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Roundup: Historians' Take

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: NPR
    8/1/2020

    Opinion: 75 Years On, Remember Hiroshima And Nagasaki. But Remember Toyama Too

    by Cary Karacas and David Fedman

    AAF officials commonly used sanitizing language to mask the fact that they were targeting entire cities for destruction. Press releases described attacks not on cities, but on "industrial urban areas." Tactical reports set their sights not on densely populated neighborhoods, but on "worker housing."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    8/6/2020

    Richard Nixon Bears Responsibility for the Pandemic’s Child-Care Crisis

    by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

    Today’s child-care crisis may have been fueled by the outbreak, but it is not new. It has been simmering below the surface for decades and can be traced back to President Richard M. Nixon’s 1971 veto of federally funded universal child care.

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    8/6/2020

    News From the Dead

    by Eileen Sperry

    The experiences of convicted women who were "resurrected" after being unsuccessfully hanged illuminate the precarious legal and social standing of women in early modern England. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/5/2020

    Is This the Beginning of the End of American Racism?

    by Ibram X. Kendi

    The slaveholders’ attempts to perpetuate their system backfired; in the years before the Civil War, the inhumanity and cruelty of enslavement became too blatant for northerners to ignore or deny.

  • SOURCE: CommonWealth
    8/4/2020

    Faneuil Hall Name Change Needed

    by Marty Blatt and David J. Harris

    We might well ask whether Peter Faneuil actually paid for the building or whether it was purchased by the lives and freedom of those he transported and sold.

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    8/6/2020

    America's Coronavirus Endurance Test

    by Howard Markel

    To defeat the virus, we will have to start thinking in years, not months. We must refuse to give up on flattening the curve. It’s up to us to hold the line until our government catches up.

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    8/6/2020

    Setting the Lost Cause on Fire

    by Karen L. Cox

    Once revered by their communities, the United Daughters of the Confederacy today are simply out of step with change sweeping the South and the nation.

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    8/4/2020

    Psychiatry and Homosexuality Draft Exemptions During the Vietnam War

    by Natalie Shibley

    Although many gay rights organizations argued that the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed forces was unconstitutional and discriminatory, several of the same groups also offered advice to gay men who wanted to be disqualified from military service.

  • SOURCE: The Bitter Southerner
    8/4/2020

    Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Coverup of Racism, Violence & Greed

    by Kevin Kehrberg & Jeffrey A. Keith

    The song "Swannanoa Tunnel" has been changed through generations of recordings by white musicians, concealing its origins as a song sung by Black convict-lease laborers who were forced to work in deadly conditions, often as punishment for minor crimes (or no crimes at all). 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    7/20/2020

    Police Sexual Violence Is Hidden in Plain Sight

    by Anne Gray Fischer

    How did we get to the point where sexual assault is considered valid, necessary police work? The answer lies in the origin story of modern police, and specifically in the history of the discretionary enforcement of public order laws.

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    8/4/2020

    Named For The Enemy

    by Ty Seidule

    "The military has perhaps the most diverse workforce in the country. That is something to be proud of. Yet we must ensure that no one who volunteers to protect America works in a place named for someone who committed treason to protect slavery."