The History of Racist Violence in the United States: Resources from the American Historical Association
In response to ongoing racist violence in the United States, we have compiled a list of AHA resources on the history of racist violence. Teachers can use them in classrooms to help students understand the history of the present; journalists can draw on them to provide historical context for current events; researchers can draw on them to inform future scholarship. Due to the nature of this history, many of the resources contain references to violence and assault.
Select resources produced or published by the AHA are listed below. For a more detailed list, please visit our Zotero library. Additional teaching materials can be found in the AHA’s Remote Teaching Resources. Use the Search function or All Topics page to browse.
AHA Statements
- AHA Statement on Violence against Asians and Asian Americans (2021)
- Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism in American History (The American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and PEN America, 2021)
- AHA Statement on the History of Racist Violence in the United States (2020)
- AHA Condemns Executive Order Restricting Entry to the United States (2017)
- AHA Statement on Confederate Monuments (2017)
In the Classroom
- “Teaching with Integrity: Historians Speak” with Leonard Moore, Katharina Matro, Julia Brookins, Kathleen Hilliard, James Grossman, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and James Sweet (YouTube, 2022)
- “B.C. Franklin and the Tulsa Massacre: A Triracial History” by Alaina E. Roberts (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Community-Engaged History: A Reflection on the 100th Anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre” by Karlos K. Hill (American Historical Review, 2021)
- “Karlos Hill on Community Engaged History” (AHR Interview, 2021)
- “Keeping It Real: Historians in the Deepfake Era” by Abe Gibson (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Reel or Unreal History: Teaching History with Newsreels” by Julianne Johnson (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “A Starting Point: Teaching the January 6 Insurrection” by Kevin Boyle and James Grossman (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Teaching South African Stories Online: A Research Paper Alternative” by Jacob Ivey (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Middle Schoolers Take on Columbus: A Lesson on Contextualizing History” by Alex Pinelli (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Rethinking How We Train Historians: University of Michigan and the USHMM Collaborate on a Pedagogical Experiment” by Rita Chin (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Teaching the History of Racist Violence in the High School Classroom,” a Virtual AHA webinar, organized jointly with the National Council on the Social Studies, featuring Reginald K. Ellis, Tina L. Heafner, and Jacqueline Jones (YouTube, 2020)
- “Looking for the North American Invasion in Mexico City” by Thomas G. Connors and Raúl Isaí Muñoz (American Historical Review, 2020)
- “See No Evil: Can Archives Prevent Offense? Should They?” by Ann McGrath (Perspectives on History, 2019)
- “Teaching on the Balkan Express: A Collaborative Attempt to Write History for Reconciliation” by Christina Koulouri (Perspectives on History, 2019)
- “Decolonizing the US History Survey: Integrating Native Voices and Experiences through Digital History” by John Rosinbum (Perspectives on History, 2018)
- “Exploring the Brutality of Expansion: Tracking Changes in the 19th Century with American Panorama” by John Rosinbum (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Teaching Against White Nationalism: How One Historian Took Action” by Jeremy Best (Perspectives on History, 2017)
- “K-12 Educators Workshop: The Long Civil Rights Movement—with Carol Anderson and Brenda Santos,” an AHA workshop sponsored by the Advanced Placement Program of the College Board on integrating historians' narratives of the civil rights movement in the classroom (YouTube, 2016)
- “Violence in Political History: The Challenges of Teaching about the Politics of Power and Resistance” by Kellie Carter Jackson (Perspectives on History, 2011)
- “Beyond Morality: Teaching about Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide” by James Frusetta (Perspectives on History, 2010)
Contextualizing Movements and Protests
- “Vikings, Crusaders, and Confederates: Misunderstood Historical Imagery at the January 6 Capitol Insurrection” by Matthew Gabriele (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Defund the Police: Protest Slogans and the Terms for Debate” by Austin McCoy (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “So Far Away from 1965: Voting Rights in the United States” by Julian Zelizer (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “After Charlottesville: Historians Tackle White Supremacist Nostalgia for an Imagined Past” by Matthew Gabriele (Perspectives on History, 2019)
- “‘An Act of Tactical History’: Creating an Archive of the Red Summer of 1919” by Karen Sieber (Perspectives on History, 2019)
- “‘For the Future’: Doing Indigenous History after Standing Rock” by Zoë Jackson (Perspectives on History, 2018)
