Howard Zinn, author of the history text A People's History of the United States, discusses his reasons for studying and writing about American history, focusing on his desire to connect the past and the present. His presentation includes a question-and-answer session.
Professor Jill Lepore describes the war between colonists and Native Americans that broke out in New England in 1675. She emphasizes the impact of cultural memory of events in constructing national identity.
Historian Kate Clifford Larson reviews the life of Harriet Tubman and Tubman's work in freeing other slaves along the Underground Railroad. Larson focuses on unsimplifying Tubman's life story and presenting it in its complexity and full breadth.
Vietnam War veteran Robert Vinson talks about his experiences in Vietnam and returning home on leave during the war and after his service in the war, including his struggle with PTSD and use of massage and movement therapy.
A panel including newsanchors Brian Williams and Dan Rather, former correspondent Steve Bell, and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Frances Fitzgerald discusses media coverage of the Vietnam War and public opinion on the war, both during the war and today.
A panel including former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, Senator Chuck Hagel, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, NBC newsanchor Brian Williams, and former ambassador to Vietnam and POW Pete Peterson examines perception of the Vietnam War today and what effects the war and perceptions of it have had on the U.S. and continue to have.
Audio and video options are available.
Christian Appy, associate professor of history at MIT, discusses perceptions and memories of the Vietnam War from all possible sides: American civilians, antiwar protestors, and soldiers, as well as Vietnamese civilians and soldiers.
Hubie Jones, assistant to the Urban Affairs chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, provides an overview of the issue of race, and, in particular, the status of African Americans in Boston over the past 50 years.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, discusses the African and African-American experience from W.E.B. Du Bois to John Coltrane in a comprehensive study, with an emphasis on Du Bois's concept of the "Encyclopedia Africana"—an encyclopedia of all Black culture and history—as a weapon against racism.
Biographer and history professor James O'Toole describes the lives of the Healy brothers, children of a multiracial slave couple, in mid-19th-century East Coast society. Three of the brothers successfully passed as white and gained prominent social positions: one as a a bishop; one as Georgetown University's president; and one as a priest, rector, and seminary director.