The history behind Sunisa Lee’s historic Olympics win

Plus: a look the genre of music television |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Gymnast Sunisa Lee made Olympics history twice over in Tokyo: as the first Hmong American to compete for Team USA and the first Hmong American to win Olympic gold. But her triumph also represents an important win for a community that has lost so much, having escaped persecution after the Vietnam War and many of whom still face disenfranchisement and discrimination in the U.S . It also comes during a broader awareness of anti-Asian discrimination/violence among the general public and just a few weeks after Illinois became the first state to require the teaching of AAPI history in public schools. As Angela Vang writes from St. Paul, Minn., “Suni Lee is a singular talent in the world of gymnastics—poised to carry both the hopes of the United States and a community that has not always felt a part of it.” Click here to read the full story on where Lee’s win fits in history and what it means to the Asian American community. Here’s more history to know:

HISTORY ON TIME.COM Column: The Hyde Amendment Denies Women Health Care. Yes, Abortion Is Health Care By Barbara Lee It keeps women of color, young people, the LGBTQ community, immigrants and lower-income people from abortion care, writes Congresswoman Barbara Lee Read More » Column: Emmett Till Would Have Been 80 Today. His Story Still Defines the Ongoing Fight for Justice By Elizabeth Alexander Elizabeth Alexander on how his story still defines the ongoing fight for racial justice. Read More » 70 Years Ago, the World Made a Pact to Protect Refugees. Too Many of Our Leaders Are Failing to Uphold That Promise By Ban Ki-moon The former U.N. Secretary General calls on leaders to step up and deliver a global resettlement programme on a meaningful scale Read More » Column: Working for J. Edgar Hoover, I Saw His Worst Excesses and Best Intentions By Paul Letersky "When I left my assistant role with the Director and finally went out into the field to execute the Bureau's marching orders, I felt pangs of conscience." Read More » Music Television Is Everywhere Post-MTV. But Does It Have to Be So Nostalgic? By Judy Berman In the years since MTV abandoned its eponymous mission, much of the programming devoted to an art form synonymous with youth, newness and immediacy has become weirdly nostalgic Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1965: Marc Chagall “For Chagall, to sniff the humid scent of fruit, hear the cicadas crackling in the bushes, and feel the feverish sun is a necessary daily act of spiritual rebirth. Not that he attempts to imitate nature; rather, he aims to continue it into the realm of the mind. ‘In the abstract,’ he says, ‘one imitates but does not continue nature. Great art picks up where nature ends.’ And for him, there is neither world enough nor time to transmute all that he sees, breathes and dreams. ‘I have no vacations, just as the earth has no vacations,’ he says. ‘The earth keeps turning all the time, and we turn all the time—even when we are dead. The earth does not sleep. It turns with us.’” Read More » This week in 1978: The first test-tube baby “To millions of people in Britain and elsewhere around the world last week, it seemed as if Huxley's prophetic vision had become reality. Banner headlines in Britain called it OUR MIRACLE and BABY OF THE CENTURY. On television newscasts in Europe and the U.S., stories about an obscure British couple and the abstruse subject of embryology shouldered aside items about the Middle East, international trade balances and inflation. Some commentators heralded the coming birth as a miracle of modern medicine, comparable to the first kidney and heart transplants. Theologians—and more than a few prominent scientists—sounded warnings about its disturbing moral, ethical and social implications. Others, made wary by the recent cloning hoax, remained unconvinced that the child about to be born was indeed the world's first baby conceived in a test tube.” (July 31, 1978) Read More » This week in 2001: Sharks “Scientists ultimately hope to de-mythologize sharks, to erase their images as rogue man-eaters like the great white shark that figures in Jaws, the Peter Benchley novel turned Steven Spielberg movie classic. Benchley, who says he is now ‘a full-time ocean conservationist,’ told TIME last week, ‘I couldn't write Jaws today.’ After 25 years of research, the demonization of sharks doesn't hold, he says. ‘It used to be believed that great white sharks did target humans; now we know that except in the rarest of instances, great white shark attacks are mistakes.’ Dr. Robert Lea, a marine biologist working for the state of California, goes further: ‘I used to call them shark attacks—now I call them incidents. It is not a case of sharks preying on humans. It is just humans sharing a spot in the ocean with sharks—at the wrong time.’” (July 30, 2001) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Family history: For The Washington Post, Cathy Free reports on a Black civil war reenactor’s surprising discovery about his family’s past. Remembrance: For The Atlantic, historian William Sturkey writes about the passing of the civil rights leader Bob Moses on July 25, and how his approach to organizing laid the groundwork for much of Black Americans’  grassroots activism today. State of state historians: Colorado Sun writer Kevin Simpson profiles Nicki Gonzales, who is the first Latina to serve as the official state historian. Q&A: Salon writer Chauncey DeVega interviews historian Annette Gordon-Reed about where the Jan. 6 insurrection fits in history. Change over time: The New Yorker’s Casey Cep reviews Frank L. Holt’s When Money Talks, a new book on the history of the world as seen through coins and how e-currencies are breaking new ground.

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