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: Inside Higher Ed
6/9/2021
"Yes, it is painful and discomforting to see and hear racism. But I am a white scholar who has always felt nurtured within predominantly white institutions. My discomfort is zilch compared to the real pain long endured by colleagues and students of color."
Source: Mother Jones
6/10/2021
Some of the most iconic news photographs of the Civil Rights Movement told a particular story to white liberals – that Black protesters were passive victims needing their help, instead of actively fighting for freedom. Those photos today help define the mainstream limits of "acceptable" protest.
Source: The Atlantic
6/4/2021
The invention of pronouns to better address gender has been part of the English language for a long time, as has moral panic about the degradation of culture and speech.
Source: Denver Post
6/6/2021
Historian Robert Goldberg describes how the Klan worked in the 1920s to dominate local goverment in the Colorado city and the state government.
Source: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
6/8/2021
In a bold rewriting of twentieth-century political history, Dorothy Sue Cobble reclaims social democracy as a central thread of American feminism and shows how global forces, peoples, and ideas shaped US politics and social movements.
Source: Jacobin
6/5/2021
Voting Rights scholar Ari Berman discusses the past, present, and future of the ballot, and the parallels between the overthrow of Reconstruction-era voting rights and today's proposals to empower state legislatures and suppress the vote.
Source: WUSA 9
6/4/2021
James Loewen tells a DC-area TV station that the capital region has had "sundown towns" where African Americans have been excluded from living by law, custom, or terror.
Source: Washington Post
6/5/2021
As a university-sponsored report comes under fire, historians debate the evidence for the claim that Johns Hopkins owned slaves, and some question whether one university's relationship to slavery is an important research question at all.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
6/4/2021
Education Historian Jonathan Zimmerman tells the Monitor that denying the presence of racism in the past is bad policy and that students must be able to consider and debate expert views on what racism has meant in American history.
Source: Last Week Tonight
6/7/2021
John Oliver discusses the large and diverse group of people who fall under the term “Asian American”, the history of the model minority stereotype, and why our conversations on the subject need to be better-informed. Feat. historian Mae Ngai.
Source: MSNBC
6/7/2021
Historian Nancy Maclean tells Joy Ann Reid that Joe Manchin's pursuit of bipartisanship is futile and misguided.
Source: NPR
7/7/2021
Peter Canellos's new book examines John Marshall Harlan, whose blistering dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson was on the losing side in 1896 but became a foundational text for civil rights and equal protection activism.
Source: Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
6/6/2021
University of Kentucky Historian Vanessa Holden will discuss her new community-oriented history of the rebellion of the enslaved in Southampton, Virginia in an online forum on Thursday, arguing that women and children were essential in planning and executing the rebellion associated with Nat Turner.
Source: New York Times
5/27/2021
The infrastructure bill debate has prompted historical reflection on the urban consequences of highway construction and imagination of alternatives.
Source: The Guardian
5/31/2021
A new generation of historians is challenging Argentina's self-understanding as a nation of Europeans and arguing that that mythology helps conceal anti-Black racism in the past and today.
Source: Black Perspectives
6/2/2021
by Melanie Chambliss
"Anniversaries are useful for focusing the public’s attention on historically significant events, including the Tulsa Race Massacre, but we must ask ourselves what happens next?"
Source: Truthout
6/1/2021
Historian Robin D.G. Kelley warns what has been truly hidden are the class politics of the Tulsa Race Massacre, both in terms of the economic agendas of the white elites who condoned and covered up violence and the impact on the city's Black working class.
Source: The Revealer
6/3/2021
by Daniel José Camacho
Keisha N. Blain discusses her upcoming book on the life and activist legacy of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party leader Fannie Lou Hamer, and its relevance to both grassroots politics and the fight to protect voting rights today.
Source: Washington Post
6/3/2021
by Michele Norris
"A full accounting of slavery is one of terror and trauma, and for decades the natural inclination was to ask, why would anyone want to claim that history?... What happens if we don’t?" Michele Norris's essay features University of Texas historian Daina Ramey Berry.
Source: Washington Post
5/28/2021
"You will not be shocked to learn that the reasons foods travel are often unsavory: enslavement, conquest, climate change and war."
