Memory

Congress had the final say on the design for the slain president’s monument. The competition was intense.

Lady Liberty was inspired by the end of the Civil War and emancipation. The connection to immigration came later.

What started as a solemn commemoration of dead Civil War soldiers has become a celebration of summer. Here's why that makes total sense.

If “living history” role-plays in the classroom can so easily go wrong, why do teachers keep assigning them?

The pessimism of some historians does an injustice to marginalized people of the past and can produce cynicism in students.

Power and ambition in women are often hidden, buried, disguised, crushed, mocked, diminished, punished, or excoriated.

The Lee and Jackson statues were erected not to mourn their deaths, but to glorify their character.

In ignoring the messy realities of westward expansion, McCullough’s "The Pioneers" is both incomplete and dull.

Anna Jarvis spent years fighting the holiday’s commercialization, but that may have hastened its descent into Hallmark territory.

Hobsbawm saw his political hopes crumble. He used that defeat to tell the story of our age.

It's time to shift the social contract of education away from short-term job training toward long-term development.

Douglas Brinkley offers a brief history of political listicles.

The reparations struggle is about remembering that America was built on slavery, but also about fighting for all working people.

In Brazil, some descendants of defeated Confederate immigrants still believe the war for secession was a noble cause.

Why did I never recognize all the important and valuable stories my mother told me as "history"?

These collections of everyday objects are clues to strangers’ daily lives.

How and why a Los Angeles folk artist created a vast array of intricate dioramas to form the African American Miniature Museum.

Angela’s arrival in Jamestown in 1619 marked the beginning of a subjugation that left millions in chains.

The success and brilliance of the new PBS series on Reconstruction is a reminder of the missed opportunity facing the nation.

The author of a book on paramilitary white supremacy discusses the methods and ethics of researching racial violence.

Reflections from the author of a novel that does not shy away from the question of Lincoln's sexuality.

There were 22 Abrahams at the event, which began in 1990.

Unearthing the beauty in the wayward, the fiction in the facts, and the thriving existence in the face of a blanked out history.

The 45th president, no student of history, marveled at the first president's failure to name his historic compound after himself.

How can we understand the physical pain of others?

In the first episode of ‘Voices of the Movement,’ King's associates recount their memories of April 4, 1968.

On why he became a public thinker, the relationship between race and class, and his work in light of new histories of capitalism.

A lot has been written about the notorious concert, but so much of the language around it has been passive and exonerating.

It offers a narrow vision of the activists who fought for equality.

What does it mean to live in a world in which history has rusted under the monstrous weight of the permanent now?