Historians in the News

Southern Baptist Leaders Called Kamala Harris a ‘Jezebel.’ That’s not just Insulting, it’s Dangerous, Experts Say

Religious Studies scholar Jessica Johnson says that the "Jezebel" trope used against Harris connects suspicion of women's power, old southern stereotypes of Black women as morally deficient, and present-day White Christian Nationalism.

Who Gets to Govern the Global Economy?

by Christy Thornton

Johns Hopkins Latin Americanist Christy Thornton describes her book "Revolution In Development" and its contribution to understanding how Mexican officials fought against dismissive treatment from the world's leading economic powers as they sought a voice in shaping the international economic order. 

Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It

by Clint Smith

"The Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives produced tens of thousands of pages of interviews and hundreds of photographs—the largest, and perhaps the most important, archive of testimony from formerly enslaved people in history."

Rush Limbaugh is Ailing. And so is the Conservative Talk-Radio Industry

Nicole Hemmer argues that Limbaugh was instrumental in making the Republican Party captive to its voter base, a base led by the content of increasingly right-wing media. 

The Never-Ending Frontier?

by Karl Jacoby

Karl Jacoby reviews Benjamin Hopkins's "Ruling the Savage Periphery" and traces a history of practices of imperial control from the American conquest of Native peoples, through the British Empire, to the 19-year-old US war in Afghanistan.

Goin' Back to T-Town

PBS's American Experience is offering online viewing of its 1993 documentary on the Greenwood district of Tulsa and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 

Robert L. Herbert, 91, Dies; Saw Impressionism With a Fresh Eye

Robert Herbert's studies of impressionism revitalized the field by situating the work of artists in the context of theri social lives. 

The Filibuster That Saved the Electoral College

Powerful Southern conservatives Strom Thurmond, Sam Ervin, and James Eastland led the 1970 filibuster that stopped the Senate from approving a constitutional amendment to elect the president by the popular vote. 

In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors

Thomas Zimmer and Joanne Freeman represent historians among the scholars commenting on the asymetric polarization of American politics. 

The Alabama Town That Could Defeat Jeff Bezos

The industrial suburb of Bessemer has a long history as a rare center of union activity in the South and now is the focal point of an effort to organize Amazon's warehouse workers. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who has written about interracial labor militancy in Alabama, gives context. 

“A New Jerusalem”–A Review Of The City-State Of Boston

Kristian Price reveiws Mark Peterson's study of Boston from its founding through the mid-19th century, which focuses on the contradiction of the Puritan ideal of a city of moral rectitude and the economic necessity of local merchants' enthusiastic participation in the slave trade. 

West Virginia Has Everyone’s Attention. What Does It Really Need?

by Emily Badger

The influence of Senator Joe Manchin in Washington has fueled speculation about federal aid to depressed communities in the Mountaineer State. But historians like William Hal Gorby and in-state activists say that there will be no quick fixes. 

A Century Ago, White Protestant Extremism Marched on Washington

"There still has to be a reckoning within white Christian churches about white supremacy. There need to be very careful conversations about this, not as, 'Individuals are prejudiced,' but about, 'This is the system that we all inhabit'."

He Became the Nation’s Ninth Vice President. She was His Enslaved Wife

Historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers examines the erasure of Julia Chinn, the enslaved wife of Kentuckian Richard Mentor Johnson. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She's Doing

by Jamelle Bouie

Historians Lisa McGirr, Sara Diamond, and Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld argue that the Republican Party has always had to keep a porous border between itself and the hard right groups who led its activist base since the Goldwater years. The borders today seem to be dissolving.

A Southerner who abandoned the Lost Cause (Review)

West Point historian Ty Seidule's book traces his own personal path from venerating the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy to rejecting it, including questioning the number of monuments to Robert E. Lee at the US Military Academy. 

On Baltimore: Narratives and City Making

by Bo McMillan

A Review of Mary Rizzo's "Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and The Wire," which argues that development interests in the city have used popular culture to craft an image of eccentric white ethnic residents that erases the city's racial segregation and the interests of the city's Black majority.

How to Teach History in a Community Still Reckoning With Its Past

"For the African American community, it was still this large, looming scar, and the white community literally didn’t even know what had happened. It had just been erased. There was this disconnect in the community."

Liveright Conversations: Jelani Cobb, Annette Gordon-Reed, & Elizabeth Hinton

An all-star panel discussin of the ongoing legacies of Black protest movements features Annette Gordon-Reed, Elizabeth Hinton, and Jelani Cobb. 

How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism

by Ronald Brownstein

Historian Matthew Dallek says that the prominence of conspiracy theorists and the far right in the Republican Party's base means that there will be no move to push extremists out like there was after Barry Goldwater's 1964 candidacy.