Historians in the News

The Deep Downward Spiral of Police Violence and Rebellion, Explained

by Hamilton Nolan

A conversation with Elizabeth Hinton, author of “America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.”

The Hidden History Of “Guerrilla Television”: UChicago Scholars Preserve Decades-Old Videos

Technological innovation in the 1960s allowed more people to shoot video and push for community-based television. University of Chicago scholars are working to digitize and preserve "guerrilla television." 

In New Orleans, Documenting History Of Iconic Black Street

Two New Orleans area activists, Raynard Sanders and documentary filmmaker Katherine Cecil, head the Claiborne Avenue History Project which aims to document and publicize the street's history. 

The Fight to Whitewash US History: “A Drop of Poison is All You Need”

"Whatever their motives, today’s reactionaries are picking up the mantle of generations of Americans who have fought to ensure that white children are taught a version of America’s past that is more hagiographic than historic."

Event: June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989 (June 1, 2021)

Jeremy Brown’s June Fourth takes a historical approach to the events of 1989 in China, arguing that the Beijing massacre was neither necessary nor inevitable, and tracing alternative paths that could have led to different outcomes. He addresses the National History Center's Washington History Seminar on June 1. 

More than 50 Years Before George Floyd, the Kerner Commission Predicted Deepening Divisions

Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, discusses the commission's findings and how they were ignored. Historians including Jelani Cobb, Julian Zelizer and Steven Gillon also comment. 

Free Black Men and Women Founded an Eastern Shore Village to Avoid Attention. Now Their Descendants Want to Share the Stories

Established as a settlement of free Black men and women in the early 1800s, San Domingo is believed to be the first and oldest such community in the state of Maryland.

From Guns to Gay Marriage, How Did Rights Take Over Politics?

Writer Kelefa Sanneh examines recent books that diagnose America's polarization as a product of a "rights revolution" under which Americans have been trained to identify their social and political preferences with absolute rights. Does the language of rights discourage Americans from working out pragmatic solutions to disagreements?

Execution of 13 IRA volunteers in 1921 may have been a war crime, says UCC historian

"Men should have been treated as prisoners of war, according to historian Gabriel Doherty of University College Cork."

Historian Scott Ellsworth: Tulsa White Community Actively Covered Up 1921 Massacre

Historian Scott Ellsworth's new book "The Ground Breaking" documents efforts by White Tulsans to conceal and deny the 1921 riot that destroyed much of the city's Black commercial district. 

Historians Seek Approval for Memorial to 1930 Sherman, TX Courthouse Riot

Local historians and activists want the town of Sherman, TX to place a historical marker at the site of a riot in which a Black man was killed and the courthouse burned down. 

Are We Entering a New Political Era?

A group of younger progressive activists is seeking to push the Democratic Party to see a new political alignment where active government and public programs are no longer considered impossible. Some members of the group of historians and scholars who met with President Biden in March also relayed that message.

Black Politics After George Floyd

Protests over the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans by police have exposed a rift in Black politics, with an establishment group seeking to control the moral authority of the Civil Rights movement by stripping it of its historical commitment to disruption. 

Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known

Daniel Ellsberg disclosed a page from a 1966 study of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis that indicate many military leaders were anticipating the necessity of using nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan against the People's Republic of China. 

"A Drop of Treason": Philip Agee, CIA Whisteblower Gets a New Bio

Jonathan Stevenson's new book on Philip Agee, who left the CIA and exposed its operations in Latin America, struggles to portray the complex mix of principle and egotism that drove its subject. 

The White Men Who Wanted to Be Victims: Joe Darda's "How White Men Won the Culture Wars"

by Chris Lehmann

Joe Darda argues that the convergence of three cultural trends – the turn of the Vietnam veterans' movement away from antiwar politics and toward treating trauma, white ethnic identity politics, and the backlash to civil rights and feminism – birthed a potent strain of white male grievance politics in the 1970s that endures today.

In Fury We Trust (Review of Sarah Shulman)

Sarah Shulman's book seeks to recover the histories of AIDS activists beyond white gay men, using two decades of oral history work to show the breadth of a coalition including women, lesbians, people of color, drug users, and the incarcerated, who all experienced the stakes of AIDS differently. 

Opinion: American Democracy is in Even Worse Shape than You Think

by Perry Bacon Jr.

Historian Thomas Zimmer cautions that the Republican Party is prepared to use gerrymandered state legislatures and the antidemocratic instituitons of the Senate and the courts to defy majority rule. 

'The Underground Railroad' and History: Eric Foner

Eric Foner discusses the historical background of the new series based on Colson Whitehead's novel. 

Plessy v. Ferguson at 125

Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack explains what the shameful decision meant, and why it still matters in 2021.