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PBSs Mercy Street Is The Downton Abbey Replacement You’ve Been Waiting For

Alyssa Rosenberg The Washington Post
“The Civil War truly was a time when women, for the lack of a better word, came into the workplace,” says PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe. “It was also a time when medicine was undergoing huge changes.” Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays a nurse, said that part of what she appreciated about “Mercy Street” was getting a part in a project where women find each other in conflict over power and intellectual traditions, rather than simply for the sake of drama.

Why do People Believe Myths About the Confederacy? Because Our Textbooks and Monuments are Wrong

James W. Loewen The Washington Post
False history marginalizes African Americans and makes us all dumber. The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation they spread. When each state left the Union, they made clear they were seceding because they were for slavery.

What This Cruel War Was Over

Ta-Nehisi Coates The Atlantic
The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it. In praising the Klan's terrorism, Confederate veterans and their descendants displayed a remarkable consistency. White domination was the point. Slavery failed. Domination prevailed nonetheless. The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance.

Tidbits - June 25, 2015 - The Racial Divide; Take Down the Flag; Charleston Massacre; Greek Debt; Israeli Nukes; BDS; and more...

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Reader Comments: The Racial Divide; Take Down the Flag; Call It What It Is, Or Be Complicit; The Charleston Massacre - A Hate Crime; Racial Violence in America; Greek Debt Truth Committee - Debt Cannot and Should Not Be Paid; American Century has Plunged the World into Crisis; Rachel Dolezal; Israeli Nukes; BDS is costing Israel big money; Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson; Announcement - Celebration of Danny Schechter's Life

What Makes Abraham Lincoln Such a Radical Politician Even Today?

David Bromwich Reuters
We may try to hedge our descriptions, bring Lincoln into perspective, call him a pragmatist and cut him down to a size more comfortably proportioned to our own. The truth is almost too great for us to recognize. He staked the future of the republic on his commitment to put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction.

Tidbits - March 19, 2015 - Lessons from Syriza and Podemos; 2016 elections; Prison Reform, Israel; Culture; and more...

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Reader Comments - Lessons from Syriza and Podemos; Kshama Sawant; 2016 elections; Prison Reform, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Israeli elections; Venezuela, Greece, Ukraine; Measles; Culture - music, television, films; Franz Fanon; Roger Burbach - Presente! Announcements - Break the Cuba Blockade - Venceremos Brigade; WRL new "Pie Chart"; Mondragon and Workers Cooperatives; Fighting Inequality Conference

Women and the War In Syria

Hillary Margolis
Meet five women who are bearing the burden of conflict in Syria and persevering in spite of it.

Remember a President for Free Labor

Mark Lause Labor and Working-Class History Association
During the Civil War, strikers and other workers with grievances found a sympathetic ear in the White House and a willingness to use what Lincoln saw as the limited power of his office to allow for a fair contest in disputes between labor and management...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars - Post-Racial Society Edition

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Newly Published Photographs Share Rich Lives of Former Slaves After Emancipation; Web Series Tells "What Black Folks Don't Do"; Customs Destroys Rare Bamboo Flutes; NYT & NPR Maintain Latino Stereotypes; Native American Studies Association Supports BDS; Chart Illustrates You Vote What You Drink
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