Roundup: Talking About History

Simone Cooper: How A Blind, Autistic Slave Boy Made White House History

[Ms. Cooper is the publicist for Deirdre O'Connell's biography, The Ballad of Blind Tom Wiggins, Slave Pianist.] When the much-hallowed Abraham Lincoln was a still presidential candidate, there lived in Georgia a blind, autistic slave boy with a flawless memory. Folks came far and wide to marvel at how he never forgot a thing.

Tim Shipman: History of Britain's special relationship with America

[Tim Shipman is Washington correspondent.] It is appropriate, then, that it was Churchill who coined the phrase. Gordon Brown's trip to Washington comes 63 years to the week after Churchill's most famous post-war speech in Fulton, Missouri, which also gave the world the phrase "Iron Curtain". He called for "a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States", who can "work together at the common task as fri

Thomas Fleming: Was George W. Bush the Worst President?

[Thomas Fleming is a past president of the Society of American Historians. His most recent book, The Perils of Peace, America’s Struggle to Survive After Yorktown has just been published in paperback by Smithsonian.]    There have been several polls of historians who have voted George W. Bush the worst president in American History.  This baffles me.  I’ve been writing and reading about presidents for a long time. What I know, and what I presume these gentleman

John J. McKay: Plagiarism lives on even after the guilty die

[Mr. McKay, a former history student, lives in Seattle and blogs at http://johnmckay.blogspot.com. He is writing a book about mammoths.] I hate plagiarism. Everyone believes that plagiarism is wrong in the abstract, but most students are able to justify a little plagiarism now and then. I managed to get through college with recourse to it. My first experience with discovering a plagiarism was when I found out that someone had stolen an essay from me. I was pleased to find out that he rec

John Summers: How the government is ruining America's most famous battlefield

[John Summers is the author of Every Fury on Earth and a visiting scholar at the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.] Last winter, I was walking with my wife along Seminary Ridge on the Gettysburg battlefield when an odd detail drew into sight: piles of felled trees, stacked alongside a road. The cuts smelled as fresh as the trees looked strong. What happened to them, we wondered? I grew up in Gettysburg, and my mother still lives in the shadow of L

Carl Sferrazza Anthony: Michelle Obama, First Ladies and African-American History

[Mr. Anthony is Historian of the National First Ladies Library.] Last week, when Michelle Obama invited several local Washington school groups to the White House for Black History Month, she used her unique podium as the first African-American First Lady to mention some of her husband's predecessors. She mentioned, for example, Lyndon Johnson who signed the Civil Rights Act in that very same room a half-century earlier, when the current First Lady was herself but a nine-month year o

Jon Wiener: Opening the Files on Bush's Secrets

[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. Since then he's written more than 100 stories and reviews for the magazine, many about American history, university politics, and California life. He's also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host. His most recent book is Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (New Press).] "For a long time there's been too much secrecy in this city," Pr

Aaron Zelinsky: Obama's Rhetorical Inspirations: Presidents, Poets, and Hobbits

President Obama's speech to Congress stood on the shoulders of prophets, playwrights, and hobbits. From J.F.K. to an Australian Pop Band, here are the ten sources behind the most memorable lines of Obama's recent address: 1) "Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States: I've come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who s

Jessica Millward: Teaching African-American History in the Age of Obama

[Jessica Millward is an assistant professor of history at the University of California at Irvine.] When I proposed a spring course on major topics in African-American history, drawing a large enrollment was my chief concern. I had previously taught the course under a different title at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a campus with a sizable African-American presence among students and faculty members. I now teach at a college whose African-American student population

Anna Quindlen: The Other Lincoln

[Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist Anna Quindlen joined Newsweek as a contributing editor in October 1999, succeeding the late Meg Greenfield.] As a Catholic schoolgirl I supplemented the obligatory "Lives of the Saints" with the biographies of famous women, searching for the possibility of a future that did not include an apron. The pickings were slim: Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale. Some of the women I learned about then are still amo

Humberto Fontova: The New York Times vs. Accurate Cuban History

[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Visit www.hfontova.com] Most Americans applaud “parental involvement” in their children's education. But a recent New York Times editorial decries it. In 2006, Miami parents discovered a children's book entitled Let's Go to Cuba, which depicts Stalinist Cuba as a combination of Emerald City and Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory,

Steven Gunn: What should we think of Henry VIII?

