Historians/History

Why Americans Are Crazy About the 4th of July

by Walter A. McDougall

Last September a group of apprehensive students gathered for the first meeting of a seminar I was offering for the first time. They weren't sure they wanted to take the class. Indeed, they weren't even sure what it was about. Imagine, then, their discomfort when I dispensed with all introductory remarks and bade them sit still for 32 minutes while I played a videotape of the entire presidential inaugural ceremony from January 2001. "Forget whether you favored Al Gore or Geo

Sacco & Vanzetti: Were They Really Innocent?

by Richard Newby

Recently, the Atlantic Monthly Online published an article by Sanders Kleinfeld in praise of Felix Frankfurter's 1927 book on Sacco and Vanzetti. The magazine has chosen not to publish my response. Editors have that right. Cut off from discussion, I recall how the Atlantic's editor in 1927 introduced readers to Frankfurter's 24-page article on Sacco and Vanzetti in its March i

The Middle East Studies Professors Who Came to the Defense of a Jew-Hater

by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld

Fawaz Damra, the Palestinian-born leader of Ohio's largest mosque, was convicted recently of lying about his connections to terrorist organizations when he applied for U.S. citizenship. As a result he may be sentenced to up to five years imprisonment, fined $5,000, and face deportation. The high profile court case turned on videot

The NAACP's Rare Legal Victories in the North

by Adina Back

The 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education has come and gone. But in celebrating its achievements we have once again omitted an important chapter in this nation's flawed story of desegregation: the resistance since 1954 to integration by Northern public schools despite many challenges by parents and civil rights activists. The understandable tendency to wax nostalgic about the Brown ruling perpetuates a dangerous myth about race relations outs

Interview with Richard J. Carwardine: About Lincoln

by Jason Emerson

The following interview with Mr. Carwardine, winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize for Lincoln (Longman Publishing Group), was conducted by email. Mr. Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University. You recently b

The Big Opportunity Ronald Reagan Missed

by Otis L. Graham

The period just after the death of a public figure like Ronald Reagan is the worst time to craft historical assessments of him. We need more time and documentation to do that -- and less partisan cheering. The recent eulogies and appraisals of the career of Ronald  Reagan were, however, worse than usual. They saluted a mythical President Reagan that we never had. Reagan did not reduce the size of government. His role in ending the Cold War was less important

GoodmanSchwernerChaney: 40 Years Ago Today

by Gil Troy

Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. To a young boy growing up in Queens, New York, during the Civil Rights Era, the three names usually blended into one: GoodmanSchwernerChaney. Forty years ago, in a dark Mississippi swamp, the three were murdered. But to me – and my friends – living in one of New York City’s unsung boroughs, these three were not victims, they were heroes; and not just any kind of heroes, but local everyday heroes, the kind we all have the potential – and responsibility -- to be.

Letter to Historians About Ronald Reagan

by Jude Wanniski

Memo To: American Historians From: Jude Wanniski Re: The Best of the CenturyWith the passing of Ronald Reagan, I was not surprised to learn that many of you have already decided that he really wasn’t a “great” President. A pleasant man he was, and popular because he was pleasant, but not to be ranked with the greats. You lived through the Reagan years, 1981-89, and probably concluded at the time that he was not up to the job. It will take historians anot

The Reagan Mantle

by Martin E. Marty

Friday at 4:44, four papers on our porch sometimes provide editorial-opinion texts for Sightings on deadline day.  This past Friday (June 11), President Reagan's funeral gave a theme to several, but not all.  In the Chicago Tribune, Richard Norton Smith, former director of the Reagan Presidential Library, attributes Reagan's outlook on life to childhood.  He"imbibed from his mother, Nelle, a fundamentalist [better:" conservative Protestant"] belief that eve

Reagan's Vision Triumphed ... But Is His the World We Want to Live in?

by Jules Tygiel

In the aftermath of his death, Ronald Reagan's remarkable life fully deserves a period of celebration. Among American political leaders in the twentieth century, only Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose 1930s New Deal reforms reshaped the American scene for succeeding ge

Was Reagan a Great President?

by Christopher Bates

Ronald Reagan's death, like the death of any president, raises the question of how he'll be judged by history. The current proximity of his life and his presidency make an objective answer to this question difficult, but the great likelihood is that he'll ultimately be counted among the pantheon of"great" presidents. There's no doubt that Reagan is held in high esteem by a majority of Americans. A 2001 poll crowned him the greatest president of all time, just ahead of Abraham Lincoln.

