Roundup: Talking About History

Doug Ireland: ACT UP's Contribution to Gay Awareness

[Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND.] At the end of the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, in a 1989 essay in October, the avant-garde quarterly he edited, noted gay intellectual and activist Douglas Crimp recalled what a younger gay man in ACT UP had said to him after seeing an early ’70s gay erotic film: “He was very excited about what seemed to me a pretty ordinary sex scene in the film, but then he said:

Kent Ewing: Tomb Warriors Battle in China

[Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.] The warlords Cao Cao and Liu Bei were fierce rivals in life, with their exploits vividly described in the classic historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most revered classical novels in Chinese literature. Now, 1,800 years later, that rivalry has been renewed in death. In a game of archaeological one-upmanship, two teams of tomb warriors claiming to have found th

Howell Raines: The Counter Revolution

[Howell Raines, a former executive editor of The New York Times, covered the civil rights movement in the 1960s and ’70s.] In the pre-digital America of 1960, “viral” was still a medical term. So it was written in countless news articles that the student sit-in movement had “spread like wildfire” on black campuses across the South. On the morning of Feb. 1, 50 years ago today, four black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University seated themselves at the all-white lunch co

Andrew B. Lewis: The Sit-Ins That Changed America

[Andrew B. Lewis is the author of"The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation."] The "sixties" were born on Feb. 1, 1960, 50 years ago this week, when four African American college students staged the first sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. Since then, the mythology of the '60s has dominated the idea of youthful activism. Of the three big events of the early civil rights movement -- the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Educa

Dee Dee Myers: Bill Clinton’s Narrow Victories

[Dee Dee Myers was press secretary for President Bill Clinton] Barack Obama, reeling from the Democratic defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race, isn’t the first president to get an unwelcome anniversary gift a year after taking office. On Jan. 20, 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno announced that, at President Bill Clinton’s request, she had appointed Robert Fiske as special counsel to investigate the Whitewater case. What we didn’t know then was that seven months later, Mr. Fiske w

Richard V. Allen: Ronald Reagan, a Man With a Plan

[Richard V. Allen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and was national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan.] ...Coupled with the basic policy framework, Reagan’s was one of the most carefully planned presidential transitions in modern political history, replete with teams of “Reaganauts” dispatched to each department and agency in the days following the election. Staffing lists were compiled, and presidential and subcabinet appointments were made swiftly, background

James Fallows: Carter's Sunny Day

[James Fallows was chief speechwriter for President Carter.] Things were tough as Jimmy Carter prepared for his 1978 State of the Union address, one year into his term. But they seemed, strangely, hopeful. The president’s big domestic initiative that year was a national energy policy. The gas-station lines and first-ever spike in fuel prices in the mid-1970s made this a genuine emergency. He hadn’t yet gotten the whole plan through, but the previous summer he had signed legislation

Leonard Garment: For Nixon, All That Jazz

[Leonard Garment was a White House counsel during the Nixon Administration.] In April 1969, three months after his inauguration, President Richard Nixon hosted a party at the White House to celebrate Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday and award the Duke the Medal of Honor. Great American jazz figures were there. Musicians played Ellington songs arranged by Gerry Mulligan. Joe Williams and Mary Mayo sang. Ellington danced with Rose Mary Woods. After dinner, the president had a nightcap w

Andrew Baker: The Holocaust's Untended Graves

[Andrew Baker, a rabbi, is director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee.] World leaders, Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans gathered at Auschwitz on Wednesday to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp. Poland has long shouldered responsibility for preserving this tragic site, which has become a virtual synonym for the Holocaust. Its gas chambers and crematoria, rail platforms and endless rows of wooden barr

William H. Chafe: A Protest That Changed History

[William H. Chafe teaches history at Duke University and is the author of “Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom.”] Fifty years ago tomorrow, four black freshmen at A and T College in Greensboro, N.C., helped change American history. They walked into the Woolworth’s department store, purchased school supplies and toothpaste, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked for a cup of coffee. “We don’t serve Negroes,” they were told.

