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The Forgotten First Step Toward Freedom for Slaves

by Joyce Appleby

Although few know it, the anniversary of one of the world great human rights milestones occurs this week. On March 1, 1780, the government of Pennsylvania became the first in the world to pass a law against slavery, affirming that no child born after that date could be permanently enslaved. The British, who did not form their first antislavery organization until seven years later, are usually credited with this accomplishment, having banished slavery in their remaining colonies a ha

A Racial Crime: The Assassination of MLK

by Mel Ayton

More than thirty-five years after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King polls have indicated that the truth about the murder is still unclear for the majority of the American people. Despite government investigations and extensive research by writers who have concluded that no evidence is availa

Why Privatizing Social Security Is a Terrible Idea

by Max Skidmore

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, he launched the most ambitious program of social reform in the country’s history. It was destined also to become the most popular and the most successful, and to operate with unparalleled efficiency. There was strong opposition, but it became muted after the unprecedented FDR landslide in 1936. The opposition did not die, though; it went underground. It emerged a generation later, when encouraged by t

What Does It Mean to be “Balanced” in Academia?

by David A. Hollinger

On Sunday January 9, 2005 a panel devoted to the history scandals was held at the American Historical Association's annual meeting. Mr. Hollinger delivered the following paper. One of the apparent academic scandals recently publicized by the media is the alleged lack of balance in the academic profession, including the discipline of history, but also the other social sciences and humanities, and even the physical and biological s

Presidential Tapes and Transcripts: Response to Stern and Holland

by Philip Zelikow, Ernest May, Timothy Naftali

The essay published on HNN by Sheldon Stern and Max Holland on February 21 makes a number of arguments about work published by us, by Michael Beschloss, and by Stanley Kutler.  Speaking only for ourselves, we think four observations will be helpful to readers who are following this matter. 1.      The original works published in 1997 (May/Zelikow & the first Beschloss LBJ volume), followed shortly afterward

Presidential Tapes and Transcripts: Crafting a New Historical Genre

by Sheldon M. Stern and Max Holland

Click here for a response to this article by Philip Zelikow, Ernest May, Timothy Naftali. Introduction Though it has been slow to develop and achieve recognition, it is now becoming apparent that scholarly works based on the extraordinary cache of presidential recordings from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations actually constitute a new and distinct genre of historical investigation.

The Traffic Accident in Syria in 1994 that May Lead to Lebanon's Freedom in 2005

by Daniel Pipes

The fate of Syria was in good measure determined on January 21, 1994. That's when, driving at a too-high speed to the Damascus airport for a skiing trip abroad, Basil Al-Assad crashed the Mercedes he was driving, killing himself and his passengers.The accident had great consequence because Basil, then 31, was being groomed to succeed his father, Hafez Al-Assad, as dictator of Syria. All indications pointed to the equestrian, martial, and charismatic Basil making for a formidable rule

Why Is the OAH Moving Its Convention from San Francisco to San Jose?

by Bonnie Goodman

On February 15th the Organization of American Historians issued a press release indicating that officials had finally decided to move the 98th annual conference to San Jose, California in light of the continuing labor troubles at the San Francisco Hilton, where the conference was originally scheduled. Lee Formwalt, the OAH's association's executive director, stated that remaining in San Francisco "would have destroy

How Neo-Conservatives Helped Bring Down Richard Nixon

by Joan Hoff

To talk about Watergate and the Nixon presidency over 30 years after the break-ins, cover-up, resignation, and pardon, one has to ask a completely different set of questions than was asked in the last half of the 1970s because there is so much more information available about those events. Because we know more, we must question the mainstream interpretation about the importance of Watergate in relation to the overall significance of the foreign and domestic policies of Richard Nixon. I initi

The Appalling Indifference to the History of Free Blacks

by Anita L. Wills

"We reside among you and yet are strangers; natives and not citizens; surrounded by the freest people and most Republican Institutions in the world and yet enjoying none of the immunities of freedom though we are not slaves we are not yet free." -- Memorial of the Free People of Color, African Repository, December 1826, Baltimore MD African American History month is a month in which Americans celebrate the history of people of African descent. It is a sharing

