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: Lowell Sun
12/31/2020
An undergraduate honors course in history led by Robert Forrant is developing public history markers to commemorate the Le Petit Canada neighborhood of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Source: New York Times
1/2/2021
Civil rights historian Calinda Lee places Atlanta at the center of political and economic changes in the south, but whether the change is deep or superficial remains to be seen.
Source: Los Angeles Times
1/3/2021
Los Angeles Times columinst Nicholas Goldberg says the roster of Trump's 1776 commission does not suggest a serious effort to wrestle with the complexity of American history.
Source: Washington Post
1/3/2021
Romila Thapar's studies of the complexities of religion and ethnicity in India's history have made her a target for the nation's ruling right-wing ethnonationalist government.
Source: Washington Post
1/4/2021
The term "conservatism" conceals and normalizes the radical anti-democratic tenor of the current Republican Party, argues Post columnist Margaret Sullivan, drawing on scholars including historian Heather Cox Richardson.
Source: PBS News Hour
1/4/20201
"I think there is a good argument to be made that he violated both federal law, which prevents one person from trying to get another to procure fraudulent votes, as well as Georgia law, which makes election fraud, ballot box stuffing a crime."
Source: New York Times
1/4/2021
"A group of prominent American historians added their voice on Monday to the debate about President Trump’s effort to overturn the election, decrying what they called an undemocratic bid to unravel a free and fair vote that has no historical precedent in the long annals of the United States."
Source: New York Times
12/29/2020
Ted DeLaney worked as a custodian at Washington and Lee before graduating at age 41, returned as a professor, became the school's first Black department chair, and pushed the school to confront the moral and ethical implications of venerating Robert E. Lee.
Source: nj.com
1/4/2021
Historian Kevin Kruse discusses the lessons Americans should learn (and those they will learn) from 2020.
Source: New York Times
1/4/2021
“Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, and his pressure tactics to that end with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, are an example of how authoritarianism works in the 21st century,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.”
Source: TIME
12/23/2020
All this happened since January 1. The year isn't over yet.
Source: National History Center
12/22/2020
The National History Center announces the lineup for its Washington History Seminar for Spring 2021.
Source: New York Times
12/22/2020
The New York Times has published a deep dive into the history of police union contracts, which, in the wake of protests in cities like Detroit, became extremely powerful shields for police departments and individual officers from accountability for misconduct.
Source: American Historical Association
12/22/2020
The AHA sent a letter to the chancellor and provost of the University of Mississippi expressing concern about the university’s decision not to renew the contract of Garrett Felber, assistant professor of history, and the possibility that Professor Felber’s activism relating to racism and incarceration might have affected a decision on his employment status.
Source: Washington Post
12/22/2020
by Gillian Brockell
Michael Flynn's casual mention that martial law has ben invoked "64 times" flagrantly ignores the context of those events. What he proposes for Trump to do is unprecedented.
Source: Mississippi Free Press
12/21/2020
The appointment of Confederate sympathizer Phil Bryant to Trump's "patriotic" history commission shows that it is an exercise in ideology and culture war politics, not a defense of historical rigor.
Source: Governing
12/21/2020
Carole McGranahan, a professor of history and anthropology, says that social media need to be taken seriously as sources of insight into the actions of prominent and anonymous people alike, and need to be preserved as sources.
Source: Charleston Post and Courier
12/20/2020
"Adam Domby’s book provides a helpful guide through White Southern memory, a place where the Civil War never really ended."
Source: Washington Post
12/15/2020
by Gillian Brockell
Knowledge carried by enslaved Africans supported rudimentary efforts at inoculation against smallpox in colonial Massachusetts.
Source: The Atlantic
12/15/2020
Historians consider whether the disruptions and cancellations of 2020 are a singular conjuncture of bad news or if the year has just highlighted normal patterns of life – deferral of dreams, economic privation, and uncertainty – that the less-privileged have always lived with.
