Trump’s “pro-American curriculum” will never match up with the evidence in our nation’s archives. History is more complicated.
Category: People's History
Remembering the Passenger Pigeon
On Sept. 1, 1914, the passenger pigeon went extinct. In 1947, a monument for the pigeon was erected near Prairie du Chien, where Aldo Leopold delivered an elegy for “the funeral of a species.”
Revolutionary Hope along the Mississippi: Kenneth Rexroth’s “The Motto on the Sundial”
Rexroth’s poem, written during a brief stop in the driftless, offers a vision of the upper Mississippi landscape and his hopes for a political revolution.
The Rise and Fall of the “Big Indian” Statue
A trip to the archives clears up factual misconceptions about “the Colossus of Kitsch” and puts the statue in its proper historical context.
Brooks are not for Brothers
Keonte R. Turner: “I thought that if I just dressed the way they wanted me to, I would not be feared.”
Prisoners in the Dairyland
Wisconsin once had more dairy farms than prisoners. Now, the reverse is true.
Communia Revisited: Utopian Communists in the Driftless and Beyond
Resurrecting the revolutionary dreams of the German radicals who built Communia in the hills of northeast Iowa.
Keonte R. Turner: The Meaning of Juneteenth
On this Juneteenth, celebrate with us, just as we celebrate with you on the fourth of July.
Plowshares and Prison Bars: Southwest Wisconsin’s Black Settler Communities
What happened to the vibrant black farming communities that once populated parts of the driftless region?
