Slavery and Public History

America’s slave past is being analyzed as never before yet it remains one of the most contentious issues in U.S. memory. In recent years the culture wars over the way that slavery is remembered and taught have reached a new crescendo. From the argument about the display of the Confederate flag over the state house in Columbia South Carolina to the dispute over Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and the ongoing debates about reparations the questions grow ever more urgent and more difficult.<br/><br/>Edited by noted historians James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton this collection explores current controversies and offers a bracing analysis of how people remember their past and how the lessons they draw influence American politics and culture today. Bringing together some of the nation’s most respected historians including Ira Berlin David W. Blight and Gary B. Nash this is a major contribution to the unsettling but crucial debate about the significance of slavery and its meaning for racial reconciliation.<br/><br/>Contributors:<br/>Ira Berlin University of Maryland<br/>David W. Blight Yale University<br/>James Oliver Horton George Washington University<br/>Lois E. Horton George Mason University<br/>Bruce Levine University of Illinois<br/>Edward T. Linenthal University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh<br/>Joanne Melish University of Kentucky<br/>Gary B. Nash University of California Los Angeles<br/>Dwight T. Pitcaithley New Mexico State University<br/>Marie Tyler-McGraw Washington D.C.<br/>John Michael Vlach George Washington University