[Steven Gunn is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Merton College, Oxford.] What should we think of Henry VIII? This year we will all have to decide. For the 500th anniversary of his accession, the British Library and the Tower of London will host exhibitions, Channel 4’s Time Team will explore his palaces, and Hampton Court will make each of its many visitors a member of his court for a day. Henry will be hard to avoid. We know more about Henry than about any previ

Jerome Taylor: The Blitz tragedy that Churchill erased from history

[Jerome Taylor joined The Independent's Foreign Desk in 2005 and is now a Home News reporter with a particular penchant for religious affairs.] Even after 65 years, remembering how Vera Trotter was killed on a winter’s evening in 1943 as the Luftwaffe made one of its regular post-Blitz raids on London’s East End is still enough to bring Alf Morris to tears. Standing on the eastern steps of Bethnal Green Tube station, the 78-year-old dabs his eyes with a handkerchief as he describes

Patrick Maney: The legend of FDR's first 100 days in office

[Patrick Maney, a professor of history at Boston College, is the author of "The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR."] HISTORICAL myth always has an advantage over truth by virtue of its head start. But the legend of Franklin Roosevelt's famous first 100 days has become so overblown that it may be crippling the ability of leaders to be effective, let alone achieve the instantaneous greatness for which millions are now pining. This may be a case when bad history

Walter Berns: Why America Celebrates Lincoln

[Mr. Berns is professor emeritus of government at Georgetown and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This is adapted from a Bradley lecture given last week at AEI.] Abraham Lincoln did great things, greater than anything done by Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt. He freed the slaves and saved the Union, and because he saved the Union he was able to free the slaves. Beyond this, however, our extraordinary interest in him, and esteem for him, has to do with wha

Joseph Kip Kosek: The Power of Nonviolence

[Joseph Kip Kosek, author ofActs of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy] The concept of nonviolence seems to have little power today. Barack Obama’s inauguration, followed quickly by Black History Month, inspired many stirring tributes to the civil rights movement. However, the nonviolent outlook and tactics of that movement have become museum pieces, not unlike the lunch

Gregory McNamee: Remembering Geronimo on the 100th Anniversary of His Death

Goyathlay, “The One Who Yawns,” is better known to history by the name Mexican soldiers gave him: Geronimo, the Catholic saint Hieronymous. He was born deep within No-doyohn Canyon, near where present-day Arizona and New Mexico meet; he placed his birthday in 1829, though many historians put it in 1823. Following Apache custom, Geronimo considered his birthplace his true homeland, and though he would roam far and wide, he would often return to it, fleeing pursuers, to cloak himself in ancestral

Gordon Taylor: The Noah Myth

[Mr. Taylor is a former teacher in Turkey and the author of Fever and Thirst: An American Doctor Among the Tribes of Kurdistan. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005.] People never seem to tire of the Noah myth. It has it all: the hopeless depravity of mankind (always a popular theme) complemented by the contrasting goodness of Noah complete with flowing white locks and beard; the"I'm-fed-up-with-all-this-fornicating" pronouncement from God; the mighty cubit-stretching labor on the big round

Byron Williams: Does America have what it takes to end Black History Month?

[Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his website: byronspeaks.com] Under the right conditions, I would support the elimination of Black History. I am quite certain that some are already asking themselves: "How can he possibly consider the elimination of Black History Month?&qu

Christopher Hitchens: Lincoln ... The Man Who Made Us Whole

Lincoln, himself, was paradoxical—as is the way we see him now. To really know the 16th president, look past the ways in which we remember him. Here's the view from the White House as the new president gazes gloomily out of its windows in 1861. The Washington Monument is an abandoned stump, surrounded by scattered blocks of stone. The Capitol has no dome. Slaves toil in the stinking heat, and the Potomac is an open sewer. The Union itself is dissolving like sugar in water. Furious m