The past is never dead. It's not even past
A specter is haunting Europe (also the United States and, really, much of the globe)—the specter of a new Cold War. In recent years columnists have been invoking the memory of the global ideological conflict that governed much of the violence and geopolitics of the twentieth-century.
September 23, 2015, marked a historic day in Colombian history. President Juan Manuel Santos and Timoléon Jiménez, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People´s Army (FARC-EP), agreed to sign a peace treaty.
Thinking about the future POTUS, with the first debate of the 2016 campaign on TV tonight? Read up on Presidents of the past in articles we have posted here on Not Even Past. Let’s begin with Jack Loveridge’s review of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72: “Thompson, author of Hell’s Angels and Fear […]
In the late nineteenth century, white Southerners imposed a system of constraints on African Americans, denying blacks their Constitutional rights, and, indeed, their human rights. This system—often violently enforced—was called “Jim Crow,” named after a minstrel song that stereotyped blacks. It included the disfranchisement of black men, the forcible segregation of blacks from whites in public spaces, and forms of state-sanctioned terrorism such as lynching, which included hanging, mutilating, and burning victims alive.
In the wake of the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, the United States has undergone a deep soul searching. Images of the confessed shooter posing with the Confederate Battle Flag have launched a long-overdue national debate about the meaning of Confederate imagery. But they have quickly overshadowed the shooter’s use of two other symbols: the defunct standards of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa.
Over the next few weeks, Not Even Past will offer readers historical sources, readings, and commentary on these events. Last week, Mark Sheaves collected past articles devoted to the history of slavery and its legacy in the US and provided us with an annotated list. Today we offer the historical analysis and commentary from journalists and historians primarily writing online. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more reading and news from the Task Force.
Not Even Past has published many feature articles, book and film reviews, and podcasts on slavery in the American South, brought together on this page. Approaching this topic from different angles, this body of work provides an overview of key issues important for anyone wanting to understand slavery and its lasting legacy.
By Josh Urich The artifact below and the document that accompanies it are out of the ordinary: hair taken from General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s horse, Old Sorrel. The hair itself was plucked by General Fitzhugh Lee and given to John S. Wise, the son of former Virginia governor Henry S. Wise. John S. Wise […]
William Williston Heartsill volunteered to fight for the South before the Civil War even began. For the first two years of his service, he and his comrades from Harrison County, Texas served as a cavalryman on Texas’s western frontier.
The nineteenth century in Britain was a time of grand figures, grand projects, and Imperial expansion. Imperialism was spreading the English language across the globe, yet there was still not a definitive guide to the language.