Laurence Rees: Raped by their saviours ... How the survivors of Auschwitz escaped one nightmare only to face another

[Laurence Rees wrote Auschwitz: The Nazis And The Final Solution, and wrote and produced the BBC TV documentary series of the same name.] When liberation came, it came quickly. One night in January 1945, as ten-year-old Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam lay in their bunks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, they were suddenly awoken by a huge explosion. Outside, the winter sky was red with flames. The Nazis had blown up the crematoria where the bodies of hundre

Gordon S. Wood: An Excerpt from "Empire of Liberty"

[Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus at Brown University. His new book, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 -1815, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic which was marked by change in all aspects of American life–in politics, society, economy, and culture. In this excerpt from the introduction, Wood explains how the classic American story, Rip Van Winkle epitomizes this time period.] During the second decade of the nine

Martin Shaw: Britain and Genocide

[Martin Shaw is professor of international relations at the University of Sussex and delivered the annual war-studies lecture at King's College, London on 26 January 2010.] The date of the liberation of the Nazi concentration-camp at Auschwitz, 27 January 1945, has since 2001 been marked in Britain as a moment for the remembrance of the victims of the Nazi holocaust – and, by gradual extension, of all those subjected to genocidal assault over the last century. The annual commemorati

Edward Serotta: A Book's Inscription and Jewish Tragedy

[Edward Serotta directs the Jewish historical institute Centropa in Vienna (centropa.org).] During a trip to Israel earlier this month, I stopped in Stein's secondhand bookshop on King George Street in Jerusalem.... A visit to Stein's always provides a glimpse of another era. It was while perusing the books there a couple of weeks ago that I came upon a volume of essays by Leo Baeck, who was Germany's most famous reform rabbi during the early 20th century.

Samuel Pisar: Liberation From Auschwitz

[Samuel Pisar is an international lawyer and the author of “Of Blood and Hope.”] Sixty-five years ago, to the day, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, while the Americans were approaching Dachau. For a survivor of these two infernos to be still alive and well, with a new and happy family that has resurrected for me the one I had lost seems almost unreal. When I entered Eichmann and Mengele’s gruesome universe at the age of 13, I measured my life expectancy in days, weeks at the most.

Alan Hamilton: What's the truth behind the fate that befell the prisoners of Stalag Luft III?

[Alan Hamilton has written articles published in The Independent and The Times.] Why are we asking this now? In January 1945, some 10,000 Allied prisoners of war were evacuated from the prison where the escape made famous in the film The Great Escape had taken place the year before. They were forced on a trek west on Hitler's orders to escape the Russians to the east. This week, veterans of the so-called Long March, and their relatives, are to recreate their ordeal as

Alan Posener: Don't let Auschwitz be forgotten

[Alan Posener is a correspondent and commentator for Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag in Berlin and one of Germany's most influential bloggers. His latest book, Benedict's Crusade, is a critique of Benedict XVI.] On 27 January, Germany will commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops. Though most Germans now face up to their past guilt and their present responsibilities, the road has not been easy. It wasn't until 40 years after the second world war t

Sean Wilentz: The Return of Ulysses S. Grant

[Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University.] [Ulysses S.] Grant may be on the verge of finally receiving his due. Quietly, outside the view of most readers—including professional historians who do not specialize in the Civil War era—Grant’s reputation, including his service in the White House, has enjoyed a friendly revision over the past fifteen years. A handful of unconventional scholars, including Richard N. Current, Brooks D. Simpson, Jean

Michael Gove: We are still in the shadow of the Holocaust

[Michael Gove is MP for Surrey Heath and Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.] This Wednesday we remember the greatest crime ever inflicted by man against his fellow man. Holocaust Memorial Day allows us to reflect on the bleakest chapter in the history of the 20th century. And there is a special urgency in the call to remember this year, of all years - because the shadow of the Holocaust continues to fall over the world today. Mass murder is st

Betty Glad: The Real Jimmy Carter

[Betty Glad is Olin D. Johnston professor of political science emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy.] The hottest new trend of 2010, it seems, is making half-baked comparisons between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Writing in Foreign Policy, historian Walter Russell Mead warns us, "[T]he conflicting impulses influencing how [Obama] thinks about the world th