When HBO’s Watchmenaired on October 20th last year, it introduced millions of Americans to the explosive episode of racial terror that gripped the black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma from May 30th to June 1st, 1921. The TV show dramatizes how white Americans used guns and even makeshift bombs to destroy millions of dollars in property and murdered an estimated 100 to 300 African Americans over the course of three days (the “aftermath” of which is pictured here).Read More
As I stood in a small room on Menlove Avenue in Liverpool, England, that had belonged to John Lennon, I bopped my head along to the Del-Vikings song playing, looked out at the blue suburban skies, and imagined John Lennon there, doing his dreaming, in this room at his Aunt Mimi’s. Read More
Editors’ Note: This is one of two essays about how journalist Tony Horwitz (1958-2019) impacted the careers of public historians. You can read the first one here.
In May 2019, I was stunned to hear of the death of journalist Tony Horwitz, just as his final book, Spying on the South, was being released. Read More
Editor’s note: We publish The Public Historian editor James F. Brooks’s introduction to the May 2020 issue of The Public Historian here. The entire issue is available online free through June 2020, courtesy of the University of California Press, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Read More
A big house. Stately trees. Curious outbuildings. In 1905, Pennsylvania-born tourist Matilda Kessinger marveled at the landscape before her, “something one always reads about but never sees.” After 18 years of traveling the South, Kessinger had finally found the one place that lived up to her romantic ideals of an antebellum plantation. Read More
At 11:00 p.m. on Friday, January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom formally left the European Union (EU). After three and a half years of national debate and division since the Referendum on British membership in the EU, the first chapter of “Brexit” concluded. Read More
Entering the Flight 93 National Memorial galleries in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a few years ago, my mind was on my achy muscles. My husband and I had just completed an intensive, multiday cooperage workshop at the Somerset Historical Society nearby. We don’t visit western Pennsylvania that often, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to check out the Memorial despite being pretty exhausted. Read More
These past few months, I have had the pleasure of interning at the National Council on Public History (NCPH), largely working on research for the organization’s upcoming 40th anniversary in 2020. I’ve been helping to think through NCPH’s strategy for commemorating the anniversary, and also digging into the organization’s history. Read More
Editors’ Note: This post is part of a History@Work series that complements “The Public Historian,” volume 40, number 3, which is about the history of the field of Black Museums.
Entertainment and music are a big piece of Asbury Park’s history. Read More
Editors’ Note: This post is part of a History@Work series that complements “The Public Historian,” volume 40, number 3, which is about the history of the field of Black Museums.
The Biddy Mason Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California, invites us into the story of a once-enslaved woman. Read More
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