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Selma through a woman’s eyes
By Amy Schaffman The film Selma opened on 9 January 2015 to a barrage of criticism about its historical accuracy. Though unable to use any of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words due to copyright issues, the movie attempted to recreate the tense scene in Selma, Alabama on the eve of the passing of the…
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Children’s strikes, school walk-outs, and youth political activism
By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) In the last two weeks, university students across the UK have been coming out in solidarity with lecturers and staff in the University and College Union’s USS strike. On the other side of the Atlantic, the news has been dominated by the aftermath of the latest US mass school shooting. Survivors from…
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Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.
By Tom Smith (@TomEtesonSmith) Last Wednesday, 4 April, the world commemorated the assassination fifty years earlier of a man widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures. Martin Luther King Jr. is best remembered for having played an instrumental role in securing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting…
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Public History at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas
Cambridge PhD students Bethan Johnson and George Severs (@GeorgeSevers10) talk to Doing History in Public about their recent Festival of Ideas panel Forms of Extreme Protest in the Post-War West. Can you tell us a bit about your research? George: My PhD researches the history of HIV/AIDS activism in England from 1982, the year of…
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“#Thank a Black Woman”: The Legacy of African-American Women in U.S. Politics
By Tionne Paris In August 2020, commentator Jorge Guarjardo tweeted that “Black women will save the United States”.[1] Whilst this statement was complimentary of black women’s ability to enact change, it highlights the unfair burden black women have been asked to shoulder throughout history. The American public vastly underestimate the political impact black women have had…
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