Roundup

The Death of the Central Bank Myth

by Adam Tooze

A financial historian argues that it's time to see institutions like the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve as political actors and question how and why they act.

Democrats’ Covid-19 Relief Plan Shows Charges of Socialism have Lost their Bite

by Merlin Chowkwanyun

McCarthyism's residual effects are on display any time an ambitious domestic policy proposal is denounced as “socialist.”

A Response to "Alternate" Explanations

by L.D. Burnett

How should a professor respond to a student's journaling project if it reflects unfounded conspiracy theories about Covid-19? 

Jogging Has Always Excluded Black People

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

The most enduring legacy of the racialized experience of recreational running is the surveillance and suspicion to which black people have long been subjected when using public space.

How Covid-19 Exposed the Deep Divide between White Rural Georgia and Atlanta

by James C. Cobb

Rural antagonism toward Atlanta has been a defining element in Georgia politics for almost 150 years and today underlies Governor Brian Kemp's potentially disastrous response to Covid-19. 

‘The 1619 Project’ Tells a False Story About Capitalism, Too

by Allen C. Guelzo

Allen Guelzo argues that pro-slavery southerners portrayed their society as opposed to growing industrial capitalism, not the integral part of it that some recent historians have claimed. 

How We Got to Sesame Street

by Jill Lepore

The beloved children's program grew from the need to use the overabundance of televisions to fix the dearth of preschools in 1960s America. Jill Lepore assesses how the show has changed along with society.

Two Studies in Folly a Century Apart

by Walter G. Moss

The example of General Douglas Haig, whose disastrous decisions in World War I caused needless death, should be a cautionary example to our "war president" in battling the Coronavirus.   

Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us

by Erik Edstrom

It should be our civic responsibility to change the forces that guide this nation. We must redefine what patriotism and national security truly stand for. 

Can the Democrats Avoid Trump’s China Trap?

by Rachel Esplin Odell and Stephen Wertheim

We stand on the brink of an even more destructive and less justifiable mistake than the post-Sept. 11 crusade.

An Unlikely Bohemia: Athens, Georgia, in Reagan's America

by Grace Elizabeth Hale

Athens kids built the first important small-town American music scene and the key early site of what would become alternative or indie culture.

Mormon Women are Finding — and Using — Their Voices. Are Men in the Church Listening?

by Jana Riess

A new collection of essays should spark consideration of long struggles by Mormon women to claim and exercise influence in the faith. The author fears that it won't. 

Let’s Be Inspired by True Past Leadership

by Walter G. Moss

Rather than inspiring us Americans to continue our fight against that main evil of our time, the coronavirus, President Trump encourages citizens to “liberate” their states from governors who have had enough sense to follow public-health guidelines that will save lives.

Roundup Top Ten for May 8, 2020

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

Ida B. Wells Won the Pulitzer. Here’s Why that Matters.

by Sarah L. Silkey

President Trump continues the long history of trying to delegitimize black women journalists.  

The Next Great Generation

by Julian Zelizer

The class of 2020 will be remembered for all that it sacrificed.  

Kent State: 50 Years After the Shootings

by Thomas M. Grace

Myth has obscured the conflict that led to the killings at Kent State: a long-building clash between a broad set of youth-led protest movements and established authority. That clash continued after May 4, 1970.

Out with the Old: Coronavirus Highlights Why We Need New Names for Aging

by Caroline Cicero and Paul Nash

Although largely unnoticed by mainstream media, something significant has happened with the rise of COVID-19: the marginalization of older Americans.

COVID-19, the Halifax Explosion, and Crises of Care

by Jacob Remes

Because disasters are part of history, not outside of it, they can bring into relief structures of society that were always there.

We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic

by Ibram X. Kendi

The kind of freedom southern secessionists demanded in 1860--freedom to enslave and exploit--are echoed by the individualist idea of freedom proclaimed by anti-shutdown protesters today. Both ignore equally important communal definitions of freedom.