public history 
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/25/2023
Beyond Mythbusting, What Should Historians Tell the Public?
by Steven Mintz
The success of the new "Myth America" collection shows a public appetite for confronting historical myths, but historians have to offer the public more than debunking.
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SOURCE: Substack
1/18/2023
Bemoaning Alabama's King-Lee Holiday Misses a Bigger Point
by Kevin M. Levin
While white Alabama still embraces the "lost cause" mythology embodied by Robert E. Lee, outrage about the holiday he shares with Martin Luther King, Jr. shouldn't blind the public to the ongoing struggle to change the commemorative landscape—in Montgomery and nationwide.
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1/15/2023
With Academic History in Crisis, can Departments Pivot to Reach Interested Audiences?
by Elizabeth Stice
Americans don't actually hate history; they often begin to appreciate it after their undergraduate years and outside of the classroom. Does this point in a possible direction for securing the future of the profession?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/2/2023
When White Contractors Wouldn't Remove Confederate Statues, a Black One Did
Devon Henry didn't seek the job of removing a dozen Confederate memorials in Richmond, but local white-owned vendors refused the contracts. He has received death threats and wears a bulletproof vest at job sites.
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SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
12/14/2022
Philly's Columbus Statue is Out of the Box—So is the Discussion About His Legacy
Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries talks about controversial statues: one removed in Richmond, and one uncovered in Philadelphia.
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SOURCE: American Historical Association
Does One's Historical Outlook Influence Civic Engagement?
It's not simple to gauge whether the desire to know about the past relates to wanting to solve community problems in the present.
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SOURCE: Substack
11/20/2022
Push Confederates Out of Gettysburg for Good
by Kevin M. Levin
Why are the forces that fought to preserve slavery, and who invaded the free state of Pennsylvania and kidnapped free Black Americans into slavery in 1863, allowed to march in Gettysburg's Remembrance Day parade?
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/14/2022
Monuments to the Unthinkable
by Clint Smith
German and European memorials to the Holocaust contrast starkly with an American memorial culture where the Confederate dead are revered, former slave plantations are tourist attractions, and state legislatures are seeking to ban the teaching of the nation's history in full.
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SOURCE: NextCity
11/10/202
Decades in Making, San Diego Museum will Honor Chicano Community and Movement
"Organizers and community members hope the museum will document the history of Chicano Park and continue educating future generations about Barrio Logan’s history."
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SOURCE: NPR
10/14/2022
New Documentary Examines the Controversial San Francisco School Mural
Artists and scholars debate the value of confronting historical discomfort against claims that images of violence are traumatizing. Historian Amna Khalid weighs in.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
10/7/2022
The Troubling History of Arlington Cemetery's Confederate Monument
by Samantha Baskind
The monument misrepresents the history of the Confederacy, and is itself a document of the way that white supremacy enabled a national "reconciliation" after the Civil War.
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SOURCE: LAist
9/23/2022
Los Angeles Project Aims to Name Every Interned Japanese American
The government's rosters of interned Japanese Americans are incomplete and error-ridden. A new project seeks a complete documentation of the missing names.
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SOURCE: NBC News
9/12/2022
The Slave Dwelling Project Pushes History of Slave Rebellions to the Public
Joseph McGill Jr. links the history of the Stono Rebellion and subsequent slave uprisings to the current effort to suppress so-called Critical Race Theory in schools.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
9/5/2022
Ty Seidule: Confederates Were Traitors
The naming of military facilties for Confederates was not a project of post-Civil War reconciliation; it was about valorizing and defending segregation in the 20th century, as with
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SOURCE: Virginia Public Media
9/2/2022
New Virginia Governor's Mansion Tour Doesn't Mention Slavery
"In a shift from a multi-year effort to tell a more complete history of the mansion, visitors won’t be taken to a building next to the mansion where enslaved workers once slept and toiled. And in two tours on Friday, docents made no mention of slavery at all."
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SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
9/1/2022
New Approach at Montpelier: Let All Voices Rise
After a controversial battle over how to incorporate the descendants of people enslaved by James Madison, Montpelier is beginning to highlight artifacts—and the process of discovering them—related to the lives of enslaved people at the estate.
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SOURCE: Associated Press
8/28/2022
Grant for Public History of Natchez, MS Civil Rights Sites
“This is great news for Natchez,” Mayor Dan Gibson said in a news release. “These grant funds will help greatly in our efforts to better tell the entire history of Natchez to include commemorating our African American historic sites.”
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SOURCE: NBC News
8/14/2022
Airbnb Listings Latest Case of Trivializing, Commercializing Slave Cabins
Preservationists like Joseph McGill Jr., founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, say the commercialization of plantation sites has been happening for decades.
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SOURCE: Boston Globe
8/5/2022
Commission Recommends Change to Massachusetts State Seal, Motto
Activists and members of the state’s Indigenous population have long objected to the image, which one critic called the “last state flag of white supremacy.”
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
7/1/2022
Looking Forward to the Semiquincentennial (after Looking Up What That Means)
by M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska
Will the observance of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence be a moment of national unity or the moment when a simmering conflict over the nation's history erupts into open conflict? The key lies in using the commemoration to look forward.
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