Memory

The “now more than ever” tendency is everywhere.

What would it take for people "to know their history"? Pay attention to the silences.

Independence Day has always been a political battlefield.

This negates a commonly used defense that Confederate symbols represent ‘heritage not hate’.

As the South Carolina city prepared to break from the Union, its people swung between nostalgia and rebellion.

A nation divided, even at birth.

The question isn’t whether they have anything of value to offer. It’s whether they can avoid partisan vituperation along the way.

And other problems we need to solve before we can get out of this mess.

The Marquis de Lafayette's name graces more city parks and streets than perhaps any other foreigner.

The most famous Emancipation holiday is more necessary now than it has ever been.

Before we can face slavery, learn about it and acknowledge its significance to American history, we must dispel the myths surrounding it.

Revisiting Holfstadter's "paranoid style" in the era of Trump.

The fight against civil rights brought it back.

New Orleans shouldn't have removed its Robert E. Lee statue.

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can’t have empathy unless people know the past pain that informs our present.

How Silicon Valley coopts history for its own autocratic ends.

It has less to do with the state's role in the Civil War, and more to do with backlash to the Civil Rights movement.

We asked about monuments in your home town. Here's what you said.

The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.

How Alex Tizon’s essay echoes a trope with deep roots in American history

Too often, we look to history not to understand it, but to seek out confirmation for our preexisting beliefs. That’s a problem.

A century and a half after the Civil War, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked his city to reexamine its past — and to wrestle with hard truths.

Before New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu made his celebrated speech, a grassroots movement forced the city to take down its monuments to white supremacy.

The leaders of the Revolutionary War — and their vision for the nation — were far from revolutionary.

Are we honoring all of our American heroes this Memorial Day?

Lee should not be defined not only by his time as a Confederate general, but also by his actions after the war was over.

Underlying current debates, says Jill Lepore, are fundamental conflicts over the meanings of the past.

On the centenary of his birth, seeking the man behind the myth.

What does the institution owe the descendants of slaves?

Why New Orleans took down monuments that had been installed by supporters of the "Cult of the Lost Cause."