The ink was hardly dry on Lee's surrender at Appomattox before Andrew Johnson's conciliation toward the former Confederacy clashed with the unfulfilled goals of freed slaves and radical Republicans to threaten further violence. These fault lines have been hidden but never healed in the restored American union.
The lesson of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion for African Americans is a sadly familiar one: proving oneself is not enough; becoming members of a select fraternity was not enough to earn the respect and equality that comes with full citizenship.
"I had two articles that I wanted to write. One was all about white supremacy and memory and the other was about lies and memory. And then I looked at those projects and it eventually dawned on me that this was actually the same project. The lies were part of the monuments and the white supremacy aspect was tied to the monuments and the Confederate fraud."
In the conclusion of his two-part analysis of William Barr's actions as Attorney General, former prosecutor James Zirin argues that Barr has hitched his office completely to the Trump Train.
Roberto Lovato's new book "Unforgetting: " examines how policing in the United States, including a combined crackdown on immigration and gang activity led by William Barr after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, helped create MS-13 as a transnational criminal gang and a political symbol of fear to be exploited in election years.
In 1840, Democrat Martin Van Buren ran for re-election without a running mate, having never embraced the eccentric Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, the man chosen by Senate Democrats to serve as his Vice President. Beginning with Johnson's failed bid for the presidency in 1840, only two of sixteen Democratic Vice Presidents became President, and none came to office by election.
The history of ethnic studies as an academic movement is a cycle of rise and retrenchment; protest movements often push for more representative curricula, while forces of tradition and austerity seek to uphold a canon or push majors linked directly to the job market. Today's protest movements are pushing an ethnic studies renaissance despite the dire financial straits of many colleges and students.
Voters in November may reverse California's constitutional ban on affirmative action, which was passed by ballot measure in 1996. The state's electorate has changed considerably in a quarter century and passage seems likely.
On Labor Day, remember the demands of striking textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Working people deserve more than bare subsistence; they're entitled to dignity and pleasure too.
Not every state has a sufficiently particular identity to sustain a culture of jokes about its inhabitants and their relationship to outsiders. Vermont does.
Women of color and their allies truly won the right to vote for all American women not in 1920, but in 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
The behavior of belligerent patriots in our times has made it clear that the type of allegiance they value most--and their image of America--leaves little room for an ethic of mutualism or compassion.
Joe Biden's efforts to run an effective campaign under COVID lockdown echo the innovations forced on James Garfield. If Biden succeeds, the "Basement Campaign" may prove as influential as the "Front Porch Campaign" of 1880.
Evangelical leaders have bent and twisted their proclaimed moral precepts so far to embrace Donald Trump that they risk forfeiting any claim to moral authority and becoming a mere reactionary identitarian group in a society leaving them behind.
In a moment in which Confederate monuments are finally coming down and we are re-thinking how we tell our history, Hamilton is a sign of hope. It's a sign that while history is something we can never resign from, we can always enter the narrative and, like Eliza, construct a history of our own.
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