civil war
June 30, 2017 -
In his famous July 4 speech delivered 165 years ago, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "With brave men, there is always a remedy for oppression." Now is the time for Congress to be brave for democracy and vote to restore the eviscerated Voting Rights Act.
December 9, 2016 -
The mistrial declared this week in the case of the North Charleston police officer who shot unarmed Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott in the back following a traffic stop is part of a long history of dehumanizing treatment of Black veterans in the South that's documented in a new report.
September 9, 2016 -
With Nate Parker's film about Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt set to be released soon, retired Duke University history professor Peter H. Wood wonders if another much-needed teaching moment is on the way.
January 28, 2016 -
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks at a town hall this week seemed to revive the old, discredited idea that post-Civil War Reconstruction was a mistake. Her campaign has since issued a clarification, but the controversy shows that the debate over Reconstruction is far from over.
October 12, 2015 -
Southern white working-class folks have a reason to feel rebellious — they're just waving the wrong flag to show it.
July 24, 2015 -
Since a white supremacist who waved the Confederate flag gunned down nine African Americans in a Charleston church last month, battles have raged across the South over the future of Confederate monuments. Some Confederate apologists are claiming that a 1958 law gives Confederate veterans, and thus the monuments to them, equal status to U.S. veterans and their memorials. They're wrong.
July 3, 2014 -
Political psychologists distinguish between "blind patriotism" that's intolerant and unquestioning and "constructive patriotism," which welcomes questioning with the hope of creating positive change. On this most patriotic of holidays, we share some of our favorite writings and songs in the spirit of the latter, and we invite you to do the same.
