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The Roundup Top Ten for July 3, 2020

Suspect Science: Today’s Anglo-American Eugenics

by Alexandra Fair

Time and time again, the Pioneer Fund subsidized research that advanced eugenic theories about racial difference and actively undermined racial equality.

Underwater: Global Warming to Flood the Former Ports of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva

How will the inundation of historic seaports as climate change progresses affect historical memory of the Atlantic slave trade? 

A Monument to Our Shared Purpose

by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins

The Freedmen’s Memorial in Washington embodies not white supremacy, but African-American agency and cooperative struggle.

Democrats May Beat Trump in November and Still not Learn the Most Important Lesson from his Presidency

by Daniel Bessner

Democrats must not just defeat Trump; they must commit to fighting a culture of elite impunity that has enabled the rise of Trump and an unaccountable Republican Party. 

Makers of Living, Breathing History: The Material Culture of Homemade Facemasks

by Erika L. Briesacher

Material culture centers objects as historical documents that can be read like a text; whether highlighting the physical piece or searching for the biography behind it, this approach reveals complex sociocultural behavior.

 

The Confederates Loved America, and They’re Still Defining What Patriotism Means

by Richard Kreitner

For most of U.S. history, patriotism and white supremacy, the values supposedly embodied by the two flags, have hardly been at odds. Rather, they have been mutually constitutive and disturbingly aligned.

When France Extorted Haiti – the Greatest Heist in History

by Marlene Daut

Because the indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for reparations.

Before Stonewall, There Was a Bookstore

by Jim Downs

Networks of activists transformed Stonewall from an isolated event into a turning point in the struggle for gay power.

Racist Violence in Wilmington’s Past Echoes in Police Officer Recordings Today

by Crystal R. Sanders

Wilmington, North Carolina police officers who spoke eagerly about the chance to kill black protesters evoke the history of a violent white supremacist coup against the city's biracial government during Reconstruction.

Why We Owe Gay Marriage to an Early Trans Activist

by Eric Cervini

Why isn't Sylvia Rivera a household name?