Megan Kate Nelson, a Colorado-born graduate of Littleton High School, is a writer and historian living in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She has written about the Civil War, U.S. Western history and American culture for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine and others. She earned her B.A. in history and literature from Harvard University […]
Reconstruction
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
Sunlit Excerpt: “Saving Yellowstone” views an iconic landscape through lens of Reconstruction, national expansion
Prologue Lost The Cut, Montana Territory. October 1870. The dog stopped along the trail ahead of him, growling. Yellowstone Jack Baronett reined in his horse and dismounted, taking his gun from the saddle. He soon saw what had captured the dog’s attention: an animal was dragging itself slowly up the side of the Cut, a […]
Posted inCartoons, Opinion
What’d I Miss?: Stuck in a disheartening cycle of American attitudes toward race
Myra has missed 30 years of her life, due to a coma, but has found a new friendship with her young neighbor, Ossie. Together, they both are searching for their place in this world. < Previous | Start from the beginning | Next >
Posted inColoradans, Culture
Training white people in Colorado to be “anti-racist” (not just “not racist”) is one step in the fight to correct historic wrongs
On a crisp Saturday morning in Boulder, 50 people, most of whom were white, streamed into the basement of a stately old downtown church to spend three hours immersed in the history of racism in America, a lesson that included uncomfortable truths, disturbing images and a belief that knowledge, ever powerful, could lead to change. […]