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H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.
profile illustration of human nervous system against black background

The Mystery of ‘Harriet Cole’

Whose body was harvested to create a spectacular anatomical specimen, and did that person know they would be on display more than a century later?
Illustration of Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley, the likely inspiration for Molly Pitcher, stoking a cannon for the U.S. Pennsylvania artillery during the Battle of Monmouth.

Molly Pitcher, the Most Famous American Hero Who Never Existed

Americans don't need to rely on legends to tell the stories of women in the Revolution.
A pirate ship decorated for the Super Bowl.
partner

The Buccaneers Embody Tampa’s Love of Pirates. Is That a Problem?

How brutal outlaws became romanticized.
The ship, Jose Gaspar, in Tampa Bay during the Gasparilla Festival

The True History and Swashbuckling Myth Behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Namesake

Pirates did roam the Gulf Coast, but more myths than facts have inspired the regional folklore.
Julian Bond

What Julian Bond Taught Me About Politics and Power

Lessons about organizing from the SNCC co-founder.

Sea Shanties and the Whale Oil Myth

Oil companies like to point to the demise of the whaling industry as an example of market-based energy solutions. The reality is much more complicated.

On the Insidious ‘Laziness Lie’ at the Heart of the American Myth

Devon Price wonders why we equate sloth with evil.
The Milky Way above Lanyon Quoit, a neolithic burial chamber in Cornwall, England.

What Big History Overlooks In Its Myth

Sweeping the human story into a cosmic tale is a thrill but we should be wary about what is overlooked in the grandeur.
Johnny Cash poses for a portrait for a publicity shot

The Complications of “Outlaw Country”

Johnny Cash grappled with the many facets of the outlaw archetype in his feature acting debut, Five Minutes to Live.
A television news reporter in a segment from the 1990s on juvenile crime

Superpredator

The media myth that demonized a generation of Black youth.
Abstract picture of Robert Johnson

The Devil Had Nothing to Do With It

“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time,” wrote Bob Dylan. “We still haven’t caught up with him.”
Bubbles with numbers of black Georgia school teachers, centered is 1896 when there were 3316.

American History XYZ

The chaotic quest to mythologize America’s past.
A black and white picture of Clint Eastwood

Cowboy Confederates

The ideals of the Confederate South found new force in the bloody plains of the American West.
A political cartoon featuring Uncle Sam holding a magnet.

America's Unending Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy

A new book charts the long contest between elites and the forces of democracy seeking to dismantle their power.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden behind podiums during the first presidential debate of 2020
partner

President Trump Gets the Suburbs All Wrong

His conception of what appeals to suburban voters is frozen in the past.
Donald Trump giving a speech under a mural of the Founders.

White Evangelicals and the New American Exceptionalism of Donald Trump

The president's "1776 Commission" marks a turning point in his rhetoric.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in Austin
partner

Though Often Mythologized, the Texas Rangers Have an Ugly History of Brutality

Teaching accurate history about white supremacy may be painful, but it's essential.

Hygeia: Women in the Cemetery Landscape

The Mourning Woman emerged during a revival of classical symbolism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gravestone iconography.
Image of street corner in the Bronx, New York

Boroughed Time

Confronting a long tradition of projecting fantasies onto the South Bronx.

The Return of American Fascism

How a legacy of violent nationalism haunts the republic in the age of Trump.
Book cover of "Ride the Devil's Herd," featuring a mustachioed man wearing a hat

Wyatt Earp Does Not Rest in Peace

A pair of new books about US Marshal Wyatt Earp are now out. Only one of them shoots straight.

The Next Lost Cause?

The South’s mythology glamorized a noble defeat. Trump backers may do the same.

UVA and the History of Race: The George Rogers Clark Statue and Native Americans

Unlike the statues of Lee and Jackson, these Charlottesville monuments had less to do with memory than they did with an imagined past.

Americans Are Determined to Believe in Black Progress

Whether it’s happening or not.

The Edge of the Map

Monsters have always patrolled the margins of the map. By their very strangeness, they determined the boundaries of the regular world.
E.J. Banks, a Texas Ranger, in front of a school with an effigy of a Black student hanging over the front door

A Century Ago, One Lawmaker Went After the Most Powerful Cops in Texas. Then They Went After Him

The Texas Rangers were vicious enforcers of white power. J.T. Canales, who once fought against them lost, but the reckoning he sought is finally underway.
Photograph of Sun Ra by Ming Smith

Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Sun Ra, a seminal artist of afrofuturism, embraced a unique vision of blackness.
Protests at the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, with an image of Robert E. Lee edited in the sky behind them.

How Northern Publishers Cashed In on Fundraising for Confederate Monuments

In the years after the Civil War, printmakers in New York and elsewhere abetted the Lost Cause movement by selling images of false idols.

The Empire of All Maladies

Indigenous scholars have long contested the “virgin-soil epidemics” thesis. Today, it is clear that the disease thesis simply doesn’t hold up.

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