Our guest in this episode is Gettysburg College historian Jill Ogline Titus. Her new book, Gettysburg 1963, tells the story of the centennial celebration of the Civil War in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Through an examination of the experiences of political...
George Wallace
This is what racism looks like
And it comes from the Donald Trump campaign: Yes, that is the voice of white evangelical vice president Mike Pence saying “you want be safe in Joe Biden’s America” as Biden kneels with parishioners at a black church. Here is...
There is nothing new about what happened to conservative evangelicals this week. But how will they respond?
It was a rough week for conservative evangelicals in the United States. The president of the largest Christian university in the country resigned after a sex scandal. A popular evangelical radio host and author was caught on tape punching an...
Trump launched his 2020 campaign tonight. Not much has changed since 2016.
Earlier this evening, Donald Trump started his campaign with a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The number of coronavirus cases in Oklahoma is rising. Most of those who did attend the rally were not wearing masks. With the exception of U.S....
The unsettling similarities between a 1964 George Wallace letter and the rhetoric of Donald Trump
Earlier this week, presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted a 1964 letter written by segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace to a woman in Cedar Spring, Michigan: Here is the text of the entire letter: Dear Miss Martin: This will acknowledge and...
When People of Faith Defended Alabama’s George Wallace Because They “Knew Him”
A lot of court evangelicals like to brag about how they “know” Donald Trump. This, they claim, is why they supported him while other evangelicals backed different candidates in the 2016 primaries. I thought about this when I saw that...
Kevin Kruse on the Differences Between Donald Trump and George Wallace (Hint: Trump is More Dangerous)
Here is a taste of the Princeton historian‘s recent piece at The New York Times: This leads us to the significant difference between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Trump. Mr. Wallace’s targets were, for the most part, presented in the abstract. Though he...
Jimmy Carter Beat 17 Competitors to Win the Democratic Nomination in 1976
As Gillian Brockell notes at The Washington Post, the last time we had a very large Democratic primary field we got Jimmy Carter. The Plains, Georgia peanut farmer emerged as the primary winner over Birch Bayh, Lloyd Bentsen, Jerry Brown, Henry...
The 2016 Presidential Election and Historical Comparisons
Everyone is making comparisons between the 2016 presidential election and other presidential election in American history. I have also been doing plenty of this here at the blog (including my last post about George Wallace). Historical analogies are never perfect....