Hillary Clinton got some deserved criticism for her lecture about how "it took a President" to pass the Civil Rights Act (didn't Obama prove he values the role of the President when he started running to be the next one?). But Robert Caro's op-ed today reminds us she could have said something worse:

"Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans," I have written, "but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life."

This isn't poetic - it's just offensive. Did LBJ tie African-Americans' shoes before they left the house to vote? It should go without saying that African-Americans have been a "true part of American political life" since before the birth of the United States. Among other things, they led a movement which seized the franchise by shifting public opinion and transforming the political landscape. That movement made the difference between the days when LBJ was strategizing against Civil Rights legislation to the days when Jesse Helms must claim to support it.

Caro seems smug towards Civil Rights activists who didn't trust Johnson's support until they got it. No doubt which bills Johnson supported, and when he came around to support them, is indeed, as Caro says, some combination of "ambition and compassion." It's short-sighted for historians to lionize Johnson's choices while disparaging the people whose vision, tactics, and courage made it possible for him to wed the two. Of course it makes a huge difference who the President is. But the Great Man Theory that tells us Lincoln freed the slaves and then Johnson gave their descendants the vote is a theory that should be in the dustbin of history by now.

Let's remember that as we consider the progress Barack Obama's nomination represents as well as the struggles ahead should there be an Obama presidency.

Though some people may think focusing on moments like this are just a litany of redundancy, they are actually quite momentous and powerful given the cultural power of the media and the notoriously conservative Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.   Read More »

The Robert Russa Moton Museum, situated on the apex of Longwood's campus, was opened to celebrate and remember the people in Farmville and Prince Edward County who stood up in opposition of inequality and segregation in public schools. More than half a century after the historic student-led protests of 1951, the building that was once the home of R.R. Moton High School was converted into a museum that now stands as a memorial to the struggle for civil rights in education.   Read More »

Cultural anxiety in Europe has a growing number of adults pretending to be medieval duchesses and mercenaries during leisure time fantasy lives, The New York Times reports. One 57-year old Belgian woman sleeps in a replica of a medieval bed, spends her weekends living in a castle, and says life was less stressful before phones and vacuum cleaners. As a history major who took a few classes on medieval Europe, it's interesting to learn that Ph.D programs in the subject, usually considered quite obscure, are packed. But is there a darker side to the nostalgia for knights and ladies-in-waiting? Is such roleplaying a reaction against increased Muslim immigration to the Continent, a harkening back to a mono-cultural time? Or is it all just fun and games?