Roundup

So This is the Historical Context You Were Looking For

by Kevin M. Levin

The problem is that no amount of historical context can turn a monument from something that was intended to be venerated by the entire community into a classroom.

The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State

by Stephanie McCurry

Whatever way you look at it, it is impossible to turn this history and its leading figures into a part of American heritage. 

When the KKK Played Against an All-Black Baseball Team

by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro

For the white-robed, playing a black team was a gift-wrapped photo op, a chance to show that the Klan was part of the local community—even the black citizens.

Donald Trump’s Message is Falling Flat Because it is Outdated

by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz

Our cities and suburbs look and feel very different than they did in the depths of the urban crisis in the late 1960s. That’s one reason Trump’s attempt to revive the law-and-order playbook of that era has fallen flat.

Police Say Deaths of Black People by Hanging are Suicides. Many Black People aren’t so Sure.

by Stacey Patton

Black people's suspicions that a number of recent hanging deaths were murders rather than suicides echoes a long history of concealing violence against black people by ruling it suicide. 

Why one Historian Changed his Mind about the Calhoun Monument

by Robert MacDonald

It's difficult for statues to serve as sources of public knowledge about history. 

From Grandfather to Grandson, the Lessons of the Tulsa Race Massacre

by Gregory B. Fairchild

An expert in community economic development reflects on how the devastation of Tulsa's Greenwood community should inform broad efforts to fight racial inequality. 

Black Joy—Not Corporate Acknowledgment—Is the Heart of Juneteenth

by Kellie Carter Jackson

Companies and state governments are finally recognizing Emancipation Day as an official holiday, but black Americans have honored its significance all along.

Why Juneteenth Matters

by Robert Greene II

The contribution of Juneteenth by Black Texans to the broader Black American pantheon of celebrations and holidays should be cherished, just like that of the first Decoration Day held by Black South Carolinians in 1865.

Ida, Maya, Rosa, Harriet: The Power in Our Names

by Martha S. Jones

Among black women, names passed down represent the preservation of the memory and history of struggles for freedom. The author's name reflects those struggles at the intimate scale of family.

Growing Up with Juneteenth

by Annette Gordon-Reed

"I... did not know, as a child, how intensely African-Americans had fought to keep alive the memory of Juneteenth—to commemorate our ancestors’ struggles and their hopes, and to link them to our own."

Pacing the Struggle for Black Equality

by Darryl C. Mace and Joseph R. Fitzgerald

Black people continue to remind this nation that unless they are free, no one is free. Black liberation cannot be denied.

Roundup Top Ten for June 19, 2020

The week's best op-eds by historians or about history from around the web. 

Black Bostonians Fought For Freedom From Slavery. Where Are The Statues That Tell Their Stories?

by Kevin M. Levin

Activists are questioning whether a statue depicting Lincoln delivering freedom to a kneeling black man is a fair representation of how abolition unfolded or a suitable message for a public monument.

The GOP Missed Its Chance To Embrace Martin Luther King Jr.

by Tim Galsworthy

Invoking a sanitized and selective memory of Dr. King enables politicians and voters to trumpet order and exhibit faux outrage at disorder, rather than face up to endemic racial inequalities.

The Disgrace of Donald Trump

by Sean Wilentz

Trump wants to copy Richard Nixon's "law and order" appeals, but may end up echoing Herber Hoover's violent crushing of the Bonus March movement. 

Why the Confederate Flag Flew During World War II

by Matthew Delmont

As white, southern troops raised the battle flag, they showed that they were fighting for change abroad—but the status quo at home.

The End of Black Politics

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The 1960s generation of Black protest demanded a stronger presence in local government. The current protest movement recognizes that presence isn't enough; leaders must advance an agenda that serves their least advantaged constituents. 

The History of the “Riot” Report

by Jill Lepore

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

After World War II, Most ‘Ordinary Nazis’ Returned to Lives of Obscurity. The World Must Recover Their Stories Before It’s Too Late

by Daniel Lee

The act of recovering perpetrators’ voices sheds light on consent and conformity under the swastika, enabling us to ask new questions about responsibility, blame and manipulation.