History Twitter is Good!

Jun 5, 2021

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Rachel Hope Cleves @RachelCleves

My next career: I'm going to be a medium who delivers presidential endorsements from the spirit realm #presidentialhistory #twitterstorians

Twitter is often a hellscape of pile-ons and bad opinions, but once you find your people, there’s nothing like it. Here are the most thoughtful, vexing, delightful tweets I bookmarked in May and early June—with special appearances by Tom Hanks, Moby Dick, and Ellie Kemper:

Alaina E Roberts, Ph.D. @allthewhile1

Where I’m coming from: In my book, one of my secondary arguments is that the Black people I study, owned as slaves by Native Americans, received reparations in the form of 40 acres of land.

Tyson Reeder @tysonfreeder

When I fist started working on the Madison Papers, I thought deciphering his encrypted correspondence would be intriguing. Turns out it’s more tedious than intriguing.

Susan Elizabeth Shepard @SusanElizabeth

4) they had a nice union thing going

Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC

Dr. A.C. Jackson, called “most able Negro surgeon in America,” was shot to death while emerging from his home during Tulsa Race Massacre of a century ago:

Letters of Note @LettersOfNote

Whenever this starts getting retweeted again I know he's done something shitty.

Letters of Note @LettersOfNote

Eton College writes to Boris Johnson's dad in 1982 https://t.co/pIVbsOdZIG

Ted McCormick @mccormick_ted

“Don’t judge the past by the standards of the present!” But also “Don’t judge people in the present — let historians do it!” https://t.co/jXr8aMkHJe

DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE, REFUND OUR COMMUNITIES @BreeNewsome

Yeah... folks have pointed this out but you really can’t assume “history will judge” anyone because historical remembrance itself is a battle between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Moby Dick @MobyDickatSea

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it

Kainaz Amaria @kainazamaria

“Ms. Rivera was part of a group of Puerto Rican photographers, mostly men, who had set about documenting their community, seeking to wrest back their story from the wider society in which they were often stereotyped.”

Sophie Rivera, Photographer of Latin New York, Dies at 82Her portraits of fellow Puerto Rican New Yorkers could be both majestic and tender. She was also a constant street photographer and later made herself her subject.nytimes.com

Gillian Brockell @gbrockell

A note on this map being shared all over the place. 1) It is really well done! And pretty darn thorough.

Kenzi @kenziewenzi

To prove that some groups are absent from our story of American history I gave students a list of important events in LGBTQ+ history and asked them to find any of them in our textbook. Take a wild guess how many they found?!? Yes, zero they found ZERO references to LGBTQ+ history

Julian Zelizer @julianzelizer

From the archives

Jason Stanley @jasonintrator

Making an attack on Critical Race Theory the center of your party’s politics is an odd way to make the point that race is not central to the narrative of America.

New York Times Books @nytimesbooks

When a poltergeist began creating havoc in a 1930s London home, a psychic investigator got involved, hoping to prove the existence of ghosts once and for all.

When Teacups, Burning Lumps of Coal and Eggs Flew Through the AirIn her delightfully spooky new book, “The Haunting of Alma Fielding,” Kate Summerscale investigates poltergeist activity in 1930s London.nyti.ms

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1

Illinois is poised to become the first state to require Asian American history be taught in public schools.

Nation’s first school mandate on AAPI history heads to Illinois governor“I’m getting calls from all over the country — people who have read about TEAACH and how they can pass this bill in their state,” state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz said.politi.co

Kristen Richardson @butwhyevernot

If you're interested in how carnival balls like the Veiled Prophet developed during Reconstruction and lent glamour to white supremacy, I have a chapter on them in my history of the debutante ritual (including an account of my trip to one of them): bookshop.org/books/the-seas…

Thee Hannah @hannastasia

@ChrisQRG1917 @WB_Baskerville A fancy event put on by our local KKK, of which Ellie Kemper was once the Queen of Love and Beauty https://t.co/6xgwa788Ck