Excellent Peter Birkenhead piece at Alternet on the exclusion of slavery on private plantation home tours in the South. Slave cabins are being turned into spas and restaurants rather than spaces of remembering our national shame. If America is a family, it’s a family that...
Historical Memory
I am intrigued by Matthew Frye Jacobson's project to create a modern archive by collecting materials and interviewing people about present-day events. Here's a write-up about it. Jacobson, most noted.
If you haven't read Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on why African-Americans avoid centering the Civil War in their history, why the Civil War is so associated with whites in public memory,.
Historiann has a good post on the problems with teaching the American Revolution: the extreme nationalism of the students on the subject It’s not just that it’s difficult to teach the quintessentially nationalistic course in American history in an era in which a great deal...
In a response to the growth of ethnically-oriented museums on the National Mall, Rep. James Moran (D-VA) supports the creation of a museum dedicated to the American melting pot as.
Neil Genzlinger has a thought provoking piece on the dark side of Ellis Island and American immigration, which he rightfully says is underplayed at the museum: But there’s another side.
Miners experienced awful conditions in the coal regions of West Virginia in the early 20th century. Coal companies ruled the region like a fiefdom. Impoverished workers had few connections with the outside world and could be thrown out of their homes or off their land...