How Psychologists Rate Presidents

by Steve Rubenzer, Deniz Ones, and Tom Faschingbauer

In a recent special on the History Channel, Bob Woodward asked Dick Cheney to state the most important personal quality of a successful president (Time Magazine and "Frontline" have posed similar questions to others from prev

How Social Security Was Defended by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson

by John Q. Barrett

Social Security, which grew out the political leadership and humane vision of Justice Robert Jackson’s great patron and friend FDR, has been a centerpiece of American life and law since the late 1930s. When Roosevelt took office in 1933, the country was at the depths of the Great Depression. Tens of millions of people, including many elderly, were living in poverty and desperation.In January 1935, Roosevelt advocated the U.S. government using tax payments from employers and wor

Even in Japan People Are Forgetting the Memory of Hiroshima

by Yuki Tanaka

Mr. Tsuboi Sunao would appear to be an ordinary healthy elderly Japanese man except for the large patch of white skin that medical specialists call leucoderma on his forehead. He is a cheerful 79 year old, but over the past 60 years he has been critically ill four times, each time being told that he would not survive. He first fell ill immediately after the bombing of Hiroshima when he was unconscious for 40 days. He is presently suffering from prostate cancer. Despite his illness he

Why Senji Yamaguchi--A Survivor of Nagasaki--Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize

by Irwin Abrams

This year is the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, as well as of the coming five-year review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it is good that several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2005 have been made with the threat of nuclear weapons in mind, whose use could result in the extinction of human life on this planet. The American Friends Service Committee has nominated Nihon Hidankyo, the international confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Suffer

Interview with Sam Tanenhaus, Editor of the New York Times Book Review

by Samantha Funk

Sam Tanenhaus took over the NYT Book Review last April. He is the author of a biography of Whittaker Chambers, which received rave reviews--from William F. Buckley, Jr., no less, who called it"masterful." Some liberal historians greeted Tanenhaus's appointment with suspicion. What Buckley had considered a strength--Tanenhaus's broad sympathy with Chambers--they

The Danger in President's Bush's Conviction He's Right

by Tom Palaima

President Lyndon Johnson once told us,"Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact." What did these simple words mean for us during LBJ's Vietnam War presidency? What might they mean for us now during President Bush's"war for democracy" in the Middle East? President Johnson had a superb grasp of the gritty realities of democratic government. He was the quintessential self-made man of power. His own

Why Tokyo's Adoption of a Rightwing Textbook Is Alarming

by Chung Chinsung (Translated from Korean by Emanuel Pastreich)

The Tokyo metropolitan board of education decided Thursday to adopt a controversial history textbook and will put it into use next spring at a secondary school run by the metropolitan government. The decision could pave the way for the popularization of the textbook widely regarded as a whitewash and distortion of Japan's invasion history in the World War II. -- China View (Aug.

Errors Still Afflict the Transcripts of the Kennedy Presidential Recordings

by Sheldon M. Stern

Everything has a history including the writing of history itself.

Calvin Coolidge: The Disabled Chief Executive

by Robert E. Gilbert

Scholars often speak of Calvin Coolidge in unflattering terms. He is referred to as "a figurehead president," as having had "no drive," as having been a "do nothing president," as a president "almost totally deficient in powers of leadership," as a "spectator president" and as "lackadaisical." However, a closer analysis of Coolidge reveals that he is perhaps the most misunderstood chief executive in American history.

How a Single Video Tape Would End the Debate over “Deep Throat”

by Joan Hoff

John Dean has done it again. In two short references in a February 6 op ed piece in the LA Times, he suggested that Deep Throat might be ill and so we would soon learn his identity. He also said that an unidentified source had told him Woodward informed Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, of this and that Bradlee had proceeded to write an obituary about this most famous character to emerge from Watergate outside of President Nixon himself. Bob Woodward