Alistair Cooke was a British journalist and broadcaster, who presented Letter from America on BBC Radio for nearly 60 years. To commemorate his life and work, the BBC has invited historian Prof David Blight of Yale University to present the 2015 Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture.
Read MoreThe First Decoration Day | Newark Star Ledger
David W. Blight, Yale University
Americans understand that Memorial Day, or "Decoration Day," as my parents called it, has something to do with honoring the nation's war dead. It is also a day devoted to picnics, road races, commencements, and double-headers. But where did it begin, who created it, and why?
Read MoreFirst Things | US News and History News Network (Opinion Piece)
"First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things," declared Frederick Douglass on April 14, 1876, in Washington D. C., in the most extraordinary public address ever delivered by an African American to that date. Extraordinary for its argument and its audience.
Read MoreThe Chronicle of Higher Education | The Civil War Sesquicentennial
In 1961-65, the centennial commemoration of the Civil War was a political and historical debacle. Fraught, to say the least, by cold-war nationalism, racism among its leadership as well as the general populace, an enduring hold of the Lost Cause on popular imagination, and a country violently divided by the civil-rights movement, the official Civil War centennial refused to face the challenge of causes and consequences. Instead, a reconciliationist, Blue-Gray celebration of soldiers' valor and re-emergent national greatness forged out of conflict dominated the scene.
Read MoreA Conversation with Eric Foner about "Gateway to Freedom" →
David Blight sat down with Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, to discuss Foner's new book, Gateway to Freedom, about the Underground Railroad in New York.
Read MoreDavid Blight on the Legacies of Appomattox (Appomattox Court House National Historic Park)
David Blight talked about the legacies of Appomattox during keynote remarks at a 150th anniversary commemoration of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. The commemoration was held April 8-12, 2015, at Appomattox Court House National Historic Park.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?325200-3/discussion-legacies-appomattox
The Atlantic | The Civil War Isn't Over: 150 years after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Americans are still fighting over the great issues at the heart of the conflict
On this 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, Americans mark the end of the Civil War. The questions at the heart of the war, though, still occupy the nation, which has never truly gotten over that conflict.
Read MoreThe Atlantic (Education, By Jacoba Urist) |
Who Should Decide How Students Learn About America’s Past?: Some politicians want to get rid of the AP U.S.-history curriculum because it paints a cynical picture of the country's backstory.
Read MoreThe Council of Independent Colleges(CIC) 2015 President’s Institute Plenary Address. (San Diego, CA.)
Lessons from the Past for Leadership Today at the CIC’s 2015 Presidents Institute
Read MoreA Conversation with Greg Grandin about "The Empire of Necessity"
David Blight sat down with Greg Grandin, Professor of History at New York University, to discuss Grandin's recent book The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.
Read MoreThe Antislavery Bulwark: The Antislavery Origins of the Civil War – Intro & Keynote (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
In this video, President Chase Robinson of the Graduate Center introduces the conference, and David W. Blight of Yale University gives the keynote address, on October 17, 2014, in Elebash Recital Hall.
Read MoreThe Civil War at 150: The past in the present? | Kansas City Star
Why can’t we just get over the Civil War in America?
Read MoreDaily Kos (By Denise Oliver Velez) The Memorial Day history forgot: The Martyrs of the Race Course
"A pencil drawing and a grainy photo in the Library of Congress are all that is left of the cemetery where 257 Union soldiers were buried after the Civil War on what had been a race course in Charleston, South Carolina.
Read MoreThe Washington Post (The Post’s View, By Editorial Board) Memorial Day: Honoring the living and the dead, in the spirit of 1869
IT MUST have been quite a sight, Memorial Day 1869 in Cincinnati, where “a crowd of thirty thousand gathered in a cemetery to observe the decoration of 745 graves of that community’s war dead,” as the historian David W. Blight describes it. “Among the processions was a disciplined line of hundreds of women, all dressed in ‘purest white’ and carrying baskets of flowers. At a signal, each woman stepped forward and cast her flowers on a grave. The scale of such an event would dwarf an All Saints Day procession in some European cities.” ...
Open Phones with David Blight (Appomattox Court House National Historic Park)
David Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, talked about his book and responded to viewer questions.
Read MoreCareer of Civil War Historian Bruce Catton (Gettysburg College)
Civil War author and historian David Blight talks about the career and influence of one of his predecessors in the field, Bruce Catton. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Catton researched and wrote several books about the Civil War, including the 1954 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Stillness at Appomattox. The Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College hosted this event.
Read MoreBackStory NPR | Fierce Urgency of Now: The 1963 March on Washington
August 28th marks the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech in front of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, D.C., when, at the close of the March on Washington, he spoke of his dream for racial harmony and economic equality in America.
Read MoreDavid Blight: The Civil War in American Memory (Minnesota Public Radio)
Photo Credit: Civil War remains Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Historian David Blight speaks at the Minnesota Historical Society's History Forum about the ways the Civil War has influenced American history and its society and people in the 150 years since.
Read MoreDemocracy: Journal of Ideas | Lincoln the Emancipator, Issue #28, Spring 2013
One hundred fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves. Just how he got there might surprise you.
Read MoreDavid Blight on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, http://www.gilderlehrman.org/, presents historian David Blight on a meeting between abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
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