Trusted Writing on History, Travel, Food and Culture Since 1949
Frederick Douglass
In what many consider the greatest anti-slavery oration ever given, Frederick Douglass called for “the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake”
The prairie lawyer president and outspoken abolitionist formed an unusual friendship
At dusk in early April 1866, a large crowd filed into Representatives Hall of the imposing Illinois Capitol in Springfield. Just 11 months earlier, President Lincoln’s rapidly blackening body had lain here in state as thousands of townspeople had filed past to say goodbye. Read more >>
A nineteenth-century blueprint for the savings-and-loan scandal
It was a banking system. The act that made it possible slipped through Congress with hardly any debate and little attention to economic reality. Many of its highestranking officials knew little or nothing about the peculiar nature of the banking business. Read more >>
The fiercest struggle going on in education is about who owns the past. Militant multi-culturalists say that traditional history teaching has brushed out minority ethnic identities. Their opponents say that radical multiculturalism leads toward national fragmentation.
In 1987 a sweeping revision of the social studies program in New York State public schools gave the curriculum a strong multicultural slant. Read more >>
In August of 1863 Frederick Douglass called upon the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, to explain why the recruiting of black troops for the Union had been slower than some had expected. Blacks wanted equal pay, he explained, and a chance for promotion. Read more >>