History wars

Plus: the priest leading Poland's fight for LGBTQ rights |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Last week, I talked about the paradoxical timing of Texas Governor Greg Abbott signing a bill into law that could restrict how teachers talk about the legacy of America’s past alongside President Joe Biden signing a bill into law declaring Juneteenth as the U.S.’s newest federal holiday. In this week’s cover story, I dive deeper into those two ways of thinking about the past and how to teach history in K-12 U.S. public schools, through the lens of the efforts to mobilize parents against critical race theory. Half of U.S. states have passed or are considering actions that could restrict how the topic is discussed in schools—and, in particular, limit the use of critical race theory, a once-obscure academic framework that has become a stand-in for much more. But while the debate is a national one, curriculum is designed at the local level, so I visited one school district in suburban St. Louis and talked to educators, parents and students about how their community has become divided. The debate is between those who think the past is in the past and those who believe teaching the legacy of the past is the only way to prepare students for the future. And the rhetoric has had consequences; staffers have received death threats, and had security at their homes. The school district, meanwhile, says actual critical race theory isn’t even taught in its schools. Historians always tell me that there can never be one U.S. history because there are so many people who make up America, who have experienced its past and and are living through the present in different ways. Click here to read how today’s debates over how to teach history fit in the history of curriculum battles. Here’s more history to know:

HISTORY ON TIME.COM The Unorthodox Priest Leading Poland’s Fight for LGBTQ Rights By Madeline Roache In deeply devout Poland, activists are trying to create a space for people to be openly LGBTQ and also Christian Read More » For HIV/AIDS Survivors, COVID-19 Reawakened Old Trauma—And Renewed Calls for Change By Tara Law For some of those who had their lives irrevocably changed by HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 has been particularly challenging Read More » Column: Medical Myths About Gender Roles Go Back to Ancient Greece. Women Are Still Paying the Price Today By Elinor Cleghorn The history of medicine, of illness, is every bit as social and cultural as it is scientific. It is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just of physicians, surgeons, clinicians and researchers Read More » Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry By Kate Moore The received medical wisdom of the 19th century was that assertive, ambitious women were unnatural, and therefore sick Read More » The Untold Story of a Secret Unit of Heroic Jewish Commandos in World War II By Leah Garrett One of the greatest untold stories has to do with the countless heroic Jews who served in the U.S., British and Russian militaries during the war Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1950: Pablo Picasso “‘What is a human face?’ asks Picasso. ‘Who sees it correctly—the photographer, the mirror or the painter? Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?’ Like the Eiffel Tower. Today Picasso's own face is leathery, seamed and wrinkled, illuminated by big dark eyes which sometimes sparkle but more often stare off into the distance. He is old and fat, but still powerful: his chest and belly, bristling with white, goatlike hairs, are mahogany-tanned. At 68, he still dominates the whole canvas of modern art.” (June 26, 1950) Read More » This week in 1967: Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. “Last week, as alumni gathered on campuses across the nation for reunions and beaming parents strolled shaded walks with newly graduated sons, proud leaders of academe pointed to glistening new science buildings and plushly modern dormitories, talked glowingly of new plans, programs, projects. But this appearance of comfortable affluence is largely deceptive. Behind the impressive facades of most private universities and colleges there is a deep concern. They are in grave financial trouble, and many are searching frantically to close a dollar gap that threatens their very existence. (June 22, 1967) Read More » This week in 1989: Kevin Costner “Kevin Costner is the man of the moment and a star out of his time. What other actor would think to achieve rampant movie fame by playing a Soviet spy and two baseball fanatics? For Costner, though, the improbable risk was a good career move. As Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, he played the straightest arrow in Prohibition-era Chicago and made saintliness sexy. As Tom Farrell, the cryptic intelligence officer in 1987's No Way Out , he brought devious modernity to a character right out of a '40s suspense novel. As Crash Davis, the bush-league catcher in 1988's Bull Durham, he found charm in cynicism and anchored the first hit baseball movie in a dozen years. And as Ray Kinsella in the current Field of Dreams—the Iowa farmer who hears spectral pleas of pain, builds a ball park in his cornfield and follows the voices back to his childhood heart—Costner, 34, has touched filmgoers with an E.T. for adults. Both Bull Durham and Field of Dreams echo with the American and Hollywood past.” (June 26, 1989) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Patriotic education: Historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman talk about past curriculum battles in a recent episode of their podcast Now & Then.   Campaign watch: Branden Adams finds a historical parallel to Andrew Yang’s unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York City in the city’s 1886 mayoral race. Profile: For The Nation, historian David M. Perry profiles Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill on teaching the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Rock on: The New York Review of Books runs an adaption of a recent lecture on how history inspired Bob Dylan’s music by Sean Wilentz. Time travel: And just in time for the summer vacation season, Scott Borcher explores the travel guides created during the Great Depression for The Atlantic.

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