Roundup

The Real Story of the ‘Draft Riots’

by Elizabeth Mitchell

"The story of the merchants’ response to the so-called Draft Riots is a reminder that we can all do more if we don’t want the lives of more Black people to be marred by cruelty."

Why Martha Washington’s Life Is So Elusive to Historians

by Alexis Coe

The popular image of Martha Washington as matronly and austere has suppressed a fuller understanding of the first First Lady as a person rather than a witness to her husband's leadership.

How a Mass Suicide by Slaves Caused the Legend of the Flying African to Take Off

by Thomas Hallock

A major trope of African American folklore converted an ill-fated effort at escape into a tale of freedom. Though the "flying Africans" story has been told and recorded throughout the African diaspora in the Americas, St. Simons Island, Georgia, is the home of the myth. 

The American Century Ends Early

by Tom Engelhardt

The American empire is now visibly in a state of rapid decay, the product of three decades of wasting the "peace dividend" of the end of the Cold War. 

What This Wave of Anti-Asian Violence Reveals About America

by Anne Anlin Cheng

Trump could not have rallied the kind of hatred that he did without this country’s long history of systemic and cultural racism against people of Asian descent.

His Ignominy Is His Triumph: a Counter-Obituary of Rush Limbaugh

by A.J. Bauer

"You’d be hard pressed to find a better popularizer of the concept of counter-hegemonic struggle (“culture war” in the vernacular), albeit on the right, or a more “organic intellectual” of the U.S. white upper middle class."

The Roundup Top Ten for February 19, 2021

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

It's Time to Stop Calling Slavery America's 'Original Sin'

by James Goodman

The theological origins of "original sin" mean that the metaphor portrays slavery, racism, and the dispossession of Native American lands as evils foisted upon Americans, rather than as social and political products of choices made by them. 

Can Historians Be Traumatized by History? (Content Warning)

by James Robins

"If the historian—the very person supposed to process the past on behalf of everyone else—struggles with trauma, then it is little surprise that societies as a whole struggle to face the violence of how they were formed and how they prevailed."

Phrenology Is Here To Stay

by Courtney E. Thompson

Liberal journalists have treated present-day exponents of phrenology as kooks. This is a dangerous dismissal of phrenology's origins among the 19th century intellectual elite which encourages false security that today's science is insulated from social currents of racism, sexism, or other power politics. 

Whose Rights Matter in Pandemic America?

by Liz Theoharis

In Cold War America, political movements that challenged the oppression of poverty were suppressed in favor of the formal ideal of civil rights. A leader of the revived Poor People's Campaign first envisioned by MLK before his death says that history must be addressed and undone. 

Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us

by Kyle Harper

It's simplistic to look to the classics as instructions for political or social conduct, but the study of the past should inform our awareness of the power of nature to affect social and political life. 

For Generations, African Americans Have Led Global Antiracist Movements

by Brenda Gayle Plummer

International organizations in the 20th century provided space for people from the developing world and African American activists to come together in movements that merged opposition to colonialism with demands for domestic civil rights. 

The Retrograde Quest for Symbolic Prophets of Black Liberation

by Adolph Reed, Jr.

The prevailing pattern of invoking activist or intellectual figures from Black history as prophetic exemplars of moral and political authority takes those figures out of their historical contexts and discourages consideration of how racism connects to multiple systems of economic and political power in contemporary crises like COVID-19. 

We Wouldn’t Have Had President Trump Without Rush Limbaugh

by Max Boot

Rush Limbaugh stripped conservative politics of principle, policy, and argument, broadcasting a show based on "assertion, mockery, and resentment." Donald Trump's presidency has proven that this was enough. 

The Fire Next Time: Climate Change, the Bomb, or the Flame of Hope?

by Rebecca Gordon

American energy policy has utterly failed to even acknowledge the hazards posed by the production of nuclear waste; concern about climate change must not enable a careless expansion of nuclear power. 

Trump’s Impeachment Trial Already Shows How Far US Democracy Has Been Undermined

by Jim Sleeper

Institutional deadlock in Congress indicates a deeper and far more worrying threat to rational debate among American citizens.

The Fantasy that Changed Female Friendship Forever

by Nicole Hemmer

If the 1980s phenomenon of the male Chippendales show benefitted women's empowerment, it was not (only) by making men the objects of lust, but by normalizing rituals of female friendship. 

Medical Racism has Shaped U.S. Policies for Centuries

by Deirdre Cooper Owens

Medical racism over centuries has "created a system of belief and practice that allowed doctors to place blame on Black people for not having the same health outcomes as White people."

Criminal Justice Reform Won’t Work Until it Focuses on Black Women

by Talitha L. LeFlouria

The history of mass incarceration is also the history of control and exploitation of Black women through the criminal justice system. Reforms need to recognize the impacts of the system on women to advance justice.