History
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July 5, 1852: Frederick Douglass—a former slave turned abolitionist leader—delivers a speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame… Read more
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“Nostalgia is rarely antiquarian, a mere interest in history qua history. It is more commonly a sentimental pining for “the way it was.” Such nostalgia is always a form of arrested development. For example, there are sorts of nostalgia that are not-so-subtle longings for adolescence and thus resent adulthood. Many forms of collective nostalgia demonize… Read more
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The “Presidential” podcast goes through each of our presidents to the present. Each one is interesting and the take in each particular episode is interesting. The podcast will take on the complicated narrative of each president, and Woodrow Wilson is a great example. He was a progressive politically. Teddy Roosevelt was another progressive president preceding… Read more
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I have found a podcast series called “Presidential.” It’s a few years old now, but it takes the listener from Washington to Biden, giving each president one episode. One episode for Abraham Lincoln. One episode for Rutherford B Hayes. Quite the challenge. I am posting a link to the one on Jefferson, but you can… Read more
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We don’t need a committee to simply regurgitate what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. We need a committee that will preserve democracy on Jan. 6, 2025, and Jan. 6, 2029. We need a committee to locate the weaknesses in our democratic system and society and find ways to address them. The core problem here is… Read more
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80 years ago a 90 minute meeting produced the Holocaust. On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials of the Nazi bureaucracy met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. Nibbles were served and washed down with cognac. There was only one point on the agenda: “The organizational, logistical and material… Read more
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A few years ago when I was teaching American History and in a section on the Supreme Court and “famous cases” I actually read the dissent of John Marshall Harlan in the case of “Plessy vs. Ferguson.” One man dissented in a time when the Supreme Court routinely upheld Jim Crow laws on a unanimous… Read more
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Tish Harrison Warren sets the framework of how Christians SHOULD handle history… and then exposes the horrible way in which we try to stay comfortable: We’re struggling now as a society with how to tell the truth about how white supremacy has shaped our history and institutions. Several states have recently passed laws against teaching… Read more
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I’ve been on a wonderful trip with our in-laws through Pennsylvania. Gettysburg. Lancaster. Philadelphia. As I’ve taken this trip, especially in Lancaster, PA, where James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens both resided, I’ve learned all over again it’s not about history. It is histories. We don’t get the the whole story a lot of the time… Read more
Apprentice 2 Jesus 