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Shannon Bow O’Brien, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
We may never get to the bottom of whether Donald Trump flushed documents down a White House toilet. “Fake story,” says the former president. “100% accurate,” retorts a reporter.
But even without having to unclog plumbing in search of missing papers, national archivists have their work cut out trying to plug potential gaps in the historical record of the 45th president. Continue reading
Union dead at Gettysburg, July 1863. National Archives, Timothy H. O’Sullivan photographer
Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia
It has become common to say that the United States in 2020 is more divided politically and culturally than at any other point in our national past.
As a historian who has written and taught about the Civil War era for several decades, I know that current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century.
Between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox in April 1865, the nation literally broke apart. Continue reading
By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-24-2020
Screenshot: WCVB
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, chair of the House Abortion Access Task Force, offered Thursday to give Education Secretary Betsy DeVos a face-to-face lesson on reproductive rights and U.S. history after the billionaire cabinet official likened the arguments of pro-choice advocates to those of slavery supporters during the Civil War Era—a comparison one critic denounced as “utterly deranged.”
“Dear Betsy, As a Black woman and the chair of the Abortion Access Task Force, I invite you to come by the Hill and say this to my face,” Pressley tweeted after DeVos’ remarks during an event sponsored by Colorado Christian University spread across social media. “Would welcome the opportunity to educate you.” Continue reading
After Haiti signed its Declaration of Independence from France, in 1804, the U.S. started a 60-year political and economic embargo that hobbled the young nation’s growth. Wikimedia
Chantalle F. Verna, Florida International University
Donald Trump’s denigrating comments about Haiti during a recent congressional meeting shocked people around the globe, but given his track record of disrespecting immigrants, they were not actually that surprising.
Despite campaign promises that Trump would be Haiti’s “biggest champion,” his administration had already demonstrated its disregard for people from this Caribbean island. In November 2017, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would end the Temporary Protected Status that had allowed 59,000 Haitians to stay in the U.S. after a calamitous Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.
Their TPS was extended after Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti again in 2016. Without protected status, these Haitian migrants have until July 2019 to get a green card, leave voluntarily or be deported. Continue reading