Roundup: Talking About History

Editorial in the Independent: 1968 Olympics ... The divided legacy of black power

To a country that invented the Hall of Fame and idolises sporting heroes, the names Tommie Smith and John Carlos are still pregnant with symbolism. The photograph of their proud-but-solemn "black power salute" on the podium at the Mexico Olympics in the summer of 1968 remains one of the defining images of a generation. Yet exactly four decades after Smith and Carlos lifted gloved fists and bowed their heads in that dignified yet somehow menacing protest, their legacy has

Njoroge Wachai: Thumbs-Up For Bush's African Legacy

[Njoroge Wachai is a journalist who formerly worked for the Kenya-based People Daily.] This is a biased question against Bush: it already prejudges Bush’s legacy as horrible. But to be fair to the man, this is not the case. Unless you live on Mars, you can’t claim that there’s nothing good associated with President Bush. Of course, you don’t expect Bush’s detractors --- and those who have political points to score by poking holes into his presidency – to paint him white. They’d rath

Geoff Small: Remembering the Black Power protest

[Geoff Small is the director of Black Power Salute, which will be televised on BBC Four tonight at 9pm.] Though mention of their names would draw blank expressions from most people, we all owe a great debt to Tommie Smith and John Carlos. The American sprinters made history when they mounted the Olympic victory stand and thrust their clenched, black-gloved fists into the night sky over Mexico City, on October 16 1968. Their "Black Power" protest produced front page headlin

James Mann: The Bush who emerges from his China diary

[James Mann is author-in-residence at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His books include The China Fantasy and About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship With China, From Nixon to Clinton.] While visiting his family in Asia after he graduated from Harvard Business School mor than three decades ago, George W. Bush discovered the joys of Chinese dentistry "George got his tooth fixed the day he left for 60 cents

Greg Grandin: Fidel Castro Tells the Story of His Life

[Greg Grandin is the author, most recently, of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism(Metropolitan). He is a professor of history at New York University.] One of Fidel Castro's earliest political memories is of Spaniards arguing over the Spanish Civil War, and his first act of censorship, he explains in My Life (Scribner, $40), was done in kindness. When asked by his family's illiterate cook--a "fire-breathing Republican"--

Max Boot: Assessing Helms

Marc Thiessen, President Bush’s chief speechwriter, who spent years working for Jesse Helms, has a fond [1] remembrance of his late boss in the Washington Post today.No doubt other conservatives are feeling equally nostalgic for the late senator, a constant thorn in the side of liberals during his many years in Washington. Fred Barnes, for instance, wrote an admiring [2] account of Helms’ influence in 1997 that the Weekly Standard website has posted today. My own assessment of Helms

Gary Stix: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents

A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the Bab el Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. If this ambitious project is ever realized, the throngs of African pilgrims who traverse one of the longest bridges in the world on a journey to Mecca would pass hundreds of feet above the probable route of the most memorable journey in human history. Fifty or sixty thousand years ago a small band of

Frank Gannon: Nixon never said he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam

RN’s “secret plan” to end the Vietnam war is the Dracula of canards. No matter how many wooden stakes are nailed through its nasty heart, it’s up again at first light, brushing off the dirt and walking the land ready to be cited in yet another book or article.Two weeks ago it surfaced in Time and, one would have thought, our colleague Jack Pitney more than effectively hammered home a big wooden stake.

Roy Edroso: Rightbloggers Shade Helms' Civil Rights History

In 2002, when blogs were young, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said former Senator and racist icon Strom Thurmond should have been President of the United States. Some rightbloggers denounced Lott's comments, and congratulated themselves for it. Lott's subsequent fall, said John Podhoretz at National Review Online, showed that "the party of personal responsibility... has just cleaned its own house with record speed." This remains a rightblogger point of pride: as recently

Malcolm Jones: Who Was More Important ... Lincoln or Darwin?

