Indiana, a state claimed as “free” from its statehood in 1816, was nevertheless the 7th highest non-southern state with racial terror lynchings, with 18 separate incidents. When searching through Indiana newspapers, many stories emerge of outlaw vigilantes who terrorized and brutalized African-Americans, sometimes for nothing more than alleged crimes. Since many were lynched before they received equal justice under the law, many of their lives ended tragically through injustice under the lariat. To learn more about Flossie Bailey, check out Nicole Poletika's article from the Indiana History Blog.

Learn about other stories of lynching at Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) and Hoosier State Chronicles (www.hoosierstatechronicles.org).

Learn more Indiana History from the Indiana Historical Bureau: http://www.in.gov/history/

Visit our Blog: https://blog.history.in.gov/

Learn more about the history relevance campaign at https://www.historyrelevance.com/.

Credits: Written and produced by Justin Clark. Footage from CNN, PBS Newshour, the Guardian, Dryerbuzz, and the Equal Justice Initiative Photo by Citizensheep on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA Photo by Fraser Mummery on Foter.com / CC BY Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash Music: "Ether" by Silent Partner, "Dramatic, Sad Ambient Song" by MovieMusic, and "Slow, Dramatic, Acoustic Song" by MovieMusic.

March 21, 2026

The Joy of Finitude: Lessons from "The Bicentennial Man”

In an age that promises expanded lifetimes and even the “singularity,” a melding of humans with technology for the purposes of immortality, grappling with the finality of death doesn’t seem like a topic for science fiction. But it was for science fiction legend Isaac Asimov. Fifty years ago, he wrote a story that tackled the subject head on with grace, humanity, and empathy: “The Bicentennial Man.” In this short but poignant tale, Asimov paradoxically reflects on the finality of death in a way that celebrates life, and ultimately concludes that consciously anticipating our death is what makes us fully human.

January 25, 2026

A Gore Vidal Retrospective: Part 2: Playwright, Essayist, and Provocateur (1956-1974)

In the mid 1950s, Gore Vidal took a sabbatical from writing novels to try writing plays—specifically plays for television. At the time, television was an extremely new medium, with broadcasters green-lighting a wide swath of productions. In this milieu, live television plays became wildly popular, and Vidal wanted to get in on the action. His plays varied, from wholly original creations to adaptations of famous works.

October 3, 2025

America’s Biographer: A Gore Vidal Retrospective: Part 1: Early Years (1946-1954)

I’ve come to the conclusion that Gore Vidal is, without question or reservation, my favorite author. His interests are my interests (politics, literature, philosophy, history), his politics are largely my politics (a liberal or libertarian socialism), and his writing is what I aspire to as a wordsmith.

September 14, 2025

The Politics of Humility: Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

For us to rebuild a robust democratic culture, we need to get over having our egos offended and accept that we don’t have all the answers. In short, we need a politics of humility. If we all committed ourselves to thinking before we spoke, listening more instead of shouting over others, and doing the homework needed to articulate informed opinions, this country would be a lot better off. Abraham Lincoln provides us with such an example to emulate. As he said nearly two centuries ago, at the start of his political career, we must gain the esteem of others by rendering ourselves worthy of their esteem. The way to do that is by correctly apportioning our confidence in relation to our competence. Only then can we genuinely make a more just, peaceful, and generous nation.

July 29, 2025

Short Book Reviews: American History

The novelist and essayist Gore Vidal once remarked that, “my subject is America,” and I, too, have devoted my life to understanding the United States. And like Vidal, I often research and write about American history in the form of immanent critique, which underscores the difference between the nation’s ideals of liberty and equality and its actual manifestations of power. The following book reviews cover the complex nature of American history, from Lawrence Wright’s day-by-day account of the Camp David Accords to Timothy Egan’s narrative history of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana during the 1920s. Acknowledging America’s successes—and its profound failures—is an indispensable practice for possessing a real picture of the United States. I hope that the following reviews are but a small contribution to such a picture.

April 16, 2025

Short Book Reviews: Science and Society II

What ties all these disparate reads together is a grappling with the human condition and our relationship to the broader world. Each book left me with a better understanding of the cosmos than I had before, even when I didn’t always like them. Such is the life of a curious reader amongst the billions of stars and stories.

March 17, 2025

Crypto and Financial Euphoria

While it would be easy to say this is all new, a consequence of the internet’s revolutionizing effect on capitalism, history shows that speculative booms and bust are a recurrent, endemic part of the economy. This is especially true for items that provide little “use-value,” as Marx referred to it in Capital. Cryptocurrencies are overwhelmingly purchased as a speculative asset rather than a means of exchange in the United States. Only 4.4% of crypto users actually use it to purchase other things, with 92.6% keeping it as a speculative asset, Business Insider noted. Crypto is nothing more than another permutation in a centuries’ long metamorphosis of financial flim-flam.

February 17, 2025

Short Book Reviews: Presidential History

The following seven short book reviews cover a wide-range of topics related to the American presidency. Two works on Lincoln, from renowned historian David Herbert Donald and travel author Jan Morris, explore the multifaceted life and times of America’s greatest president. Doris Kearns Goodwin, an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson and acclaimed presidential historian, gives us a penetrating portrait into LBJ and an insightful meditation on presidential leadership. Michael Dobbs’ day-by-day breakdown of the Watergate scandal and the downfall of President Richard Nixon is a gripping account of a presidency in crisis. The short presidency of Warren G. Harding has been much maligned by historians, but Ryan Walters’ revisionist history of the “Jazz Age President” will make you take a second look at Harding and his accomplishments. Finally, in master historian H.W. Brands’ book on FDR and Charles Lindbergh, we see the debate between internationalism and isolationism, a debate of growing importance in our era.

January 15, 2025

Obsession and Desire: Stephen King and John Carpenter’s Christine

Orson Welles reputedly said to filmmaker Henry Jaglom that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation.” Whether Wells actually said this is up for debate, but nevertheless the statement rings true. John Carpenter, like Stanley Kubrick and Welles himself, epitomizes this maxim as a filmmaker, especially with Christine. He removes so much of the unnecessary fluff of King’s novel to get to the heart of the story, which is that an unhealthy obsession can kill us all. No object of desire, whether it be inanimate or human, makes us whole. Only our own inner life and the meaningful connections we make with others completes our humanity. Arnie represents the perennially broken soul in post-war America, placating his own limitations through an object of adoration. However, in the end, the adored object obliterates him. The world is not full of spiritual phantoms, but human ones— the refuse of unfulfilled dreams. We don’t need ghosts to make the world scary; it’s haunting enough as it is.

November 1, 2024

Hope in the Machine: Towards a Humanistic Technology

Today we face a choice, one that Fromm anticipated all those years ago. “We are at the crossroads:,” he wrote, “one road leads to a completely mechanized society with man as a helpless cog in the machine—if not to destruction by thermonuclear war; the other to a renaissance of humanism and hope—to a society that puts technique in the service of man's well-being.” I believe that the path of humanism and hope outlined by Fromm is our chance to rebuild the world for human beings, rather than machines. It only takes us imagining a better world and then advocating for it.