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Why I Am Running for the U.S. Senate from Maryland

by Allan Lichtman

Conservative big government is making government costlier and less fair. It is stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making.--Allan Lichtman, Newsday.com August 7, 2005After analyzing American politics for many years I am running as a Democrat for the United States Senate seat in Maryland being vacated by Paul Sarbanes. This election matters to everyone nationwide, since Bush has targeted our state as a top priority for picking up a seat in 2006 and holding his S

When Hemingway Took the Government to Task for a Hurricane Disaster that Cost Hundreds of Lives

by Melissah J. Pawlikowski

On September 2, 1935 what became known as the Great Labor Day Hurricane ravaged the Florida Keys with winds of 160 miles per hour and gusts up to 200 miles per hour. Soon after the clouds had cleared, leaving a crystal blue horizon, the dead were counted. Between 400 and 600 people perished. What made this storm all the more tragic was that among the dead were 265 World War I veterans. At the height of the Great Depression these veterans had been sent to build a road on the low lying

Do People Ever Really Remember the Names of the War Dead?

by Thomas G. Palaima

Tell me what were their names, tell me what were their names, Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James? One hundred men were drowned in that dark watery grave When that good ship went down only forty-four were saved. Woody Guthrie began writing his ballad about the USS Reuben James right after its torpedoing by a German submarine on Halloween Day 1941. In the song he first wrote, he sang out all eighty-six names of those lost at sea

The War That Wasn’t: Religious Conflict in Public Schools of the 19th Century

by Benjamin Justice

Most modern accounts of the history of public education in the nineteenth century make for grim reading. The story goes something like this: an anti-Catholic, Protestant majority foisted common schools on a re

What Hurricanes Tell Us About Ourselves

by Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

The comparisons seem to be inescapable. New Orleans as the Third World: displacement and destitution, internal migration and "refugees," hunger and homelessness. That most of the people caught up in these conditions are conspicuously men, women, and children of color–and poor–serves to make the comparisons all the more compelling. In fact, New Orleans in the wake of Katrina has been profoundly implicated in the Caribbean condition. The hurricane haunts the Caribbean lik

We Expect the Government to Save Us from Storms ... We Didn't Always

by Raymond Arsenault

On August 16, 1888, a powerful hurricane struck the coast of southeastern Florida. The storm’s maximum sustained winds may have exceeded 100, or even 125, miles per hour, but no one knows for sure. On August 15, the storm battered several of the lower Bahama Islands, inflicting considerable damage and loss of life, but no one in F

Why It's Time for Dr. New Deal (Again)

by Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs

Speaking Thursday night in New Orleans George W. Bush raised the federal ante to clean up and rebuild after Katrina to a staggering quarter of a trillion dollars. He no doubt intends to fund that through another tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. That will surely make Bechtel, Halliburton, General Electric and numerous other Wall Street giants richer yet, but there is a more practical and time-tested way to deal with the problem of reconstruction. We need another dose of medicine from Dr.

Historians Against the War: What We Are Doing to Try to Stop the War in Iraq

by Margaret Power

Public support for the U.S. war in Iraq is dropping and has reached the all-time low of 38%. The Bush administration’s indifference to, indeed criminal neglect of, the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta has further deepened public disapproval of the government. It is in this context that Historians Against War (HAW) is enthusiastically mobilizing for the September 24 march for peace in Washington, D.C. We encourage other historians to attend the protest and to sponsor activ

My New Orleans

by Darla Rushing

These thoughts began as what can only be described as a rant to a friend at Harvard, and Marc Wiseman, an assistant editor at HNN, asked me to share them. I left Mississippi in 1966, the week I graduated from college—couldn’t wait to get out of there—and moved with my young husband to New Orleans so that he could go to Tulane for graduate school. When one grows up in Mississippi, New Orleans is that romantic other country, geographically close, but culturally a lot

The Grim Lesson of History President Bush Overlooked

by Rick Shenkman

What I am proposing tonight is the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s. During his presidency, Harry Truman recognized that our nation's fragmented defenses had to be reorganized to win the Cold War. He proposed uniting our military forces under a single Department of Defense, and creating the National Security Council to bring together defense, intelligence, and diplomacy. Truman's reforms are still helping us to fight terror abroad, and now

