Pretty much every world religion and ethical system makes a virtue of offering succor to travelers, the rootless, and the persecuted. Immigration, the social-political system we’ve constructed around those ideas, […]
Category: american history
Awards: St. Louis Rising
The 2016 Missouri History Book Award goes to Carl J. Ekberg’s and Sharon K. Person’s St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive, adding to acclaim that has already […]
200 Years of Illinois: That Ribbon Lincoln Highway
The nation’s great coast-to-coast route in the pre-interstate era, Lincoln Highway was formally dedicated by the Lincoln Highway Association on October 31, 1913. Carl G. Fisher, the head of the […]
Awards: Daisy Turner’s Kin
This week, we received word that Jane C. Beck’s acclaimed book Daisy Turner’s Kin: An African American Family Saga, won two awards: the 2016 Chicago Folklore Prize and the 2016 Wayland […]
Release Party: Slavery at Sea
The new UIP release Slavery at Sea examines the infamous Middle Passage in a new light. Sowande’ Mustakeem reveals for the first time how slavery took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Boogie Woogie Kugel Boy
Today marks National Noodle Day, an observance that simultaneously celebrates a food most beloved of preschoolers and college students while making you wonder if this national day trend has gone too […]
Return of the Word Warrior
This past Sunday, Washington, D.C. radio station WAMU-FM went into the vaults to find a classic 1949 radio documentary on Ida B. Wells. Part of the classic Destination Freedom series, the […]
Making Photography Matter awarded by NCA
Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression by Cara A. Finnegan was recently awarded the James A. Winans and Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial […]
The Liberationists
Forty-six years ago today, national feminist groups staged the Women’s Strike for Equality. “If the success of media activism is measured by the amount of news coverage generated, the Strike […]
“Barnum of the Bigots”
Not exactly the pride of Bloomington, Illinois, American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell was born into—of all things—a family of vaudeville performers. A former associate shot him to death on August […]
Fannie Barrier Williams celebrated
Progressive Era activist and reformer Fannie Barrier Williams was one of the most prominent educated African American women of her generation. A new effort to honor the woman who was a prominent spokesperson […]
“Serious crimes” keep Corrupt Illinois figure in prison
Inmate No. 40892-424, better known as former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, had hoped to he would be able to return home early. Those hopes were dashed by a the federal […]