History

Labor Day special: MPR documentary, 'The Strike is On'
The MPR documentary, “The Strike is On,” an oral history of the early labor movement in Minnesota, with emphasis on the struggle to organize Iron Range workers, the Minneapolis truckers strike of 1934, and more.
Remembering civil rights activist Anna Arnold Hedgeman of Anoka
Most Minnesotans don't know that a Black woman who grew up in Anoka — Anna Arnold Hedgeman — was the only woman on the organizing committee for the 1963 March on Washington. She was a longtime activist for civil rights and social justice — but has been mostly forgotten. 2018 History Forum lecture by Thomas Sugrue of NYU about her and other civil rights activists in the north.
How to change how we teach history
A historian and an education policy scholar walk us through the problems with how we teach history in this country and how to improve curriculum.
Suffrage anniversary commemorations highlight racial divide
As the U.S. marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, many event organizers have been careful to present it as a commemoration, not a celebration. That's because when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, it was mostly white women who benefited.
Report: 59 Confederate symbols removed since George Floyd's death
America's reckoning with racism has brought down statues, one state flag and one police emblem, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center — and led to the renaming of schools or sites.
What to learn from pandemics of the past
Medical science has grown by leaps and bounds in the past century. Despite that, the COVID-19 pandemic proves that viruses and bacteria can still surprise us and turn into major health crises. We turn to a medical historian to discuss the limits of scientific knowledge and the role of humans, past and present, in the spread of a disease.
An atomic bomb survivor on her journey from revenge to peace
It's been 75 years since the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro spoke with Koko Kondo, who was an infant when one of those bombs was dropped on Hiroshima.