Historians/History

Making the Historical Documentary "Makers"

by Robin Lindley

Professor Betsy West on the set of Makers. Credit: Columbia University School of Journalism.Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.--Maya AngelouThis past February marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s now classic The Feminine Mystique, a study of what Friedan called “the problem that had no name” -- the widespread unhappiness of many women who felt stymied by traditional female roles and had few options for meaningful work outside the family.  Friedan’s trailblazing book, with her call for educational and occupational reforms, has been seen as inspiring the modern women’s movement, and the ensuing conversation led Friedan to found the National Organization for Women.

1877: The Year the Army Wasn't Paid

by D.M. Giangreco

6th Regiment of the Maryland National Guard opening fire on an armed mob of railroad strikers during the Great Railway Strike of 1877. The Regular Army was often called upon to quell labor unrest during that year.A compromise between the political parties in the angrily disputed presidential election of 1876 placed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office and ended the last vestiges of Reconstruction in the South. In short order, the already-depleted U.S. Army units attempting to counter an ascendant Ku Klux Klan were transferred to duties elsewhere as the Service braced itself for a round of personnel cuts now that the mission in the South was at an end. What happened next caught even some of the most pessimist soldiers by surprise.

Learning to "Lean In" from Our Nineteenth-Century Ancestors

by Ellen Gruber Garvey

 Caroline Wells Healey Dall in the 1870s. Credit: Smithsonian.Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says women "hold ourselves back" when we should be advocating for ourselves and "leaning in." If only she had known Caroline Healey Dall! With other feminists one hundred fifty years ago, Dall spoke up for herself. Early feminists advocated for each other too. Their tools and methods for smashing through and stepping over barriers may still be sharp and effective.

The Ever-Destructive Dreams of Air Power Enthusiasts

by William J. Astore

RAF bombers over Hamburg in 1943.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com

Channelling Ben Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

“I’ve been told by my friend Washington that you want to talk to me.” “Dr. Franklin! I didn’t really think you’d respond. Mr. Washington told me you only express occasional interest in American affairs.”“I summed up my attitude at the Constitutional Convention. I told them we’d created a republic -- if they can keep it. That says it all -- or at least quite a lot of what I thought -- and still think.”“Without you, they might not have reached an agreement.”“True enough. I saw the antagonisms boiling between perfectionists and realists and for a while wondered if I should have stayed home. It was no place for an eighty-one-year-old man with bladder stones that made it uncomfortable to stand up.”

If Not for Muammar Gaddafi, This Guy Might Have Been Pope

by Martin Kramer

Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli in Italy.Cross-posted from Martin Kramer's blog Sandbox.

Rebutting David Greenberg's Broadside on Howard Zinn

by Jesse Lemisch, Staughton Lynd, and Robert Cohen

Read David Greenberg's response here.

Pete Seeger: "That Was the First Time I Met Reverend King..."

by Kris Wood

Pete Seeger died Tuesday at 94 -- in this interview with HNN from 2013, the legendary singer reflects on his legacy.

A New Left Historian Rewrites Some History

by Ronald Radosh

Image via Shutterstock.Cross-posted from Minding the Campus 

A Primer on America’s Forgotten "Nasty Little War": An Interview with Gregg Jones

by Robin Lindley

An interview about his new book, "Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream."

Russia's Forgotten Genocide

by Walt Richmond

The mountaineers leave the aul by Pyotr Nikolayevich Gruzinsky, 1872.

The American Roots of Neoliberalism

by Daniel Stedman Jones

Portrait of Milton Friedman. Credit: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.The word “neoliberalism” -- the ideology of free markets, deregulation and limited government -- is easily lost in translation from the European to the American context. In part this is a reflection of the different meanings of liberalism in Europe and the United States. But it also highlights a gap in historical understanding, which is only just beginning to be filled.

