Lawyers, advocacy groups and think tanks are soliciting historians’ expertise on the history underlying certain Supreme Court cases. Yet this history-for-hire approach raises questions.
Drawing shows men making shoes at the Philadelphia Almshouse, circa 1899.
Alice Barber Stephens/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Alfred Bendiner Memorial Collection
Amid rising unemployment, inflation and poverty in the 1830s, Philadelphia taxpayers believed welfare scammers were bleeding coffers dry. Poor lists from 1829 show they were wrong.
A colorized engraving depicts enslavers selling enslaved people in the 19th-century South.
Corbis via Getty Images
In the first wave to hit the beach, troops were met by withering German gunfire. But they kept pushing and established a small beachhead from which the invasion could continue.
Demonstrators display a call for Christian nationalism at the Jan. 6, 2021, ‘Stop the Steal’ rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
A former archivist at Mary McLeod Bethune’s last residence in Washington, DC, recounts how the experience led her to see Bethune as a global figure.
One of war photographer Robert Capa’s images shows a wave of troops arriving on the Normandy beaches on D-Day.
Robert Capa via National Museum of American History
Two and a half centuries later, some things haven’t changed.
Under cover of night, Colonists boarded the ships, dumped the tea chests and sparked a revolution.
Hulton Fine Art Collection/Art Images via Getty Images
An attack on private property angered Colonial leaders as much as the British public – but a strong reaction from Parliament hardened the positions of the opposing sides, making compromise impossible.
Merchandise is locked in cases to guard against theft in a Target store in New York City on Sept. 23, 2023.
Deb Cohn-Orbach/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Shoplifting has been hyped as a driver of chain-store closures, but did these companies ever really understand urban environments in the first place?
Birders participate in the Christmas Bird Count on Theodore Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2017.
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Rather than have students memorize names and dates, this history curriculum invites students to grapple with real-life issues faced by people from the past.
‘Valley of the Yosemite’ by the 19th-century artist Albert Bierstadt, owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images
The idea of Manifest Destiny inspired Americans to push west, leading to the creation of the first national parks. But those beliefs spelled removal for many Native American groups.