American Historical Association

Professor Glimp is a historian focusing on the U.S. South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, among her many honors, which are truly too long to list in this introduction.

She was the first Black woman to serve as president of the American Historical Association.

Thavolia Glimp, welcome to DoSouth.

Thank you so much for having me.

Goys believe in the word becoming flesh, but Jews believe in the flesh becoming word, a more natural, rational incarnation.

By way of further introduction, I will now quote a remark made to me by the who-shall-remain-nameless then-president of the American Historical Association when I met him at a symposium back in my student days just after the Second World War.

Ah, he said, limply pressing my hand.

Blum, did you say? A Jewish historian? Though the man surely intended this remark to wound me, it merely succeeded in bringing delight.

Go to corbin.edu, click Faculty, click History Department, then click on my name.

And you'll find what's basically a reproduction of my CV, rife with only the highlights, the nine Corbin Distinguished Teacher Prizes.

1968, 1969, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001, the American Historical Association Historian of the Year Award, 1993, the honorary degrees from LSE and the National University of Singapore, and a fairly up-to-date publication list and bibliography.

My books still in print include A General History of Taxation, Taxation Without Representation, A History of America and Ten Taxes, Import Quotas, Export Subsidies, A Journey Through Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade, Embargo, A History, Blood Money, The Taxation of Slavery, and George Seawall Bootwell, Abolitionists, Suffragist, and Father of the IRS.

There was recognition that times were changing and a sense of loss permeated the public consciousness.

The Closing of the Frontier In 1893, at the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago, Frederick Turner declared, "...and now, four centuries from the discovery of America at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone and with its going has closed the first period of American history." Turner described westward expansion as the defining feature of American identity.

It produced a nationalization tendency and promoted democracy, individualism, and opportunity.

The frontier represented the meeting point between savagery and civilization.

Look at the 1776 report that he issued at the end of his first term that represents the kind of history that he thinks should be adopted in every educational institution in America.

It was blasted by the American Historical Association with over 40 of the leading scholarly and academic institutions joining in and saying, this is not history, it's political propaganda.

Let me give you a couple of simple examples.

The 1776 report lists the great threats to American democracy.

His book, Lincoln's Code, won the Bancroft Prize, the most prestigious honor in American history, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer, among other things.

He's a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a distinguished lecturer for both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians.

Tonight, he will be jumping off from his most recent book, The Radical Fund, How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, which came out in 2025 by Simon & Schuster.

The book is a revelation.

What is the opposition to this? What's their argument? What are they saying?

The American Historical Association sent letters to lawmakers urging the Congress there and the state to reject the bill, arguing that it distorts historical facts about the founding of the United States.

The legal picture, though, is sort of mixed.

Arkansas law has been blocked, a similar law, though the state attorney general said that they planned this.

The Presidential Records Act enacted in 1978 states that White House records are government property and must be saved, turned over to the National Archives after President Lee's office, and for the most part, eventually be made public.

But the Trump administration has said that Congress overstepped its authority by ordering the executive branch to save its records, prompting a lawsuit from the American Historical Association and watchdog groups.

The issue may ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court.

Friday's hearing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit highlighted President Trump's belief that White House records should essentially be treated as the president's personal property.