5 Myths About Ronald Reagan

by David Greenberg

During crises and other shared public experiences, the news media often stop worrying about their mission to tell the truth. Instead, they take on the role of national rabbi or shaman, fostering a collective sense of good feeling by recounting stories and myths we wish to hear. Since Ronald Reagan's death, the media have chosen mostly to do just that, sugar-coating his life and career rather than grappling with his difficult legacy. Herewith, then, some myths about Reagan now being bruited ab

Reagan's Role in Ending the Cold War Is Being Exaggerated

by Roger Chapman

Ronald Wilson Reagan is no longer this side of eternity; his battles are over. Like the Cold War, he is a part of history. How will he be judged for his role as commander-in-chief? What will the narrator of the future say about this man who in popular culture has often been portrayed as a champion of freedom and a foe of totalitarianism?One scene sentimentalists may wish to let drop on the cutting room floor is the tribute Reagan bestowed upon the Nazi dead at the Bitburg cemetery in W

Father's Day: In Memory of My Father, Master Sergeant Miller, Combat Veteran, World War II

by Keith Miller

Whether or not they were members of the greatest generation, as expressed by Tom Brokaw in the title of his book (1998), will ever be debated. But one thing we can agree upon about those soldiers, like unto my father James L. Miller (1917-1954), who served in World War Two, they were all indeed Ernie Pyle's Brave Men (1944). That my father proved with a Bronze Star and Oak-Leaf Cluster. One embattled G I at Bastogne epitomized the courage of all with something he said, whe

How Reagan Invented the 1980s

by Gil Troy

Historians like to think that nothing surprises us. Still, who would have predicted the Sunday New York Times’s front page declaration that Ronald Reagan “managed to project the optimism of [Franklin] Roosevelt, the faith in small-town America of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the vigor of John F. Kennedy”? This same paper procalimed twenty-one years ago that “The stench of failure hangs over Ronald Reagan’s White House,” and, like much of the media, contin

The Wrong Lessons to Learn from D-Day

by Christopher Endy

In the spring of 2003, French protesters marched in huge numbers against U.S. policy in Iraq. Irate Americans renamed French fries"freedom fries" and accused the French of cowardly betrayal for refusing to follow the White House into war. Now, with a chance to repair American-French relations, Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac will meet June 6 on Normandy's beaches in northern France.  On D-Day's 60th anniversary, they will honor the thousands of American and

Ronald Reagan, De-Mythologized

by Juan Cole

I did not say anything about Ronald Reagan's death on Saturday. The day a person dies he has a right to be left alone. But yesterday is now history, and Reagan's legacy should not pass without comment. Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington's The Other America

The Man Who Was Responsible for Dividing the Country ... into Reaganite Republicans and Reaganite Democrats

by Richard Jensen

American politics today is evenly split into two camps, the Republican Reaganites and the Democratic Reaganites. Start with economics—no one had to tell Reagan, “it’s the economy, stupid!” Reagan’s first challenge was mending an economy in such deep trouble that most observers thought the country was permanently stagnating relative to its stronger competitors. Stagflation in 1980 was a combination of inflation and high unemployment. The Keynesian model said it was i

How Reagan Looks to a Teacher of World History

by Jonathan Dresner

Since I don't teach U.S. history, I don't have to deal with the "Reagan Legacy" much. But as a World History teacher who comes right up to the present (and even makes predictions about the future), I do cover those years. There is a way in which Ronald Reagan was important as an actor in world history which goes largely unappreciated in U.S. historiography that remains fixed on the twilight Cold War and partisan electoral politics.

What We Can Learn from Two Anniversaries of 1989

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Irena Grudzinska Gross

June 4 marks the fifteenth anniversary of both the Beijing Massacre and Solidarity’s first electoral victory. These anniversaries inspire the following three reflections, which speak to the dreams and dilemmas of not just the 1900s but also this troubled new century. 1. Determined people who rely on words, symbols and strikes, rather than violence, can sometimes accomplish impressive – indeed occasionally even miraculous – things. Here, it is obvious