Akim Reinhardt is a professor of History at Towson University in Baltimore. Born and raised in the Bronx, he has also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. He is the author of several books with more in the hopper. Email: yankeeslim [at] gmail.com
Website: https://ThePublicProfessor.com
by Akim Reinhardt Since the Civil War, the American South has mostly been a one-party region. However, by the turn of the 21st century, its political affiliation had actually swung from the Democrats to the Republicans. Here’s how it happened. It is not an oversimplification to say that slavery was the single most important issue…
by Akim Reinhardt I don’t believe in gods. I believe in metaphors. Once upon a time, people all around the world had many gods, lots of metaphors for the experiences of their lives. And by sacrificing or praying to each god, they acknowledged the forces that shaped their existence. Gods of luck, of thunder, of…
by Akim Reinhardt Last month, the national newspaper-cum-multi media endeavor Indian Country Today released its list of the worst five U.S. presidents vis a vis American Indians. As a professor of American Indian history, I was immediately curious about what they had come up with. The list, in order, reads: Andrew JacksonDwight EisenhowerGeorge W. Bush,…
by Akim Reinhardt I first met Alfred nine years ago, shortly after moving into my current home. I was brand new to the neighborhood and had only been there a week when Baltimore was blanketed with a fresh coat of snow eight inches deep. Around here, that’s well more than enough to shutter schools and…
by Akim Reinhardt When is role playing an innocent expression of playfulness, and when does it cross over into a form of unconscious catharsis that is born of and reinforces either personal psychological trauma or problematic social norms? Role playing is something we do from a very early age. Pretending to be someone else, particularly…
by Akim Reinhardt We may now be gazing upon the fading days of the Occupy movement as an actual episode in which numerous, large scale occupations are taking place and having immediate impact. Then again, maybe not. But if so, it is perhaps time to begin reflecting upon the movement and how we might measure…
by Akim Reinhardt On the morning after Mayor Michael Bloomberg had the New York City police expel the Occupy Wall Street Protestors from Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night, I wrote that the next 24-48 hours could very well be pivotal. Well, it’s now been forty-eight hours since I woke up to hear…
by Akim Reinhardt I’m currently at work on a book about the decline of community in America. I won’t go into much detail here, but the basic premise is that, barring a few possible exceptions, there are no longer any actual communities in the United States. At least, not the kinds that humans have lived…
by Akim Reinhardt I was eating a slice at one of my neighborhood pizzerias the other day. Well actually it was two slices and a drink: either a plastic bottle of corn syrup, or a large styrofoam cup with ice and corn syrup, your choice. That’s their lunch special for five and change. I went…
by Akim Reinhardt On Thursday I will put a summer of research and writing behind me and return to my professorial duties in the classroom. When I do, I will greet a fresh crop of college students, as I have done every year since 1999. I often get asked if I notice any difference, if…
by Akim Reinhardt Over the last twenty years or so, there has been a proliferation of food shows on television, both here in the U.S. and abroad. In America, The Food Network has been dedicated to that format sincethe 1990s, and a host of other channels also dabble in the genre. It’s not going out…
Sometimes I don’t stand during the national anthem at baseball games. I often do not remove my cap, and almost never place my hand over my heart. Why? Because deep down I believe that group-think is actually antithetical to freedom.
by Akim Reinhardt Mr. Sabatini? I think that was his name. It’s hard to remember. Maybe it was a plumb position awarded to him because he had buttered up the right school official. Maybe he was owed a favor by a union representative. But for whatever reason, he was not among us very often. There…
by Akim Reinhardt There is pervasive form of Americana that is a pubescent rite of passage for so many: car culture. But having been born and raised in the Bronx, I never acclimated it. I walked to P.S. 24. I walked to J.H.S. 141. I walked or took a city bus to John F. Kennedy…
As Americans deserted the countryside during and World War II, rural America began to sag. Since then, the trend has largely continued unabated down to the present day. Since 1990, over 700 rural counties have lost at least 10% of their population. Half of all rural counties in America now have more deaths than births each year.
by Akim Reinhardt I opposed the second Iraq War from the start. My stance was simple. I did not believe the reasons for war being served up by the hawks. There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had been involved in the September 11th attack. And I was very skeptical about the claim that he…
by Akim Reinhardt During the 1990s, there was much hand-wringing in some quarters at the prospect of America’s beautiful mosaic fracturing into an unworkable, divided society. Doomsayers fretted that Americans were no longer identifying themselves as, well, Americans first and foremost. Critics claimed that identity politics were the culprit in this emerging crisis. That too…
by Akim Reinhardt It wasn’t so very long ago that some Americans held people as slaves, other human beings as their own private property, as if that person were a horse or a chair, to do with, to use, abuse, exploit, beat, and rape as they pleased. What’s more, until the late 1840s most Americans…
Every year it seems, the weeks at the end of the calendar designated as the “Christmas Season” expand further and further in the direction of the blessed sunny months. Like a plodding, methodical, remorseless, invading imperial army, moving inward slowly and ineluctably towards the capital, grinding up territory with terrifying banality, the “Christmas Season's” expansion…
On Thanksgiving Day, 1970, Indians took Plymouth back from the Pilgrims. It was the work of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which had been founded in 1968 by Dennis Banks and several other Anishinaabe men (more commonly known as “Ojibway” or “Chippewa”) living in Minneapolis. Banks and his partners originally formed AIM to help the…