Memory

Americans have often been politically divided. But have the divisions over how we recount our history ever been so deep?

A new book considers the possible alternative outcomes of the battles in America's war for independence.

Historians haven't only underestimated the sheer number of underage Union soldiers, they've also overlooked the internal battles those youths provoked.

It is impossible to understand the U.S. without understanding its Indigenous history, writes Ned Blackhawk.

Professor Blackhawk’s new volume attempts to put Native peoples’ stories at the center of the history of the United States.

Targeted even when unarmed, around 70 percent of the Black Union troops who fought in the 1864 battle died as a result of the clash.

Exploring recent debates about the uses–and utility–of Black history in both the academic and public spheres.

A teenage girl died by suicide after she started menstruating and not knowing what it was, in 1935. A bill in Florida wants to take us back to those times.

Twenty years later, I am living through the making of the Iraq War as history.

Nearly 20 years after their deployment to Iraq, veterans grapple with their younger selves and try to make sense of the war.

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.

The new program might strengthen personal connections to refugees, but history shows there are potential downsides, as well.

How should historians respond to the urgency of this current political moment?

Why is Shelby Foote's Civil War subject to so much contemporary debate?

How conservatives made him their icon and distorted his ideas.

Efforts in early America to educate Black children offer us a template for addressing educational inequality today.

For members of the Hip Hop generation who came of age during the Black Power era, “reality rap” was an entry into the political power of Black history.

Georgia’s Richard Russell was an unrepentant racist. You’d think a name change would be a no-brainer. And yet...

After years of opposition and delay, Waco finally has posted a historical marker about the 1916 murder of Jesse Washington.

America has been declaring war on Black education since this country’s beginnings. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Stop Woke Act seeks to continue this tradition.

The Florida governor’s long-ignored 2011 work, "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers," reveals a distinct vision of American history.

Leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who helped vanquish chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today within the radical democratic tradition.

How should a republic honor its leaders?

In the 1960s, Annette Gordon-Reed was the first Black child to enroll in a white school in her hometown. Now she reflects on having a new school there named for her.

We may never know with absolute certainty that the Great Fire was an accident, but Grim certainly made it harder for anyone to argue otherwise.

Conservatives have long refused to accept that America’s past is complicated.

As the 20th century’s preeminent scholar-activist on race, W.E.B. Du Bois would not be surprised by modern-day attempts at whitewashing American history.

Conservatives want to make students patriotic. Instead, they exacerbate historical illiteracy.

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.

Distortions in Western history have long obscured the region’s Black communities.