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The Greatest American Historian You've Never Heard Of

An appreciation of Alfred Crosby, who coined the term "Columbian exchange."

Why a Woman Who Killed Indians Became Memorialized as the First Female Public Statue

Hannah Duston was used as a national symbol of innocence, valor, and patriotism to justify westward expansion.

Martin Luther King: How a Rebel Leader Was Lost to History

Fifty years after his death, King is a national treasure in the US. But what happened to his revolutionary legacy?
Artist Titus Kaphar says that his 2014 Columbus Day Painting—which greets "Unseen" visitors in the first gallery—was inspired by his young son’s conflicted and confusing study of the putative discoverer of America.

Two Artists in Search of Missing History

A new exhibition makes a powerful statement about the oversights of American history and America’s art history.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was More Radical Than You Think

On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s time to remember who he really was.
Line graph of history BAs granted, peaking in the 1960s and declining in the 2010s.

Do We Know What History Students Learn?

It's not enough to say that they pick up critical thinking skills. It's time to offer evidence.

Are Museums the Rightful Home for Confederate Monuments?

As museums formulate their approach to re-contextualization, they must also recognize their own histories of complicity.
A picture of the White House

Forget About It

Warnings against "normalizing" outrageous political acts misstate the problem. It’s never the immediate present that gets normalized — it’s the not-so-distant past.

Say Goodbye To Your Happy Plantation Narrative

Only a small percentage of historical interpreters are black, and Cheyney McKnight is trying to change that.

How Charles Koch Is Helping Neo-Confederates Teach College Students

The Koch Foundation is often praised for its higher-ed funding, but the money is going to some radical professors.

Our Nukes, Ourselves

Nuclear heritage and nuclear stewardship in a quiet desert town.
KKK parade
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How Social Media Spread a Historical Lie

A mix of journalistic mistakes and partisan hackery advanced a pernicious lie about Democrats and the Klan.
Statue memorializing Irish immigrants.

No, the Irish Were Not Slaves Too

The myth of Irish slavery has found fertile ground in Internet memes as a way to derail conversation about the need for affirmative action today.

Reading the Soil

On the job with a pair of men who dig up bodies for a living.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

How do museum gift shops at Civil War sites shape historical memory?

'The Teacher Would Suddenly Yell "Drop!"'

The duck-and-cover school exercises from the nuclear era are being invoked as a parallel to active shooter drills.

In Winston Churchill, Hollywood Rewards a Mass Murderer

Are a few bombastic speeches really enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands?

Pushing the Dual Emancipation Thesis Beyond its Troublesome Origins

"Masterless Men" shows how poor whites benefited from slavery's end, but does not diminish the experiences of the enslaved.

On Statues, History, and Historians

A case study from Texas in how Lost Cause mythology was promoted and reified.
Illustration of enslaved persons singing and dancing

Teaching White Supremacy: U.S. History Textbooks and the Influence of Historians

The assumptions of white priority and white domination suffuse every chapter and every theme of the thousands of textbooks that have blanketed the schools of our country.

Twenty-Four Things You Should Know about Pocahontas

To begin with, her formal name was Amonute.

Why White Southern Conservatives Need to Defend Confederate Monuments

Confederate monuments were essential pieces of white supremacist propaganda.

The Quiet Genius of Margalit Fox’s Obituaries

For years, she’s injected subtle, deft works of cultural history into the New York Times.

Men Write History, But Women Live It

The people who make it past 100, who watch the most history unfold, are almost all women.

Democrats and Republicans Are Increasingly Divided On the Value of Teaching Black History

Partisanship is much more polarized by racial attitudes than it was 20 years ago.

Dressmaking Led Elizabeth Keckley From Slavery to the White House

But her memoir caused a rift with Mary Todd Lincoln.

When Emancipation Finally Came, Slave Markets Took on a Redemptive Purpose

During the Civil War, slave pens held captive Confederate soldiers. After, they became rallying points for a newly empowered community.
Soldiers in the 15th New York.

Retracing Du Bois’ Missteps

A historian probes the ‘tragedy’ of the famed scholar's failed WWI history.
Woman wearing a VR headset.

The Future of History Lessons is a VR Headset

A conversation with the creator of a virtual reality experience that takes you inside the protests leading up to MLK Jr.’s death.
collage of disappeared webpages

The Internet Isn't Forever

When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.