Roundup

• 
• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  4/20/2021
  

  Caught in a Plague of Gun Violence (Letters from an American, April 19, 2021)

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  What explains the different reaction to two Valentine's Day massacres, in 1929 and 2018? Heather Cox Richardson examines the connections between a culture of individualism, desegregation, and guns. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/19/2021
  

  What the Rise and Fall of the Cinderella Fairy Tale Means for Real Women Today

  by Carol Dyhouse

  "Cinderella dreams an impossible dream: she isn’t a helpful role model for today’s young girls thinking about their future, and is unlikely to regain the intense hold over the female imagination that was evident in the 1950s."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/15/2021
  

  Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance

  by Erik Loomis

  "We may be in a period where economic justice concerns are more central to our politics than any time since the mid-20th century. But without a new round of labor law reform, organized labor cannot succeed."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/19/2021
  

  American Journalism’s Role in Promoting Racist Terror

  by Channing Gerard Joseph

  American journalism profited from the sale of advertisements for the slave trade and stirred up lynch mobs. When will the industry acknowledge its role in American racism? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  4/20/2021
  

  All the President’s Historians

  by Daniel N. Gullotta

  Joe Biden's attraction to Jon Meacham's historical narratives of American ideals triumphant over adversity makes sense for a president dedicated to healing and reunification. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/20/2021
  

  The Derek Chauvin Verdict Won’t Stop Cops Murdering Black People. We Still Aren’t Safe

  by Kellie Carter Jackson

  Historical reflection shows that Derek Chauvin's killing of George Floyd was not an anomaly. His conviction won't purge policing of racial bias. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/20/2021
  

  How White Americans’ Refusal to Accept Busing has Kept Schools Segregated

  by Matthew D. Lassiter

  The legal distinction between "de facto" and "de jure" segregation has always been a convenient fiction allowing the perpetuation of segregation by obscuring the role of government in creating and sustaining a racially discriminatory housing market. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/20/2021
  

  The Men Who Turned Slavery Into Big Business

  by Joshua D. Rothman

  "We still live in the world that Franklin and Armfield’s profits helped build, and with the enduring inequalities that they and their industry entrenched."

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/19/2021
  

  Is America’s Longest Forever War Really Coming To An End?

  by Adam Weinstein and Stephen Wertheim

  The authors argue that Joe Biden has recognized that the US faces the choice of absolute withdrawal from Afghanistan or permanent entanglement. His resolve will be tested by inevitable bad news, but the time is now to move on from the policy of perpetual war. 

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  4/19/2021
  

  Adam Toledo's Killing is Part of a Brutal Pattern of Child Killings in America

  by Keisha N. Blain

  Repeated acts of police violence against children underscore the fundamentally racist roots of policing in the United States and demand a diversion of resources from police to social services. 

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  4/17/2021
  

  How To Make An Oligopoly

  by Brittany McWilliams

  A document from the Eli Lilly corporate archives shows how the pharmaceutical giant strategized to control the global market in insulin. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/18/2021
  

  Calls to Disarm the Police Won’t Stop Brutality and Killings

  by Maryam Aziz

  Calls to disarm police departments ignore the way that policing has used unarmed forms of violence in its efforts at social control, particularly of Black communities. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/19/2021
  

  Compliance Will Not Save Me

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  The idea that Black people can preserve their lives through absolute compliance with police is a vestige of the age of slavery and Jim Crow, but history shows that compliance has never secured safety under white supremacy. 

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  4/17/2021
  

  GOP's New 'America First Caucus' Follows in some Blatantly White Nationalist Footsteps

  by Kevin M. Kruse

  The 1920s saw American nativists invoke the purity of "Anglo Saxon" heritage as a justification for restricting immigration outside of western Europe and other measures that inspired the racial dictatorship of Nazism. It needs to be made clear where this "America First" movement can lead. 

• 
• 4/15/2021
  

  The Roundup Top Ten for April 16, 2021

  The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/15/2021
  

  Why the Hope for Peace is Waning in Northern Ireland

  by James Waller

  "The Troubles, the decades-long Catholic uprising against British rule starting in the 1960s, began with Catholic frustration over a government that would not leave. If widespread violence returns, it will be because of Protestant frustration over a government that would not stay."

• 
• SOURCE: London Review of Books
  4/15/2021
  

  The Gatekeeper

  by Adam Tooze

  Paul Krugman's career as a politically influential economist has reflected the political dead end of the Clinton-era ideal of technocratic governing. His new book suggests that the intellectual authority of the economics profession may no longer prevent active government or deficit spending. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/15/2021
  

  This Much is Clear: Derek Chauvin’s Trial Won’t Change Policing in America

  by Simon Balto

  A historian of policing warns that, while many hope for a guilty verdict, that result, by identifying and punishing "bad" policing, may effectively render legitimate forms of violence and abuse that are historially part of policing in minority communities.

• 
• SOURCE: Edge Effects
  4/15/2021
  

  What 19th-Century Domestic Manuals Say about Housing as Infrastructure

  by Leah Marie Becker

  "We are only as safe as the person breathing the most polluted air or with the least access to stable housing."

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/14/2021
  

  My Ancestors Were Enslaved—But Their Freedom Came at a Price for Others

  by Alaina E. Roberts

  Historian Alaina Roberts' work grew out of a family history in which her ancestors were brought to Indian Territory as slaves of Cherokee masters expelled from the southeast, then became landowners as the government erased tribal control of land.