With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!

Roundup Top 10

HNN Tip: You can read more about topics in which you’re interested by clicking on the tags featured directly underneath the title of any article you click on.

Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.

by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, we might not be a democracy at all.

The Hopefulness and Hopelessness of 1619

by Ibram X. Kendi

Marking the 400-year African American struggle to survive and to be free of racism.

Trump's tweets about 'disloyal' Jews are laced with centuries of antisemitism

by Emma Goldberg

There’s a sordid history to charges of Jewish dual loyalty in the US – and that history is alive and well.

My 60 Years of Disappointment With Fidel Castro

by Enrique Krauze

Latin American, with few exceptions, they have refused to see the historical failure of the Cuban Revolution and the oppressive and impoverishing domination of their patriarch.

Why trying to distinguish between useful and dangerous immigrants always backfires

by Faith Hillis

Today’s “good” immigrant can turn into tomorrow’s radical dissident.

What 1969 Retrospectives Get Wrong About Baby Boomers and the Sixties

by Louis Menand

Apart from being alive, baby boomers had almost nothing to do with the nineteen-sixties.

It Takes Black Women in the U.S. 20 Months to Earn What White Men Make in a Year. Here's the History Behind That Wage Gap

by Andrea Flynn

In order to understand the present day race and gender wage gaps we must first look to slavery and the Jim Crow era that followed.

White evangelicals once admitted they were wrong about Nixon. Will Trump come next?

by Anja-Maria Bassimir and Elesha J. Coffman

White evangelicals voted 84 percent for Richard Nixon in 1972 and 80 percent for Donald Trump in 2016. And many of the leaders stood by Nixon as scandals swirled around him, just as they have with Trump.

The history of “German Angst” could serve as a lesson for today’s democratic societies

by Frank Biess

The Federal Republic is a remarkable democratic success story and the only such story in German history.

The Forgotten Story of Operation Anvil

by Cameron Zinsou

In August 1944, the United States executed a gigantic assault on southern France. Why does no one remember it?