The ups and downs of the current economy are all over the news these days, so we start off this What We’re Reading by looking back at financial times of yesteryear. Then, check out an impressive personal library, learn what the Britannica blog says Americans look for in a president, and find out where historians fit in the climate crisis. Finally, we point to a recently discovered “Stonewall” Jackson memoir, a project on the future of scholarly journals, a debate on British history, and an article on the cheapest eats possible in New York City.
We start off this week’s post with news from Washington that isn’t economy or campaign related. Read up on a number of news items from the National Coalition for History (including NARA news, the donation of FDR papers, and more), and learn the best way to keep up-to-date on the Vice President Cheney records case. Then, take a look at Tom Scheinfeldt’s stance on digital history and employment in academia, learn what happened this week in history from the Britannica blog, mourn the lack of a digitized version of the Intellectual History Newsletter, and compare past presidential candidates (by unconventional comparison measures).
The House of Representatives’ Office of the Clerk recently created the web site Black Americans in Congress detailing the plight of African Americans in attaining full civil rights in the federal legislature. Beginning in 1870 with Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi and Representative Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, African American Congress members, as surrogate representatives for an entire population, have fought long and hard to overcome racial prejudice, marginalization, and exclusion in the federal legislature. The web site explores three major eras that encompass the transformation of African Americans in Congress: the pioneering era from 1870-1901, the apprenticeship era from 1929-70, and the mature integration era from 1971-2007.
Today marks seven years since the September 11th terrorist attacks. So in this edition of “What We’re Reading” we link to an article on the new memorial for 9/11 victims at the Pentagon, which is opening to the public today. We also point to the National Historic Trust for Historic Preservation’s review of the PBS film on the aftermath of 9/11, “Objects and Memory.” In other topics, we include an article about the lawsuit (of which the AHA is a part of) to preserve vice president Cheney’s papers, a look at the Mississippi Freedom Riders then and now, and a “fledgling historian’s” use of Google Maps to track Marco Polo.
On March 3 and 4, 145 members of the humanities community, including college professors, museum professionals, librarians, archivists, and independent scholars, gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 2008 National Conference of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), of which the AHA is a member. The highlight of the conference was the ninth annual Humanities Advocacy Day. Participants fanned out across to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and their staff to urge them to support federal agencies that sustain research, education, public programs, and preservation in history and other fields.