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History News Network

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Roundup Top 10!

Why this year's Black History Month is pivotal

by Peniel Joseph

In 2019, slavery's aftermath hovers over contemporary American race relations in deep and profoundly disturbing ways.

The ‘Loyal Slave’ Photo That Explains the Northam Scandal

by Kevin M. Levin

The governor’s yearbook picture, like many images before it, reinforces the belief that blacks are content in their oppression.

Will Harvard continue to fail Asian Americans — or will it learn from the past?

by Renee Tajima-Peña

Harvard does not have an Asian American studies program.

When the Catholic Church’s prohibition on scandal helped women

by Sara McDougall

But why has scandal been systematically silenced in the church for so long? One answer lies in the medieval church's doctrine on scandal.

The Dark History of Anti-Gay Innuendo

by James Kirchick

The accusation that Lindsay Graham is susceptible to blackmail is historically groundless, predicated upon the same flawed assumption most people held about gays at the height of the Cold War: that they would commit treason in order to avoid being outed.

Democrats are invoking FDR in their Green New Deal. It’s historically misleading.

by Charles Lane

Politically powerful as the invocation of America’s great collective deeds under Franklin D. Roosevelt might be, however, it is historically misleading — deeply so.

The Democrats’ dilemma: two parties in one

by Niall Ferguson

In their eagerness to recruit a new generation of young voters, the Democrats have — not for the first time in their history — admitted a faction of radical ideologues into their midst.

What the Paris Peace Conference can teach us about politics today

by Anand Menon, Margaret MacMillan, Patrick Quinton-Brown

Many of the challenges that concern us today—ethnic nationalisms, building the foundations for peace and prosperity around the globe, managing and containing war, or the future of Europe—were discussed in Paris a hundred years ago.

America’s Original Identity Politics

by Sarah Churchwell

The good news for anyone feeling perturbed is that it simply isn’t true that identity politics represents the end of America or of liberal democracy.

Trump’s Trail of Fears

by Jamelle Bouie

The president, channeling his hero Andrew Jackson, continues to champion a particularly virulent form of reactionary white majoritarianism.

Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism

by Jill Lepore

Half man, half myth, Debs turned a radical creed into a deeply American one.