#political-history

#political-history

Today is Saturday, Feb. 7, the 38th day of 2026. There are 327 days left in the year. Today in history: On Feb. 7, 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as the first democratically elected president of Haiti. (He was overthrown by the military the following September.) Also on this date: In 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire began; one of the worst city fires in American history, it destroyed over 1,500 buildings in central Baltimore.

In 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition returned to St. Louis, more than two years after setting out for the Pacific Northwest. In 1955, a jury in Sumner, Mississippi, acquitted two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of killing Black teenager Emmett Till. (The two later admitted to the crime in an interview with Look magazine.) In 1957, nine Black students who entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside.

Cultural and political movements often face backlash, as seen historically with Jim Crow and civil rights, and more recently with Trump’s campaign responding to Obama.

St. James Park is the site of a protest against President Trump's policies, marking it as a significant location for political statements and actions, including high-profile anti-Trump protests.

"Nothing...can sharpen the historian's mind like defeat." - Eric Hobsbawm, reflecting the value of learning from defeats and how many intellectuals have enriched our understanding from their own failures.

Norman Tebbit, who has died at the age of 94, was at the heart of Margaret Thatcher's political revolution. His philosophy of self-reliance formed the core of his political beliefs.

"I stopped going in 2020, when marches were no longer allowed. Now it's just red flags and celebration. Maybe this is what numbness feels like just another holiday," Vinze told DW.

The resisters that I researched, by contrast, were laser-focused on creating change, whether through satire in 1920s Germany or modern-day peace advocacy.

"Buckley is often remembered as the architect of the modern conservative movement... Yet today, almost two decades since Buckley's death in 2008, the conservative landscape looks different."

The left's shift away from Leninism to leaderless horizontalism in the wake of the Soviet Union's fall hampered the coherence needed for effective protest movements.

The 1968 Race Relations Act strengthened protections for immigrant communities and ensured access to quality education and employment for second generation immigrants.