mythology — Bunk History

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The Truth About Thanksgiving Is that the Debunkers Are Wrong

A response to claims that the First Thanksgiving was not a "thanksgiving" as the Pilgrims understood it.

by Jeremy Bangs via HNN on September 1, 2005

The Myth of the Media's Role in Watergate

Journalists' role in uncovering the scandal may not have been as significant as we think.

by Mark Feldstein via HNN on August 30, 2004

Painting of Woody Guthrie smoking a cigarette while playing a guitar.

Woody Guthrie: Folk Hero

Guthrie challenged the commercial aesthetic of the pre-rock era through a performance style that was almost combatively anti-musical.

by David Hajdu via The New Yorker on March 21, 2004

Caricature of Martin Luther King's head

The House of the Prophet

Martin Luther King Jr. was the galvanizing voice of the civil rights struggle, an uncompromising, complicated figure who soared in the pulpit.

by Kwame Anthony Appiah via New York Review of Books on April 11, 2002

1491

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.

by Charles C. Mann via The Atlantic on March 1, 2002

Martin Luther King, Jr. being arrested in Montgomery, 1958.

Martin Luther King Was a Law Breaker

On the second anniversary of MLK's assassination, political prisoner Martin Sostre wrote a tribute emphasizing his radical disobedience.

by Austin McCoy, Martin Sostre via Martin Sostre Institute on April 1, 1970

Movie poster of The Birth of a Nation depicting a Ku Klux Klan member as a knight.

How the Work of Thomas Dixon Shaped White America’s Racist Fantasies

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

by Joel Edward Goza via Literary Hub on September 23, 2024

Tigers, painted by Charles Towne, ca. 1800.

Whatever Happened to Martin Van Buren’s Presidential Tigers?

It's a great story. The only problem is that the whole thing is probably made up.

by Isabel Sans via Boundary Stones on August 23, 2024

Gold Dust on the Air: Television Anthology Drama and Midcentury American Culture by Molly A. Schneider. University of Texas Press. 238 pages.

The Myth America Show

The anthology drama provided a venue for discourses on American national identity during the massive cultural, economic, and political changes occurring at midcentury.

by Josie Torres Barth via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 13, 2024

Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist No. 1: Annotated

Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous essay challenged the voting citizens of New York to hold fast to the truth when deciding to ratify (or not) the US Constitution.

by Alexander Hamilton, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on May 30, 2024

A drawing of a tent underneath stylized constellations depicting a growth chart, a graduation cap, and a dollar sign.

Summer Camp and Parenting Panics

Camps once sold a story about social improvement. Now we just can’t conceive of an unscheduled moment.

by Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker on May 24, 2024

Map of the Chesapeake Bay.

Our Local Monster

Whose knowledge matters in a changing region?

by Kathryn Carpenter via Contingent on May 19, 2024

Stanford Law School.

Why the Right’s Mythical Version of the Past Dominates When It Comes to Legal “History”

They’re invested in legal education, creating an originalist industrial complex with outsize influence.

by Saul Cornell via Slate on May 14, 2024

William F. Buckley Jr. at a press conference.

An Implausible Mr. Buckley

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on April 17, 2024

Painting of Emily Dickinson writing at a desk outside.

Eternity Only Will Answer

Funny, convivial, chatty—a new edition of Emily Dickinson's letters upends the myth of her reclusive genius.

by Maya C. Popa via Poetry Foundation on April 8, 2024

Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.

by Vincent L. Femia via The Metropole on April 3, 2024

“The Caring Hand,” by Eva Oertli and Beat Huber, sculpture of a hand holding a tree.

Bryan Stevenson Reclaims the Monument, in the Heart of the Deep South

The civil-rights attorney has created a sculpture park, indicting the city of Montgomery—a former capital of the domestic slave trade.

by Doreen St. Félix via The New Yorker on March 25, 2024

The Doctors' House in Glendale.

Pieces of the Past at the Doctors House: Glendale, California

How one house can contain larger stories of American migration and growth, reckonings with exclusion, and the advent of new technologies.

by Katherine Hobbs via Public Books on March 21, 2024

A presidential portrait of George Washington.

The Enduring Power of Purim

Since colonial times, the Book of Esther has proved a powerful metaphor in American politics.

by Stuart Halpern via Tablet on March 21, 2024

The 1917 Silent Parade march in New York City protesting antiblack violence.

The Social-gospel Roots of Environmentalism

America's environmental movement has always been moralistic, which has made it bad at weighing tradeoffs. This accounts for its successes and also its failures.

by William A. Murray via National Affairs on March 21, 2024

An illustration of a solar eclipse next to a portrait of James Fenimore Cooper.

Solar Eclipses in American History

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.

by Matthew Hale Smith via Origins on March 14, 2024

A collage of dance performances.

Dance, Revolution

George Balanchine and Martha Graham Trade Places.

by Juliana Devaan via The Drift on March 12, 2024

Edward R. Murrow on the telephone.

Edward R. Murrow Wasn’t the First Journalist to Question Joseph McCarthy’s Communist Witch Hunts

As the fear of communist subversion spread throughout America, McCarthy launched hearings that were based on scant evidence and overblown charges.

by W. Joseph Campbell via The Conversation on March 1, 2024

The First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, 1848.

What American Divorces Tell Us About American Marriages

On the inseparable histories of matrimony and disunion in the United States.

by Lyz Lenz via Literary Hub on February 22, 2024

Woman and man looking at the fiji mermaid

Nineteenth-Century Clickbait

The exhibition “Mermaids and Monsters” explores hoaxes of yore.

by Deb Lucke via The New Yorker on January 20, 2024

A supporter of Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the crowd breached the building as Congress was proceeding with the electoral vote certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump's 'Lost Cause,' a Kind of Gangster Cult, Won't Go Away

Lost cause narratives sometimes have been powerful enough to build or destroy political regimes. They can advance a politics of grievance.

by David W. Blight via Los Angeles Times on January 14, 2024

Two men fighting during Shay's Rebellion.

Fights Over American Democracy Reach Back to the Founding Era

In early America, the soaring ideals behind establishing a new democracy were marked by cycles of progress and backlash.

via Retro Report on January 4, 2024

Manifest Destiny painting by Gast.

'Pure White' Examines the White Supremacist Origins of Evangelical Purity Culture

The new podcast discusses how purity is woven into many of the myths that have fed White supremacy in the nation’s past and continue to do so today.

by Sara Moslener, Emma Cieslik via Religion Dispatches on December 18, 2023

Ronald Reagan signing anti-drug legislation as Nancy Reagan and legislators look on.

America's War on Drugs Was Always Bipartisan—And Unwinnable

There was really only one big difference between liberal drug warriors and conservative ones.

by Matthew D. Lassiter via Made by History on December 7, 2023

Ginger R. Stephens (center), a Virginia leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, joined other celebrants at a 2018 commemoration of Jefferson Davis’s birthday.

Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies!

You can call the United Daughters of the Confederacy a lot of things. But racist? Why, some of their best friends…

by Anna Venarchik via The New Republic on December 5, 2023

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