133 items
Reprinted by permission of Maya Lin from her book Boundaries (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). It’s taken me years to be able to discuss the making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial , partly because I needed to move past it and...
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"Ditched, Stalled and Stranded": Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression
During the Great Depression, a top commercial portraitist took to San Francisco’s streets to experiment with representing the social devastation surrounding her. Her photos showed men sleeping on sidewalks and in parks like bundles of...
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African Americans in the Revolutionary War
From the first shots of the American Revolutionary War until the ultimate victory at Yorktown, black men significantly contributed to securing independence for the United States from Great Britain. On March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks,...
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Charles Mingus and the Third Stream
Among the many jazz movements in which Charles Mingus (1922–1979) participated, the most likely and the most unlikely was Third Stream Music. [1] Gunther Schuller (1925–2015) coined the term, describing Third Stream as "the fusion and...
Nancy Ward, Cherokee Beloved Woman
In 1755 a Cherokee woman named Nanye’hi accompanied a war party, which included her husband Kingfisher. At Taliwa in what today is north Georgia, the Cherokees engaged the enemy Creek Indians in battle. Nanye’hi crouched behind a log...
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Sitting Bull: Last of the Great Chiefs
Sitting Bull was the last of the great Indian chiefs to surrender his free way of life and settle on a government reservation. He belonged to the Hunkpapa tribe of the Lakota Sioux. The Lakotas numbered seven tribes, loosely...
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Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) and the National Council of American Indians: Leading the Way for Indigenous Self-Representation
Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in 1876, the same year as the Battle of Greasy Grass (known more commonly in US history as the Battle of Little Big Horn), Gertrude Simmons Bonnin grew up amidst a US-national culture of systemic...
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"Show Them What an Indian Can Do": The Example of Jim Thorpe
Although the twentieth century produced many great athletes, there is no one who stood out more than Jim Thorpe. That is not just my opinion. When Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games, the king of Sweden said to...
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Indigenous Americans in World War II: The Navajo Code Talkers
In the summer of 1983, my son and I visited my father, Benson Tohe. He and other Navajo Code Talkers had recently been honored in Washington, DC, with a parade and given a medal for their service in World War II. That was the first...
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American Jewish Origins, 1654-1820
A year after his inauguration as president, George Washington visited the Newport, Rhode Island Jewish Congregation, Jeshuat Israel, in 1790. He went in response to a letter he had received from the leaders of that synagogue as well...
Alexander Hamilton and the Civic Status of Jews in the Early Republic
“I fear prepossessions are strongly against us,” Alexander Hamilton confided to his beloved wife, Eliza. “But we must try to overcome them.” That day, February 5, 1800, marked the beginning of a high-stakes trial in which Hamilton...
Exiles by the Streams of Babylon: Newport Jews in the Colonial Era
Newport, Rhode Island, wears its colonial past like a badge of honor. Visitors to its historic district encounter numerous plaques, markers, and monuments as they wend the town’s narrow and cobblestoned streets. As contemporary...
Hometown Societies in the New World: Jewish Landsmanshaftn and Americanization
Jacob Sholts, a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire, wandered dejectedly through the streets of New York in 1904. Sholts, who had fled Russia to avoid military service during the Russo-Japanese War, could not keep a job. He felt...
The Jewish Imprint on American Musical Theater
Long celebrated as one of the most quintessentially American of entertainment genres, Broadway musicals delight audiences with glitz, glitter, and polish; send them home with at least a glimmer of hope; and celebrate America’s promise...
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