Virginia Legislature Passes Resolution Honoring Historian and Journalist Charlie Clark

I've previously posted about my friend, journalist, and historian Charlie Clark, who died in the fall of 2023 of a rare illness. Click. To honor him, the Virginia "House of Delegates, and the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly hereby note with great sadness the loss of Charles Stuart Clark, a venerated journalist and cherished …

Malcolm X Is (Finally) Embraced As A Nebraska Native, With A Bust in the State Capitol

Malcolm X (1925-1965) is the first Black person in the Nebraska Hall of Fame. In May 2024, he'll have a bust inside the Nebraska State Capitol, along with 26 other Nebraskans. Nebraska Public Media reported on Malcolm's early life in Omaha and later visits. He was born with the name Malcolm Little in 1925.  His …

Local Historian-Journalist Charlie Clark Lives On in the Vast Archive He Created

My dear friend Charlie Clark, 70, a journalist and historian in Arlington, Virginia, just outside the nation's capital, died November 15, 2023, after a brief illness from an extremely rare disease. But he lives on in his huge archive of local history and leaves a deep legacy of connections in the DC metro area, as …

‘True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s Quest for a More Just America’

Peter Juul: "America could use a lot more Hubert Humphrey—and more Hubert Humphreys—these days. That’s the main thought that kept running through my head reading James Traub’s excellent new biography, True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s Quest for a More Just America. As a native Minnesotan, I may of course be biased; Humphrey stands alongside Prince, Bob Dylan, …

Despite Backlash, This AP African American Studies Class Perseveres

Stay Tuned, an NBC News Brand: "Over a dozen states in recent years have implemented restrictions limiting how teachers discuss racism. We visit an AP African American studies class in Virginia that garnered significant backlash and almost didn’t happen. The teacher of the class says, “It’s just history,” but for a class in the political …

Biden Leads Trump in Wisconsin, But Abortion Proposal Could Upend Race

Joe Biden appears to be leading Donald Trump in the swing state of Wisconsin, which Trump won narrowly in 2016 and Biden won decisively in 2020. Biden has been campaigning effectively there touting infrastructure projects, or "infrastructure decade." Biden won the state by 20,000 votes in 2020, but Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by about …

Decline In Immigration to US Threatens Growth of Regions

NYT: "Immigrants helped make places like Northwest Arkansas economic dynamos. But their dwindling numbers, a big factor in slower population growth, could have long-term repercussions." Click. Legions of immgrants from El Salvador, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, India and elsewhere answered the call to work in poultry production, trucking, construction, and computer programming. The United States …

Filipino-US Relationship Began With Colonialism

October 18, 1587 marks the first recorded arrival of Filipinos in the continental U.S., in Morro Bay, California – a state that continues to be home to a large subpopulation of Filipino Americans. In fact, Southern California has historically had the largest concentration of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in the U.S. – with a storied and …

The Readjusters: Virginia’s Radical Reformers After Reconstruction

For a brief period after Reconstruction, ex-Confederates allied politically with ex-slaves to "stick it to the rich," in a kind-of populist rebellion, a coalition of poor whites and poor blacks. Google has quite a few links on this movement. It was particularly popular in Virginia, and in the town of Petersburg, which seemed to birth …

Florida Teachers Feel Intimidated By New Restrictions

One school librarian, eager to comply with Florida's new law restricting “inappropriate” books in schools – removed one-third of the books on an English teacher's classroom shelves, including a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was not on her list of approved books. A seventh-grade teacher was to hardly discuss Emmett Till – the 14-year-old …