On the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, we share an excerpt from Jennifer Guglielmo’s book Living the Revolution. Continue Reading Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a century ago today
The popular uprisings of the sort now spreading across North Africa to the Persian Gulf were hard to anticipate—but the American response wasn’t. U.S. history is filled with moments like the present one when upheavals abroad generated great hopes for the advance of freedom. Those moments have also evoked deep anxieties rooted in a suspicion that most peoples reaching for… Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: Caught in Contradictions: The United States and the Middle East
Happy International Women’s Day! People are recognizing and celebrating the importance of women all over the world–check out the #InternationalWomensDay hashtag on Twitter to see the many ways people are expressing their appreciation for women today. Here in the U.S., the month of March is National Women’s History Month, where we celebrate the many great achievements by women over the… Continue Reading International Women’s Day Megapost Spectacular!
We welcome a guest post from James Marten, author of Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. Today is the anniversary of President Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural, in which he made a promise that was kept by passing federal programs that took care of war veterans and their families. Here, Marten discusses the importance… Continue Reading James Marten: Charity for All: A Little-Known Legacy of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
When we read about Beyoncé‘s recent photo shoot in blackface, we asked for some historical insight from W. Fitzhugh Brundage, editor of the forthcoming book Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (July 2011). The book includes essays from sixteen scholars who depict popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to… Continue Reading W. Fitzhugh Brundage: Beyoncé, Bert Williams, and the History of Blackface in America
In today’s guest post, Leon Fink, author of Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present, reflects on the recent Somali pirate attack on a group of Americans on a private yacht. With piracy on the rise off the Somali coast, the relationship between commerce, globalization, power, and security becomes problematic. Fink… Continue Reading Leon Fink: Oceanic Piracy–A War without Nations
Whose idea was Black History Month? Who picked February to celebrate it? We welcome this brief but informative history of Black History Month from Stephen G. Hall, author of A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America, as he lays out the facts and debunks the myths of the celebration’s origins.–ellen There are many misconceptions… Continue Reading Stephen G. Hall: Black History Month: Setting the Story Straight
Happy Presidents’ Day everyone! Today’s federal holiday treat is an article at History News Network by author Chris Myers Asch. He muses on how our first President has saved the United States from needing to overthrow any leaders. In light of the recent events in Egypt, Asch discusses how stepping down peacefully after two terms (and the eventual passing of… Continue Reading Chris Myers Asch on one of George Washington’s greatest contributions
Today we welcome a guest post from James Wolfinger, author of Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. Here, Wolfinger sheds light on the rocky beginnings of the Levittown in Bucks County outside of Philadelphia, which was fraught with racial tension and forced segregation by Bill Levitt himself, even years after its 1951 opening. But seven… Continue Reading James Wolfinger: A Tale of Two Levittowns: Race and Housing in Suburban Philadelphia
As you probably know, February is African American History Month, when we celebrate the countless contributions of African Americans to our country and recognize the struggles of generations past and present. Titles that treat the many facets of African American culture and history have always been one of the strongest and most important components of UNC Press’s list. Here are… Continue Reading Everything You Need for an African American History Month Reading List
We recently learned the great news that the LCRM Project has received funding from the Mellon Foundation for the next phase of its work. Here is the full press release. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL February 10, 2011—The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced today that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant of $500,000… Continue Reading Great news: Funding renewed for Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement
Shane Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present blogs for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations at SHAFR.org. In his most recent post, after the ratification of the New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia, Maddock addresses some Cold War-era myths about American nuclear hegemony that… Continue Reading Shane Maddock on the Persistent Nuclear Myths of the Cold War
Update 4/21/2011:The lamentable news of Tim Hetherington’s death covering the civil conflict in Libya reached us yesterday (20 April 2011). Restrepo is one of this fine and courageous documentarian’s major achievements. His record of what it meant for U.S. soldiers to fight in the Afghan War will stand the test of time.—MHH Ignore all the vacuous policy statements, the bland… Continue Reading Michael Hunt: Restrepo: An Oscar for Afghanistan?
The free market in housing works for many people, especially those with access to a good education, a stable job, adequate compensation, and decent health care. But not everyone has those things, and the Depression made us understand that it was not always because of personal failings. Continue Reading James Wolfinger: Home Sweet Home: Race and Public Housing in Philadelphia
We welcome a guest post today from Gregory Downs, author of Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861-1908, which we will publish next month. In the book, Downs argues that the Civil War created a seemingly un-American popular politics rooted not in independence but in voluntary claims of dependence. Faced with anarchy during the… Continue Reading Gregory Downs: Jared Lee Loughner, the Personal, and the Political
No sooner had I written the last blog post about representations of the South on reality television than another show made it to the air—TLC’s Bama Belles. It seems unlikely that “belle” is an appellation anyone would apply to women who don camouflage to hunt or are ready to start a bar fight. Still, the conscious decision by the show’s… Continue Reading Karen L. Cox: For Whom the Belle Tolls
Think of the Wikileaks’ release of State Department cables as one of your holiday gifts that will keep on giving . . . and giving and giving. Julian Assange and Company got generous just before Thanksgiving. A steady dribble from the quarter-million purloined documents should keep us happily diverted well into the new year and perhaps beyond. But what kind… Continue Reading Wikileaks is a gift – but what is it worth?
Just before our holiday hiatus we were following the story of Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s comments to the Weekly Standard about how smoothly the desegregation of schools went in his hometown of Yazoo City. It was his defense of the role of the white Citizens’ Councils (which he later recanted) that prompted a lot of backlash. I was happy to… Continue Reading Civil Rights Memory: Haley Barbour and the New ‘Lost Cause’
Joe Perry’s Christmas in Germany and Nancy Smith Thomas’ Moravian Christmas in the South provide insight into Christmas customs and traditions. Continue Reading How Christmas in Germany will forever change my understanding of The Nutcracker
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