History

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate--An American Tragedy, Michael Dobbs

'King Richard' Is A Fresh Retelling Of Watergate — With All The Drama

4:00pm May 27, 2021

by Ron Elving

Michael Dobbs writes of a time when a bipartisan group in Congress could command respect as investigators, and when even leaders of the president's party were prepared to acknowledge his wrongdoing.

National

How Police Reports Became Bulletproof

4:17pm May 26, 2021

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Phillip Atiba Goff, Center for Policing Equity co-founder and professor of African-American studies and psychology at Yale, on the role police reports in news coverage.

'We Can And Should Teach This History': New Bills Limit How Teachers Talk About Race

6:43am May 26, 2021

by Adrian Florido

Republican state lawmakers across the country are advancing bills that limit how public school teachers can talk about race in the classroom.

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Books
Arts

'On Juneteenth' Historian Examines The 'Hope' And 'Hostility' Toward Emancipation

1:35pm May 25, 2021

by Terry Gross

Juneteenth celebrates the day slavery ended in Texas, June 19, 1865. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed studies the early American republic and the legacy of slavery.

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Anneliese M. Bruner's great-grandmother Mary E. Jones Parrish, a teacher and journalist, survived and documented the massacre in her self-published memoir, Events of the Tulsa Disaster.

National

A Century After The Race Massacre, Tulsa Confronts Its Bloody Past

10:59am May 24, 2021

Survivors and their descendants say facing the truth about the Tulsa Race Massacre is essential in the nation's struggle to confront racial injustice and violence against Black people.

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The Seattle Mariners' José Godoy became Major League Baseball's 20,000th player when he took the field against the San Diego Padres Friday.

Sports

MLB Fields Historic 20,000th Player

9:13pm May 23, 2021

by Dustin Jones

Seattle Mariners backup catcher José Godoy made history on Friday as Major League Baseball's 20,000th player in 150 years.

American composers and musicians Noble Sissle, center left, and Eubie Blake, on piano, perform with a group of women on stage in the early 20th century. Sissle and Blake wrote the score for Shuffle Along.

'Shuffle Along' Changed Musical Theater 100 Years Ago

5:07pm May 23, 2021

by Jeff Lunden

Though much of it is unwatchable today — it contains blackface and other minstrelsy — Shuffle Along brought jazz to Broadway and was the first African American show to be a smash hit.

In The Fight For LGBTQ Rights, Lessons From The 1990s Culture Wars

4:39pm May 21, 2021

by Audie Cornish

FX's new documentary miniseries Pride focuses each of its six episodes on one decade in the fight for LGBTQ rights in America. NPR's Audie Cornish talks with Yance Ford, directed the 1990s episode.

The firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, in 2010. South Carolina recently passed a law to use a firing squad or the electric chair for executions, citing a lack of lethal injection drugs. South Carolina is just the four

Death Row Inmates Sue After They're Asked To Pick Firing Squad Or Electric Chair

4:22pm May 20, 2021

by Victoria Hansen

South Carolina is now asking death-row inmates to choose between the electric chair and firing squad, citing a lack of lethal injection drugs. Critics say the move is more about conservative politics.

A Maryland state flag waves near the Statehouse in Annapolis. Maryland has decided to drop a state song that originated during the Civil War and alludes to Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant and a despot.

Maryland Repeals State Song That Called Lincoln A 'Tyrant'

10:53am May 20, 2021

by Scott Neuman

Maryland, though a slave-holding state, did not secede from the Union and attempted to maintain neutrality during the Civil War. The song was a full-throated defense of the Confederacy.