Donald Ritchie: The Senate's Expert on the Senate

by Mariana Villa

Part Two of a profile of the official historians of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. To read Part One, a profile of House Historian Matthew Wasniewski, click here.Shortly after the Watergate scandal that shook the nation between 1972 and 1974, a letter was written that reminded majority and minority leaders in Congress of the importance of preserving the records of the legislative branch. The power behind Arthur M. Schlesinger’s words inspired the creation of a new office. Working together, Democratic and Republican leaders established the Senate Historical Office in 1975.  The Historical Office is currently headed by Dr. Donald Ritchie.Ritchie, a native of Queens, N.Y., was educated at the City College of New York and the University of Maryland. While working towards his graduate degree at Maryland, the U.S. government dropped graduate education as a deferment to serve in Vietnam.  As a result, he was drafted and inducted into the Marine Corps in June 1969 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Matthew Wasniewski's Front Row Seat to History

by Kelsey McKernie

Part One of a profile of the official historians of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. To read Part Two, a profile of Senate Historian Donald Richie, click here.Most historians, if asked to describe their dream job, would list among its main perks plenty of time for research, the ability to work closely with other historians in the field, and, depending on their level of extroversion, the chance to interact directly with the public. Fortunately for any historians with an interest in American political history, that job does exist, under the title of Historian for the United States House of Representatives. Unfortunately, it has already been filled by Dr. Matthew Wasniewski, and he has no plans of leaving it any time soon.

Lucy Lobdell to Lilly Ledbetter: the First Steps on the Rocky Road to Equal Pay

by William Klaber

Lilly Ledbetter speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Credit: Wiki Commons.One of the enduring images of last year’s election was that of Lilly Ledbetter standing before the Democrat Convention and telling about her fight against Goodyear Tire for paying her less than her male peers. She won her case on the merits, but then the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against her saying that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first instance of Goodyear’s shorting her, each subsequent pay theft [my word] just a continuation of the first, and thus, regrettably, beyond the province of the law.

Compromise as the Constitution’s Foundation

by David Brian Robertson

U.S. Capitol rotunda. Credit: Matt Wade Photography.Practical politicians – like the very human politicians portrayed in the movie Lincoln – wrote the U.S. Constitution. Deep mistrust and bitter disagreements divided these politicians, as they did in the Civil War era and as they do now, in the fight over sequestration and the budget deficit. They negotiated their way through these differences; compromise produced the Constitution, as it later produced the Thirteenth Amendment and the other landmark measures of American government. Their own compromises left us a government that cannot work without compromise.

When It Comes to Transparency, Obama's Channelling His Inner Nixon

by Mary L. Dudziak

Cross-posted from Balkinization.The Boston Globe reported that the president withheld a widely sought white paper “fearing it would only intensify congressional criticism, government sources say.”*This story appeared on April 4, 1973, and it referred to a white paper laying out the legal basis for President Richard Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia after U.S. troops were removed from Vietnam. Barack Obama obviously isn’t Richard Nixon, but his reluctance to disclose the legal basis for targeted killings attempts to do something that Nixon also attempted: to cloak decisions about war in government secrecy, undermining political checks on the use of military force.

Well Done, Brother Herb Shapiro

by Staughton Lynd

Herbert Shapiro died on October 17, 2012. He was eighty-three. The words that keep coming to me as I recall Herb are, meticulous scholarship and “fierce integrity.”

The Strange Saga of Lincoln Assassination Co-Conspirator John Surrat

by David O. Stewart

John Surrat in the uniform of a Papal Zouave.As the world’s eyes turn to Rome for the selection of the next pope, Americans might recall that Vatican City was the refuge in 1866 for the Lincoln conspirator who got away -- John Surratt of Maryland.In 1864, the 20-year-old Surratt was a courier for the Confederacy, carrying messages between Richmond, Washington, D.C., New York, and Confederate agents in Canada. Raised in Confederate-leaning southern Maryland, Surratt frequently crossed the Potomac on secret missions. Late in the year, he moved with his sister and widowed mother to Washington, D.C. Mary Surratt opened a boarding house on H Street. It soon became the center of an anti-Lincoln conspiracy. In President Andrew Johnson’s phrase, Mrs. Surratt “kept the nest that hatched the egg.”

On Creating a Groundbreaking Historical Novel

by Robin Lindley

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhold Heydrich in 1940. Credit: German Federal Archives.I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story, you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind.-- Laurent Binet, HHhHIn Prague on May 27, 1942, Slovak factory worker Jozef Gabcik and Czech soldier Jan Kubis attacked and mortally wounded Reinhard Heydrich, the SS Obergruppenführer (equivalent to a full general) and Nazi Protector of Bohemia and Moravia -- a man so ambitious and casually cruel that Hitler called him “The Man with the Iron Heart.”