American history

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN  JULY 1, 2022 4:19 PM EDT  While Founding Fathers behind that document like John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are household names, there were many men and women who played an important role in shaping America in its infancy who are not as well known, This is especially the case for women and minorities. Native Americans, furthermore, had their own…

Read More Beyond the Founding Fathers: 12 Unsung Figures Who Helped Build America

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…

Read More A hard historical truth about Harvard

HARRIET TUBMAN KEPT PUSHING FOR CHANGE AFTER THE ‘RAILROAD’

By Starlight Williams, Associate Editor Thursday, March 10, 2022 In her nine decades (she died on this day in 1913), Tubman (pictured in 1878) became the first U.S. woman to lead an armed military raid and was a spy and nurse for the Union during the Civil War. She joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their…

HARRIET TUBMAN KEPT PUSHING FOR CHANGE AFTER THE ‘RAILROAD’" class="entry-more-link">Read More HARRIET TUBMAN KEPT PUSHING FOR CHANGE AFTER THE ‘RAILROAD’

By Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco and Leo Dominguez 1/10/22 From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War, hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former slaveowners. More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some…

Read More More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.

My question is why can southern states, who lost the Civil War, get away with having holidays and memorials to those who rebelled against the USA? Clint Smith, writing for The Atlantic, says, “I was struck by the many people I met who believe a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods. For so many of…

Read More Traitors Celebrated?

October 29, 2020 By Jessica Mendoza Multimedia reporter; Samantha Laine Perfas Story Team Leader [This is one of a series of articles/podcasts in the Christian Science Monitor.] As Tulsa, Oklahoma, gears up to commemorate the 1921 race massacre, a new generation of Tulsans are finding ways to make the story of Black Wall Street their own. What can the country…

Read More Tulsa’s Black Wall Street burned. These artists have a new vision (audio).