Op-Eds & Essays

2025

• “Thank You, Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, For Your Service,” Slate (February 12)

2023

• “Don’t Change the Name of Faneuil Hall,” The Boston Globe (November 17).
• “A Philadelphia History Museum is Welcoming a Right-Wing Mom’s Group This Weekend. Why?,” Slate (June 29).

2022

• “The Virginia history that its state board doesn’t want students to know,” The Washington Post (August 26).

• “David McCullough taught us that history is for everyone,” Cognoscenti (August 12).

2020

• “Why ‘Glory’ Still Resonates More Than Three Decades Later,” Smithsonian Magazine (September 14).
• “Black Bostonians Fought For Freedom From Slavery. Where Are the Statues That Tell Their Stories?,” Cognoscenti (June 16).
• “Richmond’s Confederate Monuments Were Used to Sell a Segregated Neighborhood,” The Atlantic (June 11).

2019

• w/David W. Blight and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “A University’s Betrayal of Historical Truth,” The Atlantic (December 9).
• “How the myth of black Confederates was born,” The Washington Post (July 17).
• “The Diaries Left Behind by Confederate Soldiers Reveals the True Role of Enslaved Labor at Gettysburg,” Smithsonian (July 2).
• “The ‘Loyal Slave’ Photo That Explains the Northam Scandal,” The Atlantic (February 13).

2018

• “This Elementary School Had a Mural of a Lynching Still Up. In 2018,” The Daily Beast (March 9).
• The Boston Statue that Reinforces the Need for Black History Month,”History News Network (February 25).
• “Encountering the Plantation Myth Where You’d Least Expect It,” Bunk (January 19).

2017

• “The Future of Our Confederate Monuments Rests With Our Kids,” Bunk (November 30).
• “Myth of Black Confederates Won’t Go Away,” The Post & Courier (October 11).
• “History vs. Memory,” Bunk (August 25).
• “Why I Changed My Mind About Confederate Monuments,” The Atlantic (August 19).
• “Historians: ‘Defending History’ Is Complicated in the U.S.,” CNN (August 19).
• “When It Comes to Historical Markers, Every Word Matters,” Smithsonian (July 7).
• The Pernicious Myth of the ‘Loyal Slave’ Lives on In Confederate Memorials,” Smithsonian (August 17).
• “Robert E. Lee Topples From His Pedestal,” The Atlantic (May 19).
• “What Richmond Has Gotten Right About Interpreting Its Confederate History,” Smithsonian (May 18).
• “Boston Defies Trump on Immigrants the Way the City’s Abolitionists Once Fought Slavers,” The Daily Beast (February 4).
• “Donald Trump Flunks Black History,” The Daily Beast (February 2).

2016

• “The Remedy for the Spread of Fake News? History Teachers,” Smithsonian (December 6).
• “This Museum Isn’t Confederate Enough For These Losers,” The Daily Beast (October 29).
• “The Racial Politics of Nat Turner Tours,” The Daily Beast (October 22).
• “How Dixie’s History Got Whitewashed,” in The Daily Beast (August 19).
• “Capt. Khan’s Race-Plagued Resting Place at Arlington,” in The Daily Beast (August 1).
• “Is Pokemon Go a Blessing or Curse for Historic Sites and Museums?” in The Daily Beast (July 13).
• Review of Free State of Jones, in The Daily Beast (June 27).
• “100,000 From Dixie Fought For the North in the Civil War,” in The Daily Beast (May 30).
• “Confederate Flag Loses More Ground,” in The Daily Beast (May 20).
• “When Dixie Put Slaves on the Money,” in The Daily Beast (April 21).
• Review of Mercy Street, in History News Network (January 20).
• “Teaching in the Archives: Q&A,” in The Society of Civil War Historians (January 12).

2015

• “Will South Carolina Spend Millions on a Fake Flag?,” in The Daily Beast (December 25).
• “Confederate Monuments Will Come Down in New Orleans,” in the Atlantic (December 17).
• “The Civil War Almost Didn’t End Slavery,” The Daily Beast (December 6).
• “Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America,” in The Daily Beast).
• “Trump’s Lies Slander Civil War Dead,” The Daily Beast (November 25).
• “Northern Schools’ Haunting Confederate Past,” The Daily Beast (October 24).
• “Real Confederates Didn’t Know Any Black Confederate Soldiers,” History News Network (October 18).
• “The Myth of the Black Confederate Soldier,” The Daily Beast (August 8).
• “A Confederate General and His Slave,” History News Network (April 26).
• “Following Johnny Reb’s March Home,” We’re History (April 17).

2013

• “Meet William Mahone, the Ex-Confederate General Who Built His Political Career on the Black Vote” History News Network (September 30).
• “The Terror of Being Black at Gettysburg,” History News Network (July 2).
• “The Ku Klux Klan Protests As Memphis Renames a City Park” the Atlantic (February 27).

2012

• “Historians Need to Give Steven Spielberg a Break” the Atlantic (November 26).
• “America’s Simple-Minded Obsession With the Confederate Flag,” the Atlantic (August 16).
• “The Best Servant By Far” New York Times/Disunion (November 10).
• “A Worthy Death: How Civil War Families Made Sense of Death,” the Atlantic (September 19).
• “How Should We Represent Black Civil War Soldiers?,” the Atlantic (August 2).
• “A Jim Crow View of the Southern Plantation System,” the Atlantic (April 30).
• “Were Slaves Loyal to the Union From the Start?,” the Atlantic (April 9).
• “Why Doesn’t Anyone Think It’s Cool To Dress Up As a Confederate Soldier Anymore?,” the Atlantic (February 28).
• “How the Men of ‘Glory’ Stood Up to the U.S. Government” the Atlantic (February 22).
• “What Black Confederates Really Did During the Civil War” the Atlantic (February 21).
• “The Battlefield as Classroom” New York Times/Disunion, (February 12).

2011

• “The Case Against Vandalizing Confederate Monuments,” the Atlantic (December 21).
• “Not Your Grandfather’s Civil War Commemoration,” The Atlantic (December 13).
• “How Newt’s Novel Plays Politics With the Past,” The Atlantic (December 5).
• “Black Confederate Soldiers? In Your Dreams” Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va), (September 23).
• “One Day, We’ll Commemorate 9-11 Like the Civil War,” History News Network, (September 9).
• “Teaching Civil War History 2.0” New York Times/Disunion, (January 21).

2010

• “Blogging the American Civil War” Common-place Vol. 11, no. 1 (October, 5).
• “Executing Justice” in Civil War Times (April): 46-51.

2006

• “Why the Civil War Still Matters” in History News Network (April 3).