History

By Michael Duffy Washington Post Opinions editor-at-large We are witnessing something of a watershed moment in the reckoning America is having with itself and its history. Harvard University released a 134-page report Tuesday that begins to explain how, as Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it, “the nation’s oldest, richest and most prestigious institution of higher learning” benefited from slavery.  Two Harvard…

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The Gorgeous Jazz Age Photography of Alfred Cheney Johnston

04/25/2022 09:42 AM EDT from The Library of CongressThe court photographer for the Ziegfeld Follies, Alfred Cheney Johnston — who later donated more than 200 of his photographs to the Library — captured the era and helped create the modern celebrity glamour shot. He was one of the first celebrity photographers. 

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‘A Song for Cesar’ History will remember the blood, sweat and tears shed by late civil-rights activist and labor leader Cesar Chavez while standing up for American farmworkers. In ‘Song for Cesar,’ co-writers and co-directors Andres Alegria and Abel Sanchez build on that legacy and pride through the music of Chavez’s era. Friday, April 29, 8 p.m.…

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By Gillian Brockell “We captured three Negro soldiers, the first we had seen,” Private Byrd Willis wrote on May 8, 1864. “They were taken out on the road side and shot and their bodies left there.” Coming across these lines a century and a half later was “a chilling experience,” Lambert said in a phone interview.…

Read More Three Black soldiers executed by Confederates are finally being honored in Virginia

Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley, was an American stand-up comedian and actress. Mabley began her career on the theater stage in the 1920s and became a veteran entertainer of the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American vaudeville. Mabley later recorded comedy albums and appeared in films and on television programs including The…

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In the latest issue of Orion magazine, Lacy M. Johnson writes: When the next freeze or fire or pandemic or hurricane hits us, vulnerability will determine who gets to live, and who will die, and how. The disaster won’t be the weather, but the shape of the wound structural violence has already made. For better or worse, St. Patrick’s…

Read More Lessons from Irish History

American Women: A guide to Women’s History Resources at the Library of Congress

A major new online research guide highlights hundreds of sources that tell the stories of women through a wide variety of perspectives and media in the Library of Congress collections. The guide’s comprehensive coverage includes historic and contemporary audio and video files, posters, photographs, magazines, sheet music, maps, manuscripts, and rare books, as well as…

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March 3, 2022 By David Leonhardt The original American advocate for inoculation against severe disease was arguably an enslaved man named Onesimus. Before being forcibly brought to Boston, Onesimus seems to have lived in West Africa, where inoculation was a common practice. There, he had been deliberately infected with a small amount of smallpox to…

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