Presidency: What Harry Got Wrong

by David Greenberg

Bush's Department of Homeland Security plan is modeled on Truman's 1947 national security reorganization. Here's what Harry got wrong. When President Bush unveiled his plan for a Department of Homeland Security, he invoked the Democratic president Republicans love to love, Harry Truman. Bush compared his reorganization to Truman's 1947 National Security Act."Truman recognized that our nation's fragmented defenses had to be reorganized to win the Cold War," Bush said."He proposed uniting ou

Before Americans Can Conserve Gas Government Policies Will Have to Change

by Mark Nevin

Last Thursday, after reviewing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on the oil-rich Gulf Coast states, President Bush addressed Americans’ growing concerns over spiraling gasoline costs and tightening supplies in his typical it’s-so-simple-even-you-can-understand-it style: “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need to.” Bush’s call for Americans to conserve gas is remarkable for two reasons. First, it is a dramatic departure from his own past stateme

What Katrina Tells Us About Mr. Bush's Philosophy of Government

by Leonard Steinhorn

Years from now, historians will likely see the Bush administration’s initially callous and indifferent response to hurricane Katrina as a parable for the type of conservatism this president and his party currently represent. Bush conservatism is built on a fundamental cultural narrative that has reemerged since the Reagan Eighties – that success is a sign of virtue, and anything less, particularly poverty, can be explained only through a character flaw. From the Roos

Interview with Erik Larson: The Hurricane that Destroyed Galveston in 1900

by Rick Shenkman

Mr. Larson is the author of Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. We conducted this interview by email. Some 6,000 people died in the Galveston hurricane. No one yet knows how many died in Katrina. But we know t

A Week Later: A Report from the Front Lines of Katrina

by Paul E. Hoffman

A week later, one thing is clear here in south Louisiana: Federal help came late and accompanied in some cases with well-intentioned bureaucratically minded FEMA and other officials whose desire for "system" delayed implementation. We did not have the resources/assets to rescue, and feed all of the thousands stranded in New Orleans and some other parishes (counties in the rest of the country), but the state, local governments, and especially civilians did everything they could from

Houston Universities Welcome History Students Displaced by Katrina

by Karen Kossie-Chernyshev

Thousands of students figure among the more than 250,000 Katrina survivors who flocked to Texas in search of higher ground. Hundreds have found welcome mats outside the doors of public and private universities in Houston including Rice University, Texas Southern University, the University of Houston, and the University of St. Thomas. According to Anne Wright, Vice President for Enrollment, Rice University, nestled among the plush oaks of the posh South Hampton community, has

Historians Should Help Design the Reconstruction of the Affected Communities

by Gerda Lerner

A small group of Madison folks met over the weekend to see if we could contribute some proposals for long-range solutions for the people caught in the New Orleans horror. The attached statement is the result of our thinking. We have made appointments to see our Congress people and would like to present them with as many signatures as possible to the statement, when we see them. If you agree, please send me an email with your signature. Please feel fr

Missing Historians: The Ordeal of Not Knowing

by Rick Shenkman

A full week and a half after Katrina hit the Gulf many people remain missing, including both historians and history students. The story unfolds chronologically in all its horror on the blog HNN set up last week to track the missing. Tulane's history department as of last evening had failed to locate eighteen people, from Pamela Smith, the department secretary, to Douglas Brinkley. But the gr

John Roberts Is Being Victimized Because He's a Catholic

by Timothy Walch

There's a whiff of religious intolerance swirling around  as the Senate approaches its hearings next week on the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. Because he's a devout Catholic, some senators -- even Catholic senators -- suggest that he's too deferential to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church to serve on the Court.   The charges are unfair; the concerns are unfounded. Although a Catholic and a conservative, Roberts is also an independent thinker who

The Florida Flood that Accounted for the Most Deaths of Black People in a Single Day (Until Katrina)

by Eliot Kleinberg

A hurricane catc