This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Jacobin
7/10/2023
The eminent labor historian discusses his political roots, the evolution of labor studies, and the state of movements for economic democracy.
Source: New York Times
7/3/2023
John Dichtl of the American Association for State and Local History says that Americans want "more help navigating these times, which are probably only going to get worse,” portending brutal battles over the upcoming commemoration.
Source: The Guardian
7/5/2023
A process for producing wrought iron from scrap had been credited to Henry Cort. But Cort likely adopted it from a Jamaican works operated by 76 Black metallurgists, including enslaved workers.
Source: PBS News Hour
7/4/2023
AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman says that the founding can't be understood without understanding the founders' worldview and actions, which, as a matter of pure fact, incorporated an acceptance and embrace of slavery.
Source: New York Times
7/4/2023
Kitty Schmidt's Berlin brothel has been the subject of lurid speculation that its owner was forced by the Nazis to spy on her clients for evidence of subversion and disloyalty. A new book tries to untangle the more complicated history of commercial sex in the Weimar and Nazi eras, but struggles against the pervasiveness of myth.
Source: The Atlantic
6/30/2023
by Craig Spencer
Politicians have felt free to attack public health authorities to score points in the wake of the pandemic because the profession's achievements have allowed the public to forget just how much damage contagious illness can cause.
Source: New York Times
6/19/2023
Hans Asperger had been identified as an Oskar Schindler figure in the German medical community, with the diagnosis that bears his name helping to save many people from death under Nazi eugenic policies. But he also helped determine who would fall into the unfavored categories. Historian Edith Sheffer says it's time to retire his name.
Source: Jacobin
6/21/2023
A historian and editor of MLK's speeches praises Jonathan Eig's new biography, but says that the importance King placed on labor solidarity as a foundation of social justice is a part of the story that needs to be understood today.
Source: Marketplace
6/14/2023
When the historian set out to write the history of working-class African Americans, her own family's stories proved the best place to begin.
Source: Los Angeles Review of Books
6/15/2023
by Charles W. McKinney
Roane picks up a challenge offered by W.E.B. DuBois in his pioneering "The Philadelphia Negro" to understand the spaces of alternative and underground social life as important and formative parts of Black urban life in the Great Migration.
Source: The Atlantic
6/10/2023
by Morgan Ome
Many recent proposals for African American reparations prescribe particular uses for compensation, such as securing housing. But the lesson of the $20,000 payments made to Japanese-American internees and their descendants is that restoring dignity and autonomy means letting recipients decide how to spend any payment for themselves.
Source: Boston Review
6/5/2023
Roane examines the ways that Black Philadelphians between the Great Migration and the Black Power era created and used "underground" and spiritual spaces to stake claims to life in the city, and asks what places can fill that role today.
Source: New York Times
6/9/2023
Dagomar DeGroot's research shows that NASA scientists were aware of the tiny, but potentially catastrophic, risk of moon-earth contamination, and that quarantining the spacecraft and crew would do little to mitigate the risk but could convince the public that authorities were taking precautions.
Source: NPR
6/13/2023
Following up on a blockbuster 2016 Times article, Swarns's book examines the histories of families with ancestors who were sold by Maryland Jesuits to shore up the order's finances (including the fledgling Georgetown University).
Source: KJZZ
6/13/2023
Recent state laws regulating the participation of transgender athletes in girls' sports are part of a long history of policing gender in athletics.
Source: Wall Street Journal
6/12/2023
A memoirist of her own experience of terrorist hostage-taking reviews Martha Hodes's effort to apply the tools of historians to recover memory of being held in the Jordanian desert on a hijacked plane in 1970.
Source: Dame
5/30/2023
The historian and podcaster says hope for a multicultural democracy lies with the young: "Preserving the status quo will not be good enough, and the younger generation understands this better than any other."
Source: New York Times
5/31/2023
The first 17 of nearly 500 interviews with Obama Administration officials was released this week, as part of a Columbia University project.
Source: Bloomberg CityLab
5/30/2023
by Brentin Mock
Victor Luckerson looks to the aftermath of the deadly attacks on the Greenwood district to argue that Tulsa's white leadership, in combination with federal highway and urban renewal programs, thwarted the efforts of Black Tulsans who were determined to rebuild.
Source: The Guardian
6/1/2023
Historian Nicolas Bell-Romero found that influential Cambridge backers were happy to learn of the links between the university and famous abolitionists, but not on the university's historical links to an imperial elite that benefitted from the slave trade, part of a broad battle about the politics of British history.
