Millsaps College History Department

01/31/2026

This is a fascinating tale full of twists and turns. Hope to see you there!

07/31/2024

Many people thought TFG saying Kamala Harris doesn't like Jews is absurd because her husband is Jewish. I called the RINO candidate to ask about this and he responded in his usual forthright manner (and with his trademark use of caps for his main point):

"Being married to someone in no way, shape, or form means that you like them or their kind. Let me give you an example.

I HAVE BEEN MARRIED TO THREE WOMEN, BUT I HATE WOMEN. YOU KNOW IT, I KNOW IT, EVERYBODY KNOWS IT."

06/21/2024

My essay today is the tenth in my series, "The Long 1964 at Sixty." It discusses one of the most impactful events of that momentous year, the Klan murder of three freedom workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Link to story is in the comments.

04/10/2024

History

02/22/2024

Some of us are old enough to remember the "Miracle on Ice" on this day in 1980. The rag-tag amateur US hockey team was given zero chance of beating the Soviet team, the best in the world, in the Winter Olympics. Yet, somehow, the Americans won.

Almost the entire nation joined in wild celebration. "USA! USA! USA!" Ronald Reagan ran on that feeling (not, to be sure, just from the hockey game) and was elected president.

How unbearably sad it is that 44 years later an entire major political party in our country – the party that was Reagan's – is, in effect, cheering, "Russia! Russia! Russia!" and supporting a brutal Russian dictator against the United States.

That is more unbelievable than was the thought that the US hockey team could beat the Russians in 1980.

02/19/2024

Happy Presidents Day. Below are the top and bottom results of a survey of historians' rating of presidents. I have participated in some of these surveys in the past, but not this one.

Here are my rankings at the top and bottom:
1. Lincoln
2. FDR
3. Washington
4. Jefferson
5. T. Roosevelt

40. Coolidge
41. Pierce
42. G.W. Bush
43. Andrew Johnson
44. Buchanan

In a category by himself, BY FAR the worst president (a title that used to be arguable):

LAST: Trump.

I would rate Biden higher than 14, ahead of Obama, Clinton, and Kennedy.

02/18/2024

New York Times obit for Charles Sallis

He collaborated on a textbook so unsparing in its review of the state’s grim past that it was barred from schools almost as soon as it appeared.

02/12/2024

Happy Birthday, Abe. I'm sad to have to report to you that the party you helped to found has turned completely against your principles.

Presently, the survival of a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" is under the greatest threat that it has been since the Enslavers' Rebellion.

Rest assured that in 2024, we DO “highly resolve … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

02/09/2024

My latest Substack essay, on the significance of the The Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan sixty years ago this evening, is the first in a series of essays I plan to write on what was happening in 1964, “The Year ‘The Sixties’ Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn,” as I put it in the subtitle of my most recent book, "The Times They Were a-Changin’." Portions of them will be taken straight from the book, but other parts of the essays will be new commentary.
To READ it, go to the first comment below.

02/06/2024

A great man passed away today. Charles Sallis has been our dear friend for a half century. Historian, teacher, champion of justice, seeker of making Mississippi what it should and can and will be.
We’ll miss you greatly. RIP Charles.

02/02/2024

For a piece I did for the Washington Post after the 2008 election, I calculated what this image shows. With all the talk of a new Civil War and almost every "Republican" governor supporting Texas as it raises from the dustbin of history the argument of John C. Calhoun and the Confederacy that states have the power to defy the federal government, it seems relevant.