This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: The Root
12-19-10
Ask most Americans to name the most powerful image of the civil rights movement, and it would probably be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial sharing his dream of a color-blind society. The masses at the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and his landmark speech symbolized a powerful, united movement that was forcing change on America.
Truth be told, that historic Kodak moment didn't truly reflect the movement that everyone, from folks at the cons
Source: Talking Points Memo
12-21-10
So what was Gov. Haley Barbour doing, exactly, when he defended the reputation of the Citizens Councils, a segregationist movement that was formed to oppose the civil rights movement after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision? Barbour released a statement this afternoon, declaring: "My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the 'Citizens Council,' is totally
Source: Huffington Post
12-20-10
WASHINGTON -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has set off a firestorm of controversy over his comments on the civil rights era in his hometown of Yazoo City, and now the president of the state's NAACP organization is calling his remarks "offensive" and akin to revisionist history.
"It is quite disturbing that the governor of this state would take an approach to try to change the history of this state," said Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP.
Source: NYT
12-20-10
Jacqueline de Romilly, one of France’s leading scholars of Greek civilization and language and only the second woman to be elected to the Académie Française, died on Saturday in the Paris suburb Boulogne-Billancourt. She was 97.
Her death was confirmed by Dr. Philippe Rodet, a friend.
Ms. de Romilly, who in 1973 became the first woman named a professor at the Collège de France, embraced the culture of ancient Athens with an almost romantic fervor and spent much of her l
Source: Miller-McCune
12-20-10
...The Charleston “Secession Ball” — advertised as “an event of a lifetime” — includes a theatrical re-enactment of the signing of the Ordinance of Secession (the original version of which will be on display), as well as dinner and a dance.
“We’re celebrating that those 170 people risked their lives and fortunes to stand for what they believed in, which is self-government,” one of the event’s organizers told The New York Times. “Many people in the South still believe that is a just
Source: El Paso Times
12-20-10
President Richard Nixon got a pardon. So did Scooter Libby, who served in President George W. Bush's administration and was convicted of perjury and other crimes.
Now certain New Mexico historians are hoping that legendary outlaw Billy the Kid receives a posthumous pardon from outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
Richardson last week received a formal petition to pardon Billy the Kid. The governor's staff said the issue, though, has been on Richardson's mind since
Source: Ian Johnson at the NYRB
12-20-10
[Ian Johnson is a former Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.]
Yang Jisheng is an editor of Annals of the Yellow Emperor, one of the few reform-oriented political magazines in China. Before that, the 70-year-old native of Hubei province was a national correspondent with the government-run Xinhua news service for over thirty years. But he is best known now as the author of Tombstone (Mubei), a groundbreaking new book on the Great Famine (1958–1961), which, though impreci
Source: NYT
12-20-10
J. Michael Hagopian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide who came to the United States from Turkey after World War I, studied filmmaking and made a series of documentaries based on interviews with hundreds of other survivors, died on Dec. 10 at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 97.
His daughter, Joanne, confirmed the death.
Historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died in orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1918, amid the chaos of World War I and t
Source: National Security Archive at GWU
12-16-10
Efforts to tighten the secrecy system and crackdown on leakers and the media will be "fundamentally self-defeating," according to
Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, who testified today before the House Committee on the Judiciary. During the first Congressional hearing in the aftermath of "Cablegate" and the Wikileaks release of State Department documents, Blanton urged that lawmakers take a reasoned view of the issues raised by the lea
Source: Sheffield Telegraph (UK)
12-14-10
Professor pens directory of city makers
SOME books do exactly what it says on the tin.
Tweedale’s Directory of Sheffield Cutlery manufacturers 1740 to 2010 is one of them.
In short, this tome of almost an inch thick contains a history of the Sheffield Cutlery trades from the 1740s right up to the present day.
