Christmas tours to mansions often present a ‘magical’ experience to tourists, but they ignore the realities of the lives of slaves who worked there.
Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau/Flickr
Fictional accounts of white Southerners make it seem like it was fun to be a slave on a plantation at holiday time. Many of today’s tours repeat such stories.
Will Donald Trump peacefully vacate the Oval Office if he loses the presidential election in 2020? The American 1800 election showed that peaceful transitions of power are the result of choices made by individuals.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Throughout the course of American history, peaceful transitions of power have been the result of choices made by individuals, not the U.S. political system. What does that mean if Trump loses in 2020?
Women pray at a mosque during the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan on May 6 in Bali, Indonesia.
AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati
Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam – acts that denote the obligations of living a good Muslim life.
The Mueller report reveals that Trump and his campaign did all kinds of ethically questionable activities to smear Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, including asking Russia to hack Clinton’s email. According to Attorney General William Barr, nothing Trump did was illegal.
Reuters/David Becker
Amid all the Mueller report uncertainty, one thing is clear: Donald Trump did some wildly improper things to win the presidency. So did Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, JFK and George W. Bush.
How partisans argue tells a lot about how the public sees democracy.
Shutterstock
US history is filled with instances where one partisan side charges that the other side’s positions will lead to national ruin. Now, both sides accuse the other of betraying their country.
In the 19th century, white families in the U.S. could easily acquire real estate. This was never the case for Black Americans.
U.S. National Archives
Old 19th-century agreements between the U.S. government which expelled Indigenous peoples from their land and gave it cheaply to white settlers continue to impact inequalities in the United States.
Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump.
Wikipedia for Jefferson official portrait/REUTERS/Leah Millis for Trump photo
Jill Darling, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences e Robert Shrum, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Americans are overwhelmingly committed to a free press and hostile to government restrictions, a new poll finds. But the country is divided on the meaning of President Trump’s attacks on the press.
President Donald Trump sits down for an iftar dinner, in the State Dining Room of the White House.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
As President Trump resumes an annual tradition of celebrating Ramadan, it provides a moment to remember that Islam has long been practiced in America.
Pastors kneel in prayer in front of the Supreme Court, as a counter-protester holds a sign that says “What’s Christian About Discrimination.”
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Arguments on religious freedom have taken place throughout US history and have landed in the Supreme Court as well. Interpretations have changed over time.
A cellar worker steams American oak wine barrels before their use at Silver Oak Cellars in Oakville, Calif.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Jeff Flake called the US president’s lies and attacks on the media a danger to democracy, but it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stands during a service at the International Church of Las Vegas in Las Vegas in Oct. 2016.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
Trump embraced evangelicals in his first year as president. Here, scholars provide historical context to how the religious right has shaped American politics over the past decades.
The wedding cake on display at Masterpiece Cakeshop.
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
The Supreme Court appeared divided over claims of religious freedom in the case of a gay wedding. History shows how contentious religious freedom has been in America.
The Library of Congress is in Washington, D.C.
Valerii Iavtushenko/Shutterstock.com
Catalog data are a library’s most important map to knowledge. What does it mean that
the Library of Congress just released 25 million records to the public?
The Thomas Jefferson memorial in Washington, DC.
Gage Skidmore
Abram Van Engen, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Trump’s budget would eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities, breaking a tradition of funding humanities scholarship that goes back to the nation’s founding.
Little Rock protest, 1959.
Wikimedia/John T. Bledsoe
Thomas Jefferson would disagree with Trump’s call to bar one religious group from entering the country. But that’s not to say that Trump’s idea isn’t anything new in American history.
Bronze statue of Jefferson in the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC.
Image ID: 138476909
Copyright: DonLand.
DonLand/SHUTTERSTOCK
Democratic parties in four states have recently removed the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from their annual fundraising dinners, a move now under consideration in at least five other states…
Notions of the ‘right to know’ forced Hillary Clinton to defend her use of a private email account as secretary of state - a far cry from the days when citizens didn’t even know how their representatives voted.
EPA/Andrew Gombert
The idea of the right to know as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ is a surprisingly modern development. And in an age when transparency is prized, privacy and secrecy can still be justified in many cases.