Tag Archives: history

The Year of Hubris: “Retired But Not Shy” at Nine

Posted on June 1, 2019 by

  [NOTE: Essentially, this post is a mea culpa for the penultimate paragraph in last year’s “birthday post,” “Confessions of a Historical Pack Rat: ‘Retired But Not Shy’ at Eight”: Finally, as RBNS approached its eighth birthday, it reached a milestone: … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Education, Historical Reflection, History, Interdisciplinary Work, memoir, Research, Retirement, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Polishing the “Marble Man”: Reflections on Douglas Southall Freeman’s “R.E. Lee” (4 vols., 1934-1935)

Posted on April 1, 2019 by

[NOTE:  I never intended to read Douglas Southall Freeman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning four-volume biography of Robert E. Lee.  After all, in grad school one of my professors dismissed Freeman’s effort out of hand, remarking that Freeman’s Lee would have been a … Continue reading →

Posted in Age of Jim Crow, Books, Civil War, Current Events, Historical Reflection, History, History Teaching, Research, Retirement, Shelby Foote, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History, Uncategorized, WP Long Read | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Betts, A Mother’s Memoir, 1923-1964, Part IX: Grandmother Remembers

Posted on February 1, 2019 by

Judith Levy and Judy Pelikan, Grandmother Remembers:  A Written Heirloom for My Grandchild (New York, 1983). [Note:  Somehow this volume wound up in my basement, along with a lot of other stuff from my mother, Elsie Elizabeth (Betts) Lamplugh, that … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Books, Delaware, family history, genealogy, Historical Reflection, History, memoir, Research, Retirement, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Second Reconstruction: The Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1940s-1968, Part 2 (Teaching Civil Rights, 12)

Posted on January 2, 2019 by

[NOTE:  This is the concluding post in my treatment of the Modern American Civil Rights Movement from World War II through the assassination of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.  For part 1, go here.  A list … Continue reading →

Posted in "The Race Beat", Age of Jim Crow, American History, Civil Rights Movement, Cold War, Dr. Martin Luther King, Education, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, Historical Reflection, History, History Curriculum, History Teaching, Martin Luther King, Prep School, prep school teaching with a PhD, Research, Retirement, Southern History, Sun Belt, Taylor Branch, Teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The “Second Reconstruction”: The Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1940s-1968, Part 1 (Teaching Civil Rights, 12)

Posted on November 25, 2018 by

[NOTE:  One of the most significant developments in American history since the end of World War II has been the modern civil rights movement, which noted historian C. Vann Woodward termed “the Second Reconstruction.”  Between the 1940s and 1968, the … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Education, Historical Reflection, History, History Curriculum, History Teaching, Martin Luther King, Popular Culture, Research, Retirement, Southern History, Sun Belt, Teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“My people, yes!”

Posted on November 15, 2018 by

A Review of: Nancy Isenberg, White Trash:  The 400-Year Old History of Class in America. New York:  Penguin Books, 2016. [NOTE:  Like J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (2016), Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, had … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Civil Rights Movement, Current Events, Historical Reflection, History, Interdisciplinary Work, Popular Culture, Southern History, Teaching, Uncategorized, WP Long Read | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Age of Jim Crow (Teaching Civil Rights, 11)

Posted on October 27, 2018 by

[NOTE:  In previous posts (here and here), we’ve seen how southern whites, helped by the growing weariness of the rest of the nation with the post-Civil War “Negro Problem,” regained control of their state governments by 1877 and began, about … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Civil Rights Movement, Education, Historical Reflection, History, History Curriculum, History Teaching, Prep School, prep school teaching with a PhD, Research, Southern History, Teaching, The "Great Migration", The Blues, Uncategorized, WP Long Read | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Road to Jim Crow, 1875-1900, Part 2 (Teaching Civil Rights, 10)

Posted on September 28, 2018 by

[Note:  In the previous post in this series, we looked at the short-term consequences of the acceptance, by white southerners, and many northerners, of the so-called “New South Creed,” which offered a prettified picture of the “Old South” and a … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Historical Reflection, History, Research, Southern (Georgia) History, Southern History, Teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Road to Jim Crow, 1875-1900, Part 1 (Teaching Civil Rights, 10)

Posted on September 1, 2018 by

[NOTE: As we saw in the previous post in this series, a key element in the eventual acceptance of the defeated South back into the Union on a (more or less) equal basis with the rest of the nation was … Continue reading →

Posted in Age of Jim Crow, American History, Civil Rights Movement, Education, Historical Reflection, History, History Curriculum, History Teaching, Southern History, Teaching, Uncategorized, WP Long Read | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Betts: A Mother’s Memoir, 1923-1964 Part VIII: Betts, Ben, and J.B., 1940-1944

Posted on July 16, 2018 by

[NOTE:  Almost a year ago, I put up what I thought would be the final installment of the series, “Betts: A Mother’s Memoir, 1923-1964.” But I hadn’t considered my  “Historical Pack Rat” gene. . . . In the middle of … Continue reading →

Posted in American History, Delaware, family history, genealogy, Historical Reflection, History, memoir, Research, Retirement, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments