western history

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• 11/15/2020
  

  Reckoning with Marcus Whitman and the Memorialization of Conquest

  by Cassandra Tate

  The same period that saw the public affirmation of the Confederate Lost Cause myth saw a proliferation of monuments that portrayed the conquest of the indigenous people of the west as virtuous pioneering. The case of Marcus Whitman shows a national reckoning is in order.

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• SOURCE: Zócalo Public Square
  8/19/2020
  

  For 100 Years, El Monte Has Celebrated A Blatant Historical Falsehood. Why?

  by Romeo Guzmán

  The city of El Monte in southern California has embraced a false origin story--that the town was the end of the Santa Fe trail--to focus public history on white/anglo settlers and not the Native, Mexican, and Asian immigrant people who have also built the city. 

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• 8/2/2020
  

  From Historical Injustice to Contemporary Police Brutality, and Costs of Monuments to the Unworthy

  by Billy J. Stratton

  Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer, two Civil War-era heroes who rebelled and refused to join a brutal attack against Native peoples represent the moral courage we would do well to honor.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2020
  

  The Pandemic and Protests Have Exposed the Truth About California

  by Miriam Pawel

  The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the notion of American exceptionalism. The same is true for the golden myth of California, where American inequalities are perhaps most starkly displayed.

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• SOURCE: TIME
  5/26/2020
  

  Understanding the Origins of American Gun Culture Can Help Reframe Today’s Gun Debate

  by Jim Rasenberger

  The past is a morally untidy place. As a result, it is also a place, perhaps the last one left, where we can meet and lower our weapons for a while. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/17/2020
  

  The West Is Relevant to Our Long History Of Anti-Blackness, Not Just The South

  by Walter Johnson

  The Missouri Compromise paved the path to the Civil War. But it also signaled what would follow: western settlement driven by the idea of expanding a country of, by, and for white men.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/6/2020
  

  The Latest Battle over the Confederate Flag Isn’t Happening Where You’d Expect

  by Megan Kate Nelson

  Confederate actions in the Far Western theater of the war reveal the extent to which the Confederate flag became a symbol of white supremacy and conquest.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  12/14/19
  

  Gamblers, Wastrels and Lumberjacks: An Old Cemetery Gives Up Its Secret History

  An estimated 72 people died during construction of a rail tunnel through the Montana mountains. After more than 100 years, their final resting place has been found.

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• 6/30/19
  

  Hawaii’s Cowboy Heroes

  by David Wolman and Julian Smith

  At the turn of the 20th century, three Hawaiian cowboys arrived in Wyoming to compete in a rodeo extravaganza. What happened next overturned much of what people thought they knew, and still think they know, about Hawaii, the American West, and the relationship between the two.