Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"
By Thomas Doherty
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The Trouble with Truth, Reconciliation, Peace and Friendship Treaties: Indigenous Land and Resource Rights Among the Mi’kmaq
Rachel Herrington
Honoring the history of the treaties is not just about the past but also about the present and future of indigenous Canadians.
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West Virginia's Founding Politicians Understood Democracy Better than Today's
Daniel W. Sunshine
The filibuster, as currently constructed, violates what West Virginia founder Waitman Willey described as “the great fundamental political right of the majority to rule.” West Virginia’s quest to improve their democracy offers lessons on how to heal our own.
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“Some of Our Superpatriots are Simply Going Crazy”: America's Response to the Fall of France
Michael S. Neiberg
The fall of France in 1940 disrupted Americans' understandings of their stable and secure place in the world. One response was intense nativism and paranoia about spies and subversives that resonate with today's pandemic response.
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Scoring the Presidents on Integrity and Humanity in Dealing with Native American Nations
Michael A. Genovese
Since George Washington, the President has had principal influence in government policy toward Native American nations. The nation's record is not generally a proud one but some presidents have dealt more honorably than others.
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The Fantasy of Hispanic Heritage Month
Frank P. Barajas
Conceived by a Congressman to honor the contributions of ethnic Mexicans to American society, Hispanic Heritage Month is based in a mythical Spanish past that obscures the indigenous history of the west and legitimates the succession of power from Iberian to Anglo elites.
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"The Essential Kerner Commission Report" Links Past and Present, but Abridges the Committee's Process
James Thornton Harris
The Kerner Commission shocked Lyndon Johnson and much of white America by insisting that "the Negro problem" was in fact a problem of pervasive white racism. Two books are essential reading for understanding the commission's work and it's unmet demands.
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We Need Poets as Much as Physicists and Artists as Much as Actuaries
David P. Barash
We need the expertise of scientists and technologists to solve big problems, but we need artists to make people care enough about those problems to demand solutions.
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The Roundup Top Ten for October 15, 2021
The best opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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Recovering Women's Reproductive Lives, One Mutilated Record at a Time
Catherine Prendergast
"Far too often, archives resemble graveyards with marked tombs for men in which a few bones of women are scattered. It’s time to dig up all of the bones and ask them what story they tell."
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Reviving the Conflict Between Columbus and Taíno Chieftain Caonabó Through Historical Fiction
Andrew Rowen
By resisting the conquest of Columbus, Taíno peoples made the story of conquest their story too. A novelist explains how he worked to recover both sides of the conflict, including the values and worldview of Native and European antagonists, through historical fiction.
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The Horseshoe Crab is the Unsung, and Threatened, Hero of the Pandemic
William Sargent
With due regard to Anthony Fauci, horseshoe crabs are truly the unsung heroes of the pandemic.
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Imagine a World Remade by US-China Cooperation
Lawrence Wittner
The world has everything to gain from remaking the US-China relationship around cooperative approaches to global problems. Will Xi and Biden follow the example of Reagan and Gorbachev?
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Tracing World War 2's Impact on Sicily's Cultural Heritage Sites and Museums
Antonino Crisà
World War II profoundly affected museums and antiquities in Sicily; a new research project is examining this underappreciated destructive consequence of war.
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The Burden of the Pile
Ann Banks' Confederates in My Closet
For years the papers I’d inherited gathered dust in my closet, shut away, easy to ignore. Occasionally it would cross my mind that I should take them out and go through them – p...
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Blog
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The Roundup Top Ten for October 8, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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How Evangelical Conversion Narratives Feed the "Free Choice" Rhetoric at Your School Board Meeting
Rebecca L. Davis
Evangelical Christianity grew in America by emphasizing the power of individual conversion as a "choice for Christ." This frame explains not only the prominence of Evangelicals among anti-mask and anti-vaccine protesters, but also the frequent rhetorical connections they make between COVID policy and LGBTQ tolerance.
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The Forgotten History of Solidarity Between Black and Indigenous Freedom Movements
Kyle T. Mays
"We have forgotten a similar time in history when African American and Native American activists battled against colonialism and white supremacy, respecting the uniqueness of both groups’ history, but understanding that an end to US empire would require solidarity."
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Latitude: The Pioneering International Mission to Measure the Earth
Nicholas Crane
The scientists and technicians of the Geodetic Mission to the Equator did more than measure a degree of latitude; they showed how a disparate group of human beings from different countries and backgrounds could pool their collective resources and solve problems.
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Ending COVID in Our Lifetimes Requires Seeing the Bonds of Shared Humanity
Michael Hogan
"In the end, like those who sought to escape the plague in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” we are all vulnerable and at risk if we do not look to see that our fellow human beings both at home and abroad are safeguarded as well."
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At 82, Dion Offers a Rock and Roll Light in the Darkness
Richard Aquila
Dion's new recording isn't just a work of Baby Boomer nostalgia; it reaches to the past to understand the present, says a historian of rock in American culture.
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A House Still Divided (Part 2)
Walter G. Moss
There are signs that Americans can begin to resolve the fierce struggle underway about what kind of nation we will be.
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Blog
The "Pro-Life" Party of Death
Steve Hochstadt
"In the distorted politics of Republican 'pro-lifers,' the beginning counts much more than the end."
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The Roundup Top Ten for October 1, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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