- “Elizabeth Hinton Discusses Carceral Studies and Scholarly Activism” (AHR Interview, 2017)
- “#SayHerName: The LA Uprising, 25 Years Later” by Brenda E. Stevenson (AHA Today, 2017)
- The Future of the African American Past, a landmark conference co-hosted by the American Historical Association and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) that brought together over 60 scholars to celebrate the opening of the NMAAHC and to consider the future of the study of African American history (YouTube, 2016)
- “The Politics of the Past in the Black Freedom Struggle” by Allison Miller (AHA Today, 2016)
- “Uncovering Activism and Engaging Students: The Colored Conventions Project” by John Rosinbum (AHA Today, 2016)
- “‘Manufacturing Criminals’: The Historical Roots of Baltimore's Racialized Criminal Justice System” by Dennis Halpin (Perspectives on History, 2015)
- “Understanding Ferguson” by Sarah Fenton (Perspectives on History, 2015)
Contextualizing Violence in a Pandemic
- A Bibliography of Historians’ Responses to COVID-19: Race & Health, a section of the AHA’s COVID bibliography, addresses current and historical public health crises within the context of xenophobia, racism, and racial inequity. Use the linked Zotero Library to find more specific topics (American Historical Association, 2020–21)
- “History and Historians in Response to COVID-19: Containing Contagion,” a Virtual AHA webinar with Keith A. Wailoo, Peter Baldwin, Elena Conis, George Dehner, Yanzhong Huang, and Bob Reinhardt (YouTube, 2020)
- “History and Historians in Response to COVID-19: Infection and Inequality,” a Virtual AHA webinar with Evelynn M. Hammonds, Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr., Alan Kraut, Michael Spencer, and Keith A. Wailoo (YouTube, 2020)
- “History and Historians in Response to COVID-19: Plagues Past and Present,” a Virtual AHA webinar with Peter Baldwin, Mariola Espinosa, Evelynn Hammonds, Mark Harrison, Gregg Mitman, and Ruth Rogaski (YouTube 2021)
- “Precedents for a Pandemic: Reflections on Disease and Indigenous Communities” by Seth Archer (Perspectives on History, 2020)
Immigration and Xenophobia
- “Cliché and Caricature: Why January 6 Was Not Like a Banana Republic” by Dario A. Euraque (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Colorizing Photos from the Past: The Ethics of Making History” by Tara Tran (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “A Farewell to the Model Minority Myth: AAPI Racism in Academia” by Shuko Tamao (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “‘Our Country Is Full’: Roots and Consequences of America’s 1921 Immigration Act 100 Years Later,” a Virtual AHA webinar featuring Erika Lee, Ashley Johnson Bavery, Linda Gordon, and Alexandra Minna Stern (YouTube, 2021)
- “Age and the Construction of Gendered and Raced Citizenship in the United States” by Corinne T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett (American Historical Review, 2020)
- “Between Africa and America: Recalibrating Black Americans' Relationship to the Diaspora” by Nemata Blyden and Jeannette Eileen Jones (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Who Is ‘Essential’?: US Immigration Policy in Historical Context” by Mae Ngai (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “‘Education Embargo’: Scholars at Risk Hosts Discussion on How Immigration Bans Restrict Knowledge” by Kritika Agarwal (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Human Rights in the Era of Trump” by Mark Philip Bradley (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Mexican Migration History in the Era of Border Walls” by Julia G. Young (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Travel Bans in Historical Perspective: Executive Orders Have Defined ‘Terrorists’ since Nixon” by Ibrahim Al-Marashi (Perspectives on History, 2017)
- “Reliving Injustice 75 Years Later: Executive Order 9066 Then and Now” by Karen Inouye (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Today’s Banned Immigrants Are No Different from Our Immigrant Ancestors” by Tyler Anbinder (AHA Today, 2017)
- “Denver’s Asian Americans” by William Wei (Perspectives on History, 2016)
- “Erasing Memory, Erasing People: Armenian Genocide Remembrance and Denial at Harvard” by Alexandros K. Kyrou (Perspectives on History, 2015)
Monuments
- “A Juneteenth Dilemma: Freedom and Self-Determination” by Channon Miller and T.J. Tallie (Perspectives on History, 2021)
- “Erasing History or Making History? Race, Racism, and the American Memorial Landscape,” a Virtual AHA webinar featuring David W. Blight, Annette Gordon-Reed, and James Grossman (YouTube, 2020)
- “A Monument to Black Resistance and Strength: Considering Washington, DC’s Emancipation Memorial” by Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Named for the Enemy: The US Army’s Confederate Problem” by Ty Seidule (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Rumors of War Arrives in the South: Changes to Richmond’s Monumental Landscape” by Ryan K. Smith (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Setting the Lost Cause on Fire: Protesters Target the United Daughters of the Confederacy Headquarters” by Karen L. Cox (Perspectives on History, 2020)
