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The difference between history and nostalgia
I am now reading through Clint Smith’s book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Smith’s goal is to examine places in America and how they tell the story of slavery and racism in American history.
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A chilling anniversary
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 steps for a final solution…
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The Great Dissenter
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 basis. I knew of Harlan’s…
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We just like being comfortable as white Christians
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 “critical race theory.” The imprecise…
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Learning from histories
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 when we concentrate on one…
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To sit and wonder
The past few days have been what I call “History Geek Week” for me. We have gone on a fantastic historical tour of Pennsylvania with my in-laws. One I’ve always wanted to do and this was a great opportunity. The first two days in Pennsylvania were spent in Gettysburg, then Lancaster area. Gettysburg is a place to be studied. It…
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The illusion of being “pro-life”
For me, growing up in a conservative Christian environment and coming into voting age in the “Reagan Revolution” this is what I knew: It’s all about abortion. It’s all about being pro-life. Then, the narrator off to the side (who I didn’t hear at the time and wished to GOD he had been just a little louder) whispered: “It wasn’t…
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A record must be left
This counts for so little, I know. But, in some dusty corner of the internet bin one day, may this record stand. The House hearing on the January 6 INSURRECTION is starting and this is the written testimony of one of the Capitol Police Officers. HERE. I won’t repost one of the more heartbreaking parts because of the use of…
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History does indeed repeat itself
Read American history, You will seelaws being pushed now, legallyby those who spurn racialized realitymirror sins of their ancestryalmost exactly the same as 1963They curse(d) and kill(ed) Black people and POCCreatively justify bigotryCalling selves Christians-oh really? — Marlena Proper Deida Graves (@MarlenaGraves) July 21, 2021
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To repent, To change…
While the violence in Tulsa was stunning, American history is littered with examples of street battles, racist uprisings, and mass killings. The history of the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina, massacre and coup, in which a racist mob overthrew the city government, is its own category of chilling. So is the Rosewood Massacre. The list goes on. It is not “hating…
Tag: History
