How will the book about 2020 be written?
This has been an extraordinary year for the history books.
In January, President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial began. In China, a strange, new virus was spreading. By April, the coronavirus had infected more than 3 million people worldwide, schools had closed and New York City was using refrigerated trucks as morgues.
Then, on Memorial Day, George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer ignited a summer of demonstrations for racial justice.
The months that followed saw wildfires, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and an election like no other, with 60 million Americans voting early as COVID-19 cases surged yet again.
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On Tuesday at 9 a.m., MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke to two historians about how 2020 will be remembered and how it compares to other tumultuous years in American history.
Guests:
Leah Wright Rigueur is the Harry S. Truman Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis University.
Kathryn Cramer Brownell is an associate professor of history at Purdue University.
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