public history

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/3/2021
  

  Discovery Of Schoolhouse For Black Children Now Offers A History Lesson

  The discovery of an 18th century schoolhouse on the campus of William & Mary offers a chance for public historians to explain the complexity of Black education in colonial Virginia, which taught reading in the hopes of indoctrinating both free and enslaved children with pro-slavery ideology.

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• SOURCE: KCUR
  3/2/2021
  

  What The History Of 'Noose Road' Tells Us About Kansas, Race And The Lynchings Of Black Men

  Despite its Great Plains location and history of abolitionism, Kansas has been the site of lynching, sundown towns and violent exclusion of Black residents. Historians Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders and Jim Leiker discuss. 

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• SOURCE: Virginian-Pilot
  3/1/2021
  

  How a Wave of Segregationist Tributes, from Streets to Schools, Entrenched the Idea of White Supremacy

  Understanding the stakes of renaming public buildings, streets, or schools requires understanding the purposeful politics that attached the names of Confederates to public spaces a century ago, say Virginia historians Dan Margolies and Calvin Pearson.

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• SOURCE: National Parks Traveler
  2/25/2021
  

  Op-Ed | Confederate Memorials Serve A Role In National Parks

  by Harry Butowski

  "The removal of existing statues in our Civil War parks will not change our history, but make it more difficult to confront and examine our history. National parks are the great American classroom where American history is taught."

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• SOURCE: WABE
  3/1/2021
  

  Ga. Lawmaker Authors Bills To Abolish Confederate Monuments In Peach State

  Georgia state representative Shelly Hutchinson argues that while Confederate monuments stand,"there’s no healing that takes place there, and that means you are OK with where we are at as a country.”

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/23/2021
  

  SPLC: Over 160 Confederate Symbols Were Removed in 2020

  "The nonprofit organization, based in Montgomery, Ala., started tracking symbols of the Confederacy after a white supremacist killed nine Black worshipers at a storied African-American church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015."

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  3/1/2021
  

  “UT Needs Rich Donors”: Emails Show Wealthy Alumni Supporting “Eyes of Texas” Threatened to Pull Donations

  A number of wealthy University of Texas alumni have threatened to withhold donations unless "The Eyes of Texas," a song with roots traced to blackface minstrelsy and the Lost Cause mythology, is reinstated as the Longhorns' postgame anthem. 

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• SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
  2/22/2021
  

  Take Down Chicago’s Lincoln Statues? It’s Iconoclasm Gone Mad

  by Sidney Blumenthal and Harold Holzer

  Two biographers of Lincoln question the Chicago Monuments Project, which has placed famous statues of the 16th president on a list of public memorials subject to possible removal.

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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: 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: BBC
  2/24/2021
  

  Franco: Melilla Enclave Removes Last Statue of Fascist Dictator on Spanish Soil

  The statue was the last standing after a 2007 law recognized the suffering caused by Francoism and began a process of removing memorials to the dictator. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/15/2021
  

  The Sinking of a Bust Surfaces a Debate Over Denmark’s Past

  "An anonymous group of artists had unscrewed it from its plinth, popped a black garbage bag over its head and ferried it to the edge of the canal, before tipping it in."

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  2/9/2021
  

  A Paradox: History Without Historians

  by Jim Grossman

  "We cannot heal this nation without accurately understanding its pathologies, which are by their very nature historical."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/4/2021
  

  The San Francisco School-Renaming Debate Is Not About History

  "In fact, the way that the San Francisco school names are being talked about, fretted about, and competed over seems to have little to do with history at all. It has more to do with another realm of public life: celebrity."

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• SOURCE: WTOP
  2/5/2021
  

  Virginia House votes to turn ‘Jefferson Davis Highway’ into ‘Emancipation Highway’

  The bill, which has bipartisan support, would rename any stretches of  US Route 1 still named for the Confederate president as "Emancipation Highway" but would not reflect segments of the road already renamed by local authorities. 

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• SOURCE: AL.com
  2/7/2021
  

  UA Trustees vote to remove George Wallace’s name from UAB building

  “This is simply the right thing to do,” Trustee Judge John England Jr. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  2/9/2021
  

  Behind these Names, You’ll Find Stories of L.A.'S Black History

  The city of Los Angeles's early Anglo history was marked by the national conflict over slavery, and local decisions granting freedom to Black Angelenos shaped the city. Longtime LA Times columnist Patt Morrison discusses the public markers to African American history in the city. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/2/2021
  

  Trump’s 1776 Commission and the San Francisco Board of Education Have a Lot in Common

  by Max Boot

  "It is no surprise that the 1776 Commission did not include a single expert on U.S. history and that the San Francisco school board also refused to consult historians."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/2/2021
  

  San Francisco’s Ridiculous Renaming Spree

  If those on the right were looking for an example to condemn the trend of renaming public facilities because of the misdeeds of prominent historical figures, they couldn't have asked for more than the slapdash actions of the San Francisco school board, writes journalist Gary Kamiya.