coincide in unsettling ways.

Variations in the legend of a steel-driving man tell us about differing American views of the value and purpose of work.

“Wherever there is race reform, there’s inevitably retrenchment.”

Let’s remember that performative anti-racism is as profitable politically as racism has been.

The history of racism, slavery and its impacts on American society is essential and appropriate for school history classes.

A new creative history comes closer than ever to giving us access to Turner’s visionary life.

In a growing number of states, the GOP is pushing “Don’t Say Gay” laws to prevent students from learning about the triumphs and struggles of LGBTQ Americans.

A new way to think about the American Revolution.

The GOP’s new embrace of Lincoln, emancipation, and Juneteenth is no sign of progress.

Why are politics so consumed with the past?

Today, the legendary deputy U.S. marshal is widely believed to be the real Lone Ranger. But his true legacy is even greater.

On Juneteenth, we should remember both the struggle against chattel slavery and the struggle for radical freedom during Reconstruction.

How 20th-century curriculum controversies foreshadowed this summer’s wave of legislation.

We need to do far more than “give voice to the voiceless" to win justice.