Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/9/2020
  

  Thousands of Women Fought Against the Right to Vote. Their Reasons Still Resonate Today

  Anya Jabour and Susan Goodier offer insight into the motives of women who opposed female suffrage.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2020
  

  After Falwell Stumbles, His Hometown Sees a Leader in Need of Redemption

  Historians of religion including Grant Wacker, Anthea Butler and John Fea comment on the significance of Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s recent public scandals and the position of Liberty University in the evangelical world. 

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  8/10/2020
  

  White Author Reflects On Finding, Bringing Together Descendants Of Enslaved People In His Family (Audio)

  Author Edward Ball discusses his two books examining the relationship of his white family to slavery and the Ku Klux Klan and the role of white Americans in racial reconcilation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  8/11/2020
  

  A Milestone for Palestinian Studies

  Brown establishes what it says is the first endowed professorship in Palestinian studies at a U.S. research institution, held by Beshara Doumani.

• 
• SOURCE: Stanford University
  8/10/2020
  

  Paul Seaver, Leading Historian of Early Modern England, Dies at 88

  Paul Seaver, a distinguished historian of early modern England and dedicated university citizen, died Aug. 1. He was 88.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  8/11/2020
  

  Trump has Never Even Read a 'Children's Book' about Abraham Lincoln: Douglas Brinkley (Video)

  Douglas Brinkley recounts part of an interview with Trump in which the President's lack of erudition was revealed. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/5/2020
  

  Taking My Children to See Frederick Douglass

  by Clint Smith

  “It is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him.” So wrote Frederick Douglass in his 1855 autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. It was with these reflections and Douglass’s words in mind that, on Juneteenth, I got in the car with my family and drove from our home, outside Washington, D.C., to Talbot County, Maryland, where Frederick Douglass was born.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  

  How the GOP Became the Party of Resentment

  Historian Patrick Iber reflects on "Reaganland," the concluding volume of Rick Perlstein's genre-defining series of books on American conservatism, and urges readers to consider how the movement mobilized anger and resentment as opposed to high principle. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/7/2020
  

  The Nation’s First Civil-Rights Law Needs to Be Fixed

  Congress can amend the nation's first civil rights law to make explicit that it protects against both intentional discrimination and policies that perpetuate racial inequality. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  Experiencing War Far From the Battlefield

  Two new books examine unexpected facets of World War II. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/7/2020
  

  Isabel Wilkerson’s World-Historical Theory of Race and Caste

  Wilkerson's book contends that what we know as racism must be understood as a system of social domination, not as a matter of group conflict or prejudice.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Post
  8/8/2020
  

  Queens Powhatan and Pocahontas Democratic Club Considers Name Change

  Columbia professor Mae Ngai, co-director for the school’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, called the use of Pocahontas’ name “clueless.”

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/7/2020
  

  Eminent Scholar of Early U.S., Bernard Bailyn, Dies at 97

  An acknowledged landmark in scholarship, Bernard Bailyn's “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” won the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize in 1968. 

• 
• SOURCE: South Bay (CA) Daily Breeze
  8/9/2020
  

  Manhattan Beach to Present Bruce's Beach History, Community Awaits Historians' Voices

  Alison Rose Jefferson had been scheduled to brief the Manhattan Beach City Council about how to commemorate a stretch of beach historically used by Black Californians barred from other parts of the coastline. Her participation ended under disuputed circumstances. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  8/5/2020
  

  Black Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Segregation and Second-Class Roles

  “The experience was very dispiriting for a lot of Black soldiers,” says Matthew Delmont, a history professor at Dartmouth College and author of "Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African American Newspapers."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/5/2020
  

  Lincoln Library Cancels Exhibition Over Racial Sensitivity Concerns

  The library, in Springfield, Ill., said Black community leaders who previewed it feared parts of the traveling exhibition, created 15 years ago, were outdated and lacked context.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  Nixon Did Call the Military on Protesters. He Just Covered It Up.

  by Lawrence Roberts

  The antiwar movement had already helped turn public opinion against Mr. Nixon’s conduct of the war. He was determined to deny activists a victory that could cause further political damage.

• 
• SOURCE: Irish Times
  8/4/2020
  

  Historians Pay Tribute: ‘Today We Live In John Hume’s Ireland, And Thank God For That’

  ‘His extraordinary impact reflects the exceptional political leader and person he was.’

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/4/2020
  

  Let Us Drink in Public

  Many modern open container laws derive from previous “public drunkenness” and “vagrancy” ordinances that criminalized not just alcoholism, but also poverty and homelessness.

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  8/6/2020
  

  Trump Doesn’t Understand Today’s Suburbs—And Neither Do You

  Suburbs are getting more diverse, but that doesn't mean they’re woke. Historian Thomas Sugrue says if you want to understand where American politics is going, look how suburban whites are sorting themselves out.