Geoffrey Tweedale, a professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, has been researching Sheffield’s cutlery
Source: Indian Express
12-15-10
The 1962 India-China war may be a sore point for Indians but that’s not the case with the neighbouring country, Prof Wang Gungwu, who is a professor at the National University of Singapore and Chairman of East Asian Institute, told The Indian Express on Tuesday. “Most in China don’t even think about it. Still others won’t know about 1962 and what happened. Most people in China think it was misunderstanding between leaders...I do know though that in India that is not the case. This I think is the
Source: Star Tribune
12-10-10
Step inside the Bartholomew House in Richfield, and the decades slip away. You're in the cramped, maze-like rooms of a pioneer home, built when Wood Lake -- now separated from the house by buzzing traffic on Lyndale Avenue -- was a place to hunt.
The 1852 house is filled with period pieces like cast-iron stoves, a chair with cowhorn arms and art made of twisted hair. But exactly what is the story the house is trying to tell?
"The story of Richfield," said Sara
Source: The Age (AU)
12-15-10
WARREN Perry, whose extraordinary memory, meticulous research and painstaking efforts to ensure accuracy and depth to his writings ensured his place as a pre-eminent historian, has died at an RSL nursing home in Bundoora. He was 101.
His first contribution to the canvas of Australian military literature was an article published in December 1941 in the Australian Quarterly. Four books followed: centennial histories of the Science Museum of Victoria (1972), and the Naval and Military
Source: Associated Baptist Press
12-13-10
ATLANTA (ABP) -- The real culprit behind declining baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention might be youth soccer, says historian Bill Leonard.
Because of nightly requirements for church-going families -- including children's sports -- week-long and two-week revivals that were once a mainstay of Baptist life are becoming a thing of the past, Leonard says in the summer/fall 2010 issue of the journal Baptist History and Heritage.
Leonard, professor of church history at
Source: BoilerStation.com
12-13-10
In the pre-Civil War South, Christmas traditions were a lot different than what they are today.
The holiday brought out surprising kindness in slave owners, giving their slaves numerous gifts and lavish banquets, according to Purdue University history professor Robert E. May.
Still, often these acts of kindness had a dark side to them.
May will discuss this segment of American history during the holidays at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Tippecanoe County Public Libra
Source: Oregon Live
12-11-10
Most of us get our physical perspective of Portland by looking up.
From street level, we can raise our eyes to the Wells Fargo Center or the US Bancorp Tower, the Oregon Health & Science University complex on Marquam Hill, or Mount Hood soaring on the eastern horizon....
"Above" is the operative word, as in "Above Portland," a new coffee-table book by Portland photographer Bruce Forster, with historic passages and captions by Chet Orloff....
Source: Irish Examiner
12-11-10
THE son of a German man who fought against his father’s own country during WWI and who later joined the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (ADRIC), has been identified as the man who organised the burning of Cork 90 years ago today.
Charles Schulze, who had served as a captain in the Dorsetshire Regiment during WWI, led Auxiliaries on a rampage of burning as a reprisal for an IRA ambush which left a colleague dead and 15 injured....
Historian Jim Herlih
Source: Atlanta Examiner
12-11-10
Across the former Confederacy, preparations are under way for the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860. And while many organizations are working to incorporate both the black and the white experience, there are complaints that most events will glorify the Antebellum South and the Lost Cause while overlooking the major reason for the war: slavery....
Mark Simpson, commander of the South Carolina Div
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
12-11-10
...The unpublished sketches of famed African-American editorial cartoonist Chester Commodore as he struggled to get President Richard Nixon’s nose and President George W. Bush’s ears just right....
....On Friday at the University of Chicago’s Joseph Regenstein Library, researchers unveiled a new website intended to make it easy for the public and scholars alike to locate these African-American artifacts as well as a host of others in the city from the same period in history....
Source: NYT
12-13-10
MANKATO, Minn. — On Dec. 26, 1862, thirty-eight doomed Dakota Indians wailed and danced atop the gallows, waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them. The square scaffold, built here to accommodate the largest mass execution in United States history, swayed under their weight.
“It seemed that the purpose of the singing and dancing was only to sustain each other in their last ordeal,” a witness observed. “As the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and
