In the seven decades after the 1871-1872 trials of Ku Klux Klan leaders, mainstream American popular culture would reflect, extend, and greatly amplify sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan as a series of southern artists created successful works that featured increasingly idealized depictions of heroic Klan members and their actions.
Ben Railton
Pilgrims and Indians: Two First Encounters
In his famous account of the Pilgrims’ arrival in America, Of Plymouth Plantation, Governor William Bradford described the first extended contact between the recently arrived Mayflower Pilgrims and a group of Native Americans.
Veterans to Remember: The Bonus Army
If our narratives of veteran protesters tend to focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, soldiers’ protests actually have a much more longstanding history. Some of their most powerful examples were the World War I veterans who constituted the Bonus Army.
Veterans to Remember: Parker David Robbins
Thanks principally to the critical and popular success of the film Glory (1989), our collective memory of the Civil War includes African American soldiers (known in their era as United States Colored Troops).
Veterans to Remember: Chinese Americans in the Civil War
At least 58 Chinese Americans fought in the Civil War, constituting a largely forgotten community of soldiers and veterans.
White House Down: Invasions of Washington in Culture and History
Summer blockbusters seem to proceed in pairs—the dueling volcano films, the competing asteroid films, and so on—and in 2013 the trend continued with a pair of action films in which 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. came under assault.