MLK Day-2011

Thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. –on the eve of his actual birthday on January 15, 1929– I came across the presentation speech given when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In it, Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said of Dr, King: He is the first person in the Western [...]

The N-word is for “Nonsense”

A work that aspires, however, humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. The great novelist Joseph Conrad wrote those words in a literary manifesto called “A Preface to the Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’ ” Oops, I mean “Slave of the Narcissus.” Or should it be “The Children of the [...]

Bare Arms? Arm Bears? A Second Amendment Guide (Civics Primer #2)

There is little doubt that the Founders and Framers, in a time when there was no standing army, expected men to have a gun at the ready to defend the country. But does that 18th century logic still hold in a country with a standing army, state militias and local police forces? And does the high level of American gun violence (more than 31,000 firearms fatalities in 2006, according to the CDC) mean it is time to reassess an idea that made sense more than 200 years ago?

Don’t Know Much About® THE STONO REBELLION

For those still stuck with the Gone With the Wind view of American slavery, September 9 is the anniversary of one of the largest and most violent slave insurrections in American History.

TODAY IN HISTORY: Don’t Know Much About® Tocqueville in America

Happy Birthday, Monsieur Tocqueville (born July 29, 1805; died April 16, 1859) Observing a Choctaw tribe—the old, the sick, the wounded, and newborns among them—forced to cross an ice-choked Mississippi River during the harsh winter, Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote, “In the whole scene, there was an air of destruction, something which betrayed a final [...]

TODAY IN HISTORY: A Very Significant Amendment

I know. The mere mention of Constitutional Amendments automatically sends most of us for the snooze button. But this one is different. On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. On July 9, 1868, the state of South Carolina ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing the [...]

Today in History: Don’t Know Much About® New York’s Bloody Draft Riots

On July 13, 1863, New York City exploded in a four-day long murderous riot, still considered one of the deadliest urban riots in American history. The cause of the riots–violent opposition to the Civil War draft law.

Jefferson’s Version-A few key differences

Today , July 2d is the day the Continental Congress actually voted in favor of independence for America. It took two more days of debate to approve Thomas Jefferson’s explanation of that vote, the Declaration of Independence. Once again the New York Public Library is displaying a handwritten version of the Declaration, written by Jefferson. [...]

Juneteenth

Ghosts of Confederates Past

On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

After four years of Civil War, with his Army of Northern Virginia practically starving and reeling under the onslaught of Union pressure from Grant’s superior forces, Robert E. Lee had to contemplate the inevitable