Roundup

Makers of Living, Breathing History: The Material Culture of Homemade Facemasks

by Erika L. Briesacher

Material culture centers objects as historical documents that can be read like a text; whether highlighting the physical piece or searching for the biography behind it, this approach reveals complex sociocultural behavior.

Calhoun-Fall

by Peter H. Wood

"When word spread that the Charleston City Council had voted unanimously to remove the domineering figure from his skyscraping column, I thought of a comment Walt Whitman recorded at the end of the Civil War. After Confederate forces had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, the poet overheard a Union soldier observe that the true monuments to Calhoun were the wasted farms and gaunt chimneys scattered over the South."

St. Louis’s Statue of Pius XII: A Double-Standard

by Eunice G. Pollack

If Yale has renamed a residential college named for John C. Calhoun and Princeton will cease to name its public policy school after Woodrow Wilson, the Jesuit St. Louis University should consider evidence of Pope Pius XII's actions in the face of the Holocaust and remove his statue from campus. 

The Confederates Loved America, and They’re Still Defining What Patriotism Means

by Richard Kreitner

For most of U.S. history, patriotism and white supremacy, the values supposedly embodied by the two flags, have hardly been at odds. Rather, they have been mutually constitutive and disturbingly aligned.

When France Extorted Haiti – the Greatest Heist in History

by Marlene Daut

Because the indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for reparations.

The Surprising Cross-Racial Saga of Modern Wealth Inequality

by Adolph Reed Jr.

A political scientist argues that the black-white wealth gap is mostly a product of four decades of income gains accruing to the highest earners; accordingly a broad economic justice program is the best way to close the wealth gap. 

Take the Statues Down. Replace them with any of These People.

by Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz

A national monuments program to honor the U.S. Colored Troops, the Greensboro Four and Reconstruction lawmakers, for a start, would create jobs, art and renewal.

What Defunding the Police can Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy

by Stuart Schrader

To start this process will require looking inward, but it will be impossible without looking outward as well — by rethinking the U.S. role in the world, shrinking the Department of Defense’s massive footprint, and redirecting its resources and legitimacy toward more peaceful streets.

Reparations Need to be Part of the Conversation about Racial Justice

by Nichole Nelson

Understanding how government policy held African Americans back economically — and advantaged whites — long after ending slavery, shows why the reparations discussion is once again growing.

With Schools and Daycare Closed, the Coronavirus is Worsening Women’s Inequality

by Lisa Levenstein

The paucity of policy support for childbirth and care work are the result of a system that still envisions the ideal worker as a man.

Letters From An American: June 27, 2020

by Heather Cox Richardson

A series of stories from the Trump administration over the weekend don't add up.   

Before Stonewall, There Was a Bookstore

by Jim Downs

Networks of activists transformed Stonewall from an isolated event into a turning point in the struggle for gay power.

Racist Violence in Wilmington’s Past Echoes in Police Officer Recordings Today

by Crystal R. Sanders

Wilmington, North Carolina police officers who spoke eagerly about the chance to kill black protesters evoke the history of a violent white supremacist coup against the city's biracial government during Reconstruction.

Should the Freedmen’s Memorial Stay or Go?

by Kevin M. Levin

In considering what to do about the emancipation memorial, academic observers would do well to consider the gap between their understanding of a statue's public impact and the way that black residents experience it. 

The Rap Against Christopher Columbus Statues Overlooks Their Origins

by Jonathan Zimmerman

The great achievement of the 20th-century United States was the integration of formerly excluded ethnics -- Italians, Irish, Jews, and others -- into full citizenship and equality. And the great tragedy was our failure to do the same for nonwhites, especially African Americans and Native Americans.

Building The Chicago Police State: A Review Of Occupied Territory

by Davarian L. Baldwin

"With scrupulous archival detail and sharp analytic focus, Occupied Territory shows how Chicago’s “powerful carceral machinery,” which present-day Black communities condemns for its under-protection and over-policing, was built in the early twentieth century." 

Abolition or Bust: Liberal Police Reform as an Engine of Carceral Violence

by Charlotte Rosen

Recent work by scholars including Naomi Murakawa, Jodi Melamed, Elizabeth Hinton, Marisol LeBrón, Simon Balto, Max Felker-Kantor and Alex Vitale show that liberal reforms to policing fail to solve serious problems and reinforce the power and reach of police departments to the detriment of the disadvantaged.

Funny how Trump’s Dislike for 'Losers' Doesn't Extend to Confederate Generals

by Max Boot

"When we celebrate Confederates, we do so because of their racism. By contrast, when we celebrate other great Americans, from Jefferson to Theodore Roosevelt, we do so despite their racism. That’s a crucial distinction that should not be lost in the heat of the moment."

Yes, The Freedmen’s Memorial Uses Racist Imagery. But Don’t Tear It Down.

by David W. Blight

As a nation, let’s replace a landscape strewn with Confederate symbols with memorialization of emancipation. Tearing down the Freedmen’s Memorial would be a terrible start for that epic process.

Roundup Top Ten for June 26, 2020

The top ten op-eds by historians or about history from around the web this week.