The Silence of Presidents

Not until Thomas Holt delivered his address in 1994 did any AHA president tackle the fraught history of racial ideologies. It took a black historian to consider the subject of black history, and it also took a woman,. Natalie C. Davis, to posit women as subjects worth studying. These long-standing voids were part of a larger trend that erased not only the histories of specific groups, but also the political and social upheavals of their day.