[Malcolm Jones is a columnist at Newsweek.] How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in t

Fergus Bordewich: Hamilton's deal placing the capitol in the South boded ill for abolitionism

[Mr. Bordewich is author of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital," published in May by Amistad.] Last month, workmen jacked up a 206-year-old yellow clapboard house, levered it onto a set of remote-controlled dollies, and trundled it two blocks to a new site in St. Nicholas Park, overlooking East Harlem in New York City. The Grange, as it is called, was the home of Alexander Hamilton, best known as co-author of the Federalist papers and America's fi

John Fund: Jesse Helms ... An uncompromisingly defiant conservative who rescued Reagan's political career

If Ronald Reagan was the sunny and optimistic face of modern conservatism, the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar of it was Jesse Helms, who died yesterday at age 86. While Reagan has undergone a revisionist makeover by many historians who now recognize his accomplishments, Helms is still the conservative liberals most love to hate. But while they still disdain his views, many liberal groups are now using their own forms of the rhetorical and campaign techniques that Helms honed to p

Ted Widmer: Which document is the Declaration of Independence?

[Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, is the author of “Ark of the Liberties: America and the World.”] ACCORDING to the film “National Treasure,” the Declaration of Independence is a document of such far-seeing sagacity that it has secret codes and treasure maps hidden in the parchment. You just have to know how to look for them. But that poses the question: which document, precisely, is the Declaration of Independence? Most of us w

James Cuno: Archaeology must be shielded from nationalistic laws and politics

[James Cuno is president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a former director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Harvard University Art Museums. This essay is adapted from Who Owns Antiquity: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage, published in May by Princeton University Press.] ... Laws intended to retain antiquities within the jurisdiction of the modern nation-state concentrate the risk to antiquities by keeping them in one place. Were we to distri

Roy Blount: Mark Twain ... Our Original Superstar

[Roy Blount has written introductions for six editions of Twain's work. His next book, Alphabet Juice, will be published in October by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.] What, if anything, about this benighted moment of American life will anyone in the future look back on with nostalgia? Well, those of us who have cable are experiencing a golden age of sarcasm (from the Greek sarkazein, "to chew the lips in rage"). Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann ar

Damon Linker: George Bush's other legacy

[Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, is a senior writing fellow in the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.] With George Bush set to leave office in just over six months, critical evaluations of his presidency have begun. A particularly scathing indictment was delivered this week by scholar Andrew Bacevich, in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. In Bacevich's view, the Bush administration's most pernicious legacy will follow from i

David Hackett Fischer: One New World, Two Big Ideas

[David Hackett Fischer, who teaches history at Brandeis University, is the author of “Washington’s Crossing” and the forthcoming “Champlain’s Dream.”] THIS week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States, and it will be observed as John Adams prescribed in 1776: a “day of deliverance” in more ways than one, with “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty ... pomp and parade ... shows, games, sports, guns,

Peter Turchin: A mathematician says history needs to be made more scientific

[Peter Turchin is professor of ecology and mathematics at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, USA. He is the author of War and Peace and War: The Life-Cycles of Imperial Nations (Pi Press, 2006).] If we are to learn how to develop a healthy society, we must transform history into an analytical, predictive science, argues Peter Turchin. He has identified intriguing patterns across vastly different times and places. ### What caused the c

Jonah Goldberg: Unintended Consequences of an Obama Presidency

[Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.] Breaking news! The ultimate White House insider plans a tell-all book about the Bush years. Boasting unprecedented access to the president’s thinking, it will run counter to almost everything we’ve been told about Bush’s radical presidency. Who will be the latest to break the code of silence after former White House Press Secretary Scott

Pearl Duncan: How DNA is rewriting history

[The author is completing a book,"DNA Blood: World's Shared Roots of Strong Mothers and Determined Fathers" about DNA and Ancestry.] In this presidential election year, in print, the Internet and on TV, we hear and see much talk about uniting the country, and being unified. We hear much about patriotism and behaving as Americans. On this 4th of July, few things make us feel as American as a connection to the Founding Fathers. Americans feel and express their connection to the Founding