Memory

The Civil War started with a surrender, ended with a series of surrenders, and had several of its major campaigns end in surrender.

Refocusing the study of the Civil War on the West shows that events out west were not simply “noteworthy”; they were emblematic.

White racial violence in America has never been a random collection of individual or unrelated crimes of passion against minorities.

A new book looks at the lives of Jewish professors who sought asylum in the U.S. and were denied entry.

This information is crucial for getting the election right.

Like it or not, the “Miracle on Ice” team has long allowed itself to be used by the worst actors in our politics.

Plantations are not "charming" or "tranquil" wedding venues. They were gruesome labor camps profiting off of enslaved labor.

Six historians weigh in on the biggest misconceptions about black history, including the Tuskegee experiment and enslaved people’s finances.

A now-famous Puritan sermon was nothing special in its own day.

The story of the 1890 massacre was often about the end of Native American resistance to US expansion. But that’s not how everyone told it.

The United States didn't begin in 1619.

Nearly 60 years after FDR authorized the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, California plans to apologize for its role.

Underground Railroad simulations have ignited controversy about whether they confront the country’s darkest history or trivialize its gravest traumas.

Can experiencing elements of what is was like in the past make us better historians?

No, the Civil War didn’t end slavery, and the first Africans didn’t arrive in America in 1619.

A frontier character's life was crafted to be legendary, but was the real person as incredible?

Commemorating the event that hardened the lines of segregation in the city.

A cheeky biography of the first president pulls no punches.

The Editor of the American Historical Review weighs in on recent historiographical debates around the New York Times' 1619 Project.

“Whenever there’s a tragedy in black America, there’s always been an uptick of black history courses."

On the occasion of its bicentennial, and in the wake of racist violence in Charlottesville, UVA confronts its history.

Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected—and what it means to preserve them.

Critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project obscure a longstanding debate among historians over whether the American Revolution was a proslavery revolt.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project launched with the best of intentions, but has been undermined by some of its claims.

The African American Patriot, who died in the Boston Massacre, was erased from visual history. Black abolitionists revived his memory.

How John and Jessie Frémont explored the frontiers of legend-making.

Officials altered a photo of the 2017 Women’s March to avoid “political controversy.”

Stories about the past can help communities create an identity of which they can be proud. This was certainly the case at Christiana.

What to the historian is 1619? What to Africans and their descendants is 1619?

A public historian recommends tactics for explaining an oft-left out period.