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: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2/23/2021
For Many, an Afro isn’t Just a Hairstyle
Journalist Ernie Suggs reflects on how hairstyles reflected his own family's history, with backing from historians Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Noliwe Rooks.
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SOURCE: TIME
2/25/2021
With Free Medical Clinics and Patient Advocacy, the Black Panthers Created a Legacy in Community Health That Still Exists Amid COVID-19
by Olivia B. Waxman and Arpita Aneja
Sociologist and social movement historian Alondra Nelson explains that Black Panther Party community action to provide health services grew out of a mistrust of mainstream health institutions' willingness to direct resources to the needs of poor Black communities, a mistrust that remains today.
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SOURCE: Journal of the History of Ideas
10/7/2020
With a Touch of Wisdom: Human Rights, Memory, and Forgetting
by Antoon de Baets
A historian concerned with memory, censorship and human rights considers whether there is an affirmative duty for historians to promote the memory of crimes and atrocities.
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SOURCE: NBC Los Angeles
2/22/21
New Exhibit Reckons With Glendale's Racist Past as ‘Sundown Town'
The suburban city of Glendale, CA has initiated a series of public programs confronting its legacy as a "sundown town" where minorities, particulary African Americans, were able to work but barred from living or socializing.
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/23/2021
The Broken System: What Comes After Meritocracy?
by Elizabeth Anderson
Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson reviews Michael Sandel's critique of meritocracy, a book that locates an explanation for the Trumpian moment in the rise of competitive individualism in the platforms of both major parties.
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SOURCE: The Bulwark
2/22/2021
How George Washington Didn’t Lead
Historians Lindsay Chervinsky, Noemie Emery, David Head and Craig Bruce Smith offer reflections in a virtual forum on the first president's leadership.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/24/2021
After the Riot, What’s the Future of Art in the Capitol?
Art Historian Sarah Lewis suggests that damage to the artworks in the Capitol during the rioting presents an opportunity to rethink what subjects are included in a collection that signals inclusion in the national narrative.
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SOURCE: WTVY
2/24/2021
Auburn Professors Working to Preserve History of Selma’s ‘Bloody Sunday’
Richard Burt and Keith Hébert are leading a team of researchers to preserve the site of the historic attack on voting rights marchers by Alabama State Troopers on March 7, 1965, hoping that a better-preserved public monument will clear up misperceptions of the day's events.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
2/25/2021
Fight To Vote: The Woman Who Was Key In 'Getting Us The Voting Rights Act'
Historian Carol Anderson explains the contributions of Amelia Boynton to the Selma movement and the erasure of women's organizing work from many histories of the movement.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/22/2021
We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy
by Sarah Zhang
“We’ve gotten so good at preventing so many diseases, there’s been a loss of knowledge and a loss of experience,” Jeanne Kisacky, the author of Rise of the Modern Hospital, says.
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SOURCE: National Parks Traveler
2/22/2021
The Future Of Confederate Monuments
by Kim O'Connell
“The Park Service needs to ask, ‘Who’s coming to your site and who’s not coming to your site?’” says Denise Meringolo, a professor of public history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Those monuments are a barrier to significant portions of the audience, for whom they are not simply inaccurate or annoying. They are traumatizing.”
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SOURCE: JStor Daily
2/21/2021
Black Women Have Written History for over a Century
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie examines the work of Black women scholar-activists like Anna Julia Cooper whose work integrated the writing of African American history with political organizing, despite exclusion from the academy.
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SOURCE: CNN
2/21/2021
Black Women's Roles in the Civil Rights Movement have been Understated -- But that's Changing
Beverly Guy-Sheftall of Spelman College discusses the public minimization of women as leaders in the 1950s and 1960s Black Freedom movements.
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/24/2021
A Poisonous Legacy: New York City and the Persistence of the Middle Passage
by Gerald Horne
Historian Gerald Horne reviews John Harris's book on the role of New York merchants in the illegal last phase of the Atlantic slave trade, which persisted despite the law because trade in human beings enriched Americans throughout the nation.
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SOURCE: KJZZ
2/22/2021
As A New Blue Is Discovered, ASU Professor Details History Of The Color Blue
Arizona State's Theresa Devine discusses the discovery of a new blue pigment and the social significance of blue coloring from the ancient world to today.
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SOURCE: The Asia-Pacific Journal
2/23/2021
Supplement to Special Issue: Academic Integrity at Stake: The Ramseyer Article
by Alexis Dudden
The Asia-Pacific Journal is publishing a collection of letters in opposition to the controversial article by Harvard Law professor J. Mark Rameseyer which characterized the sexual abuse of Korean women during World War II as freely contracted sex work.
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SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
2/19/2021
The Current Republic of Suffering
by Murray Browne
Drew Gilpin Faust's "This Republic of Suffering" inspires reflection on how the collective experiences of COVID and the loss of a half million Americans may shape the society that emerges.
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SOURCE: Public Books
2/16/2021
The Arch of Injustice
Historian Steven Hahn reviews Walter Johnson's "The Broken Heart of America," finding that Johnson makes a compelling case that St. Louis is the archetypal American city but is less effective at showing concepts like white supremacy and racial capitalism as dynamic historical processes.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/21/2021
The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret
The value hierarchy of properties on the Monopoly game board reflect the history of Atlantic City; the game was created as the Great Migration brought African Americans north to New Jersey and spurred northern cities and their white residents to create and defend residential segregation.
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SOURCE: Washingtonian
2/22/2021
Black Broadway in DC: A New Book Explores the Undeniable Influence of U Street’s History
Briana Thomas's "Black Broadway in Washington, DC" examines the city's U Street, which was not just a daily fixture of Black life in the District, but a connector of Black America's aspirations in politics, education and business.
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