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.
Source: Seattle Times
March 17, 2006
Just three years ago, students at the Bellevue Community College bookstore would throw a pile of textbooks on the counter each quarter and wait for the verdict. The cost was usually $200 to $250.
Now the typical cost is $350 to $400 — an amount distressing to many students, said Kristen Connely, store manager.
So this summer, BCC will become one of a few colleges in the state — and in the country — to offer a formal textbook rental program.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
March 17, 2006
Alabama lawmakers are considering pardoning hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who were arrested decades ago for violating Alabama's segregation laws.The idea of a mass pardon gained traction after the death last year of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who had refused to give up her bus seat to a white man half a century earlier.
Even though the law allowing segregated seating on city buses was eventually overturned, Parks' conviction is still on the re
Source: AHA Perspectives (March 2006)
March 1, 2006
A federal survey of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities in 2004 found real increases in the number of history faculty employed, as well as proportional increases in the number of historians employed on the tenure track and full time. Unfortunately, even as historians' employment prospects improved, the survey shows that average salaries for historians fell further behind most other academic disciplines and the demographic diversity of the profession was largely unchanged.
Source: NYT
March 17, 2006
Anne Braden, a prominent civil rights activist who in the 1950's was indicted on charges of sedition in a famous case after she helped buy a house for a black family in an all-white suburb of Louisville, Ky., died March 6 in Louisville. She was 81.
Source: AP
March 17, 2006
Although the 1955 killing helped galvanize the civil rights movement, those responsible for Emmett Till's death were never brought to justice. Now, more than 50 years after the black teen died, the FBI says too much time has passed to bring the case to federal court.In a long-awaited report Thursday, the FBI said that no federal charges will be filed in the brutal death of the 14-year-old Till, who was beaten and shot for purportedly whistling at a white woman.
Source: NYT
March 17, 2006
For nearly two decades, Kurds have gathered peacefully in this mountainous corner of northern Iraq to commemorate one of the blackest days in their history. It was here that Saddam Hussein's government launched a poison gas attack that killed more than 5,000 people on March 16, 1988.
So it came as a shock when hundreds of stone-throwing protesters took to the streets here Thursday on the anniversary, beating back government guards to storm and destroy a museum dedicated to the memor
Source: AP
March 16, 2006
A new book by Pope John Paul II's longtime personal physician recounts the pontiff's final days and minutes, saying doctors realized on a few hours before his death that further medical intervention would have been fruitless.John Paul died April 2 at 9:37 p.m. after slipping into a coma two hours earlier, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti writes in his book ''Let me go.'' The title refers to the pope's final words ''Let me go to the house of the Father,'' which he uttered in Polis
Source: National Coalition for History
March 16, 2006
On 8 March 2006, by a vote of 409 to 12, the U.S. House of Representatives granted approval to the Secretary of the Interior to designate President Bill Clinton's birthplace in Hope, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site thus making it a unit of the National Park System. The bill is somewhat unusual as it empowers the Secretary of the Interior to designate the home rather than have the site created through the more common process where Congress alone makes the designation.
Source: Baltimore Sun
March 15, 2006
Blazing a Trail Before Brown is a documentary in the works by seniors at Polytechnic Institute. The 10-minute film tells the story of the pioneering integration of their own school, developed primarily through interviews with people who experienced it.Although many Baltimoreans already know this groundbreaking local history, it also has significance nationally. When Poly admitted black students in September 1952, it was among the first - possibly the first - public hig
Source: Inside Higher Ed
March 16, 2006
Sure, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan may have been presidents of the United States. But they would have been really influential if they had helped to break a racial barrier in professional sports.hat’s one way of interpreting a list of the “100 Most Influential Student-Athletes” released Wednesday by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, as part of its centennial celebration. The top five leans heavily toward leading African-American athletes who bec
Source: BBC News
March 16, 2006
The brainchild of the Northern Ireland Museums Council and the Nerve Centre in Londonderry, the site will feature World War II memorabilia which is held in Northern Ireland museums. It will be launched in the autumn, and will feature objects, reminiscences and war images.
The site is aimed at teachers and pupils studying the effects of the Second World War in Northern Ireland.
In addition to providing photographs and recordings of veterans reminis
Source: Ansa.it
March 14, 2006
The hunt is on for the 'brothers' of a 2,400-year-old bronze satyr fished out of the sea off Sicily seven years ago ."We are sure there are similar objects down there," said Sicily's maritime culture chief Sebastiano Tusa .
The Sicilian regional government has contacted top Italian fuels group Eni to tap into its experience laying underwater cables .
"They've provided us with special equipment that should enable us to find the s
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 15, 2006
Move over Bode. You may have competition you don't know about - among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived.
Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track
Source: London Times
March 16, 2006
A furious debate has erupted in Dallas after a suggestion that the only memorial in the city commemorating John F. Kennedy should be torn down. His assassination in 1963 still evokes deep feelings of guilt.Despite the fact that the monument — a stark, empty, open-air concrete box — is widely considered a monstrosity, many people are afraid that public criticism would offend the memory of a man whose murder brought so much unwanted attention to the city.
But this
Source: Seatle Post-Intelligencer
March 16, 2006
President Andrew Jackson gave the order that started the Trail of Tears, the cruel removal of American Indians to west of the Mississippi River. Now Jackson's plantation home near Nashville, the Hermitage, has been named as an official site along the historical trail that commemorates the Trail of Tears.Hermitage Executive Director Patricia Leach said the recognition Wednesday opens a new chapter in Jacksonian history by acknowledging one the darkest periods in h
Source: CNN
March 15, 2006
Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Robert F. Kennedy to death in 1968, was denied parole Wednesday for the 13th time since his conviction.Sirhan is "very hostile. He hates Americans. ... He continues to pose a risk to public safety," said state Board of Parole Hearings spokesman Tip Kindel.
Sirhan did not attend the hearing at Corcoran State Prison or appoint a lawyer to represent him. His longtime attorney died last year after numerous failed attempts to g
Source: NYT
March 16, 2006
On his third day of testimony in a London court yesterday, Dan Brown acknowledged "reworking" passages from another book for his best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," but rejected charges that he stole key ideas for his thriller, The Associated Press reported.He was testifying on behalf of his British publisher, Random House U.K., in a copyright infringement suit brought by two of the three authors of a 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and the
Source: Justin Driver in New Republic
March 8, 2006
[Robert L. Carter's memoir] is dedicated not so much to challenging the great-man theory of history as it is to arguing that history canonized the wrong man. Instead of fixating on Marshall, Carter contends that historical accounts should highlight his own legal exploits. In these pages Marshall emerges as a puppet, with Carter pulling the strings and providing the voice. By his lights, Carter delivered black emancipation through such legal victories as Brown v. Board of Edu
Source: Ansa.it
March 14, 2006
An ancient Phoenician city unearthed in Sicily was inhabited after its supposed destruction, the head of an Italian dig team claims ."Our finds, including cooking pans, Phoenecian-style vases, small altars and pieces of looms, show Motya had a thriving population long after it is commonly believed to have been destroyed by the Ancient Greeks," said Maria Pamela Toti .
The continued life of Motya had been put forward by various archaeologists over
Source: NYT
March 15, 2006
Acting on an accord reached last month, the Italian government is offering to lend the Metropolitan Museum of Art an array of artifacts recovered from graves in the ancient region of Etruria, in west-central Italy, to reciprocate for the Met's return of objects that Italy claims were illegally excavated from its soil.In exchange for a Laconian kylix, or ancient Greek drinking cup, that the Met is returning under the agreement, Italy is prepared to send a comparable six
