Desecration of Cemetery a Repercussion of the Unfulfilled American Dream

AHA members Eric Sandweiss, Carmony Chair of History at Indiana University and his sister Martha A. Sandweiss, Professor of History at Princeton University, recently penned an op-ed about the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in their hometown of University City, Missouri. Their article discusses the 20th-century "upward mobility narrative of the American Dream," which is complicated by the historical record. "The upending of the narrative in our own backyard, the intentionally symbolic damage done to the monuments to our own ancestors' unheralded search for peace, reminds us that History will always find a way to come home."