- “Can We Right the Past? Memory and the Present” by Caroline E. Janney (AHA Today, 2018)
- “Monumental Effort: Historians and the Creation of the National Monument to Reconstruction” by Kritika Agarwal (AHA Today, 2017)
- “The Struggle to Commemorate Reconstruction” by Sarah Jones Weicksel (AHA Today, 2018)
- “What Should We Do with Confederate Monuments?” by Dane Kennedy (AHA Today, 2017)
International Contexts and Comparisons
- “Teaching with Integrity: Confronting a Nation’s Past” with Katharina Matro (YouTube, 2022)
- “On Silence and History” by Lilia Topouzova (American Historical Review, 2021)
- “Walking While Indian, Walking While Black: Policing in a Colonial City” by Sylvia Sellers-García (American Historical Review, 2021)
- “The Age of the Witness and the Age of Surveillance: Romani Holocaust Testimony and the Perils of Digital Scholarship” by Ari Joskowicz (American Historical Review, 2020)
- “Ari Joskowicz on His Article ‘The Age of the Witness and the Age of Surveillance’” (AHR Interview, 2020)
- “The Global Politics of Anti-Racism: A View from the Canal Zone” by Rebecca Herman (American Historical Review, 2020)
- “AHR Roundtable: Rethinking Anti-Semitism: Introduction” by Jonathan Judaken (American Historical Review, 2018)
- “Encouraging Nuance in Holocaust History” by Rebecca Erbelding (AHA Today, 2018)
- “Reframing Indigeneity: The Case of Assyrians in Northern Mesopotamia” by Sargon George Donabed and Daniel Joseph Tower (Perspectives on History, 2018)
- “AHR Conversation: Walls, Borders, and Boundaries in World History” by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Tamar Herzog, Daniel Jütte, Carl Nightingale, William Rankin, and Keren Weitzberg (American Historical Review, 2017)
- “‘Condemned to Rootlessness and Unable to Budge’: Roma, Migration Panics, and Internment in the Habsburg Empire” by Tara Zahra (American Historical Review, 2017)
- “Fatal Differences: Suicide, Race, and Forced Labor in the Americas” by Marc A. Hertzman (American Historical Review, 2017)
- “Reckoning with Colonial History: A Berlin Museum Faces the Future” by Steve Hochstadt (Perspectives on History, 2017)
- “Rumors of Slavery: Defending Emancipation in a Hostile Caribbean” by Anne Eller (American Historical Review, 2017)
- “AHR Roundtable: The Archives of Decolonization: Introduction” by Farina Mir (American Historical Review, 2015)
- “The Colonial Rule of Law and the Legal Regime of Exception: Frontier ‘Fanaticism’ and State Violence in British India” by Elizabeth Kolsky (American Historical Review, 2015)
- “Looking beyond Mau Mau: Archiving Violence in the Era of Decolonization” by Caroline Elkins (American Historical Review, 2015)
Explore the Resources Using Zotero
To sort and filter entries from The History of Racist Violence in the United States: Resources from the American Historical Association using categories and topics, please visit the associated Zotero Library.
Remote Teaching Resources
The AHA’s Remote Teaching Resources compiles materials and tools to help historians develop courses and teach remotely in online and hybrid environments.
The Assault on the Capitol in Historical Perspective: Resources for Educators
We know teaching the events of January 6, 2021—which are not a “moment,” but the product of a long history—presents a familiar, yet unusually urgent, challenge: how can students use historical knowledge and thinking to understand current crises? Here are some resources that might help.
Historians on the Confederate Monument Debate
In the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy, historians across the country provided important historical context and insight to the public. The AHA compiled statements that our members, fellow historical societies, AHA council members, and staff have made in op-eds, interviews, and other media conversations about the importance of historical thinking and knowledge within the current debate.
A Bibliography of Historians' Responses to COVID-19
The AHA is compiling a professionally vetted bibliography of historians’ responses to COVID-19 as a resource for the public, teachers, and scholars seeking historical perspectives on the current crisis and its local and global impacts. The bibliography includes commentary and publications by historians in both scholarly and popular periodical literature; recorded lectures and webcasts; and digitized primary source materials from past epidemics and pandemics. In amassing these references, the AHA seeks to provide a space where anyone, regardless of expertise, can find digital historical material relevant to the COVID-19 crisis.
AHR Member Access
- Start at historians.org/myaha.
- Login with your email address and password.
- On the MY AHA page, scroll down in the white part of the page until you see the section AHA Publications on the left side. Click the link under that for American Historical Review at Oxford University Press.
- You'll then come to a transfer page where you click Continue to the AHR at Oxford Journals.
- Then on the Oxford site at academic.oup.com/ahr, you'll see AHA Member Access at the top right. As long as you see those words, you're logged in and can access all articles. Just ignore the Sign In and Register links—once you see AHA Member Access, you're set.