Search Results for: Washington Post

Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?

Longreads Pick

In my study of African American history, the Civil War was always something of a sideshow. Just off center stage, it could be heard dimly behind the stories of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and Martin Luther King Jr., a shadow on the fringe. But three years ago, I picked up James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom and found not a shadow, but the Big Bang that brought the ideas of the modern West to fruition. Our lofty notions of democracy, egalitarianism, and individual freedom were articulated by the Founders, but they were consecrated by the thousands of slaves fleeing to Union lines, some of them later returning to the land of their birth as nurses and soldiers. The first generation of the South’s postbellum black political leadership was largely supplied by this class.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Dec 4, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,835 words)

From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect

From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect

The Peekaboo Paradox

Longreads Pick

If you want to understand why the Great Zucchini has this kind of success, you need look no further than the stresses of suburban Washington parenting. The attendant brew of love, guilt and toddler-set social pressures puts an arguably unrealistic value on someone with the skills, and the willingness, to control and delight a roistering roomful of preschoolers for a blessed half-hour. That’s the easy part. Here’s the hard part: There are dozens of professional children’s entertainers in the Washington area, but only one is as successful and intriguing, and as completely over-the-top preposterous, as the Great Zucchini. And if you want to know why that is — the hook, Vicki, the hook — it’s going to take some time.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jan 18, 2006
Length: 37 minutes (9,346 words)

‘I Have Seen the Promised Land’

Longreads Pick

Excerpt from At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s final days:

“King spent the early weeks of the new year flying around the country trying to drum up support for his poverty campaign but he found one of his toughest audiences back home in Atlanta.

“With his aide Andrew Young, King took a midnight flight through Dallas and reached home early on Jan. 15. They arrived late and exhausted for King’s morning presentation at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he was the pastor. Some 60 members of the SCLC staff were gathered from scattered posts with their travel possessions, ready to disperse straight from Atlanta to recruiting assignments for the poverty campaign. SCLC executive director William Rutherford’s summons had described a mandatory workshop of crisp final instructions—’it is imperative’—but King labored more broadly to overcome festering doubt and confusion about why they must go to Washington. He thanked his father Daddy King and others for fill-in speeches to cover his tardiness. He made a faltering joke about the tepid response of friends with their coats still on—’they act like it’s cold in my church’—and betrayed rare unease in a defensive speech.”

Source: Time
Published: Jan 1, 2006
Length: 23 minutes (5,932 words)