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Susan Philpott

@susanphilpott.bsky.social
318 followers 219 following 91 posts

Public historian of the struggle for justice and equality. Lover of podcasts and family, including our tiny dog Chester. Recently widowed.

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Reposted by Susan Philpott
Barbara Waxer 🌈 @barbara-waxer.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
When Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens begins playing “Old Corn Liquor,” a traditional Black American folk tune, acclaimed Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man recognizes similarities to Chinese pentatonic music and spontaneously joins in. The joy on their faces says it all.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
In the Spiderman: Homecoming scene at the Washington Monument, the park ranger is wearing a ball cap outside instead of a flat hat.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It's just history, Jason. We learn all about you menfolk
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 09/10/2026
Productivity as an adult is just an endless process of applying new psychological tricks and operant conditioning to yourself until an acceptable number of tasks are completed.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Strength training. Watching YouTube videos about people who live in their cars. And the Murdaughs, for some reason.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I'm having one of those days, too.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
If you're in DC, it's playing at Ford's Theatre starting September 10.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The daily debate: stay and uphold what we can or leave.
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Pamela Toler (she/her) @pdtoler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
One of the best parts of being a historian? Changing my mind. Sometimes one letter or one newspaper article sends me back to rethink everything I thought I knew. That's not failure. That's good history. 🗃️
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Reposting so I remember to read. I'm heading to Newport in September!
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Emily Ramshaw @eramshaw.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
In the past decade, more than 5,000 women have served in combat roles. And the occupation standards for these roles have always been gender neutral by law, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s false insistence that requirements were lowered for women and that there were quotas made for women.
19thnews.org
Women have served in combat for a decade. Lawmakers want to protect that right.
“As far as I’m concerned, the only person who doesn’t think that women should have the opportunity to serve in these roles is Hegseth,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, a lead sponsor of a new bill.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Equal Rights Amendment also.
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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
disco park ranger (wait for it)
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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Today is Monday, July 13 Good morning ❤️ eat take your meds hydrate tell your people you love them let them love you back We are here. This is real. Let's build a home for each other and fight like hell. All you fascists bound to lose ✊
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Sent these to my therapist at 9 am. I’m totally normal, why do you ask??
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Dr. Cara Berg Powers @clbergpowers.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Believe Women is an epistemological stance. It doesn't mean you assume that every single woman is telling the truth and women never lie. It means you understand that in the system that we exist in, there's much more risk and pain for women coming forward about abuse than there is anything to gain.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
My friends and I put on a Bicentennial show for our parents. Then my dad took my brother and me to see the fireworks on the National Mall.
A young girl wearing a sailor outfit and tap shoes performing a dance on an outside patio.Two girls in leotards twirling batons on an patio..
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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
This is wonderful. Finding a mystery daguerreotype with deep historical meaning.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Ms.Duck seems to live and work somewhere close to BEPA. I wonder if she ever stops in.
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Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
To all my queer and trans buds, even those I don’t know, if someone’s coming for you behind your identity, let me know so I can give them a real problem to handle. Being a problem is my speciality, and I’ve chosen to embrace it. Let me use this weapon on your behalf.
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Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
It's Joan of Arc's feast day today. Here's a poem for everyone who needs to remember that there's more to life than the fight.
from 'The Vanishing Song' by Jay Hulme

'What rage or madness drives you?'

Joan of Arc, March 1430

You will not find Joan of Arc in the Bible, she is something stranger than scripture. Her sword rattles among the saints, arms aching for another fight.

When she arrived she found Heaven more difficult than expected -a place of pure justice; her steel unnecessary. Hands unbloodied. Speeches unspoken.

Joan waits for the prayers of wronged women. Her hands grasp the pommel of a blade. When God asks what she is doing in this place of peace, she says:

Lord, you have made me for war, and I have no idea what to do with the gift of all I was fighting for.
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Jeanne Theoharis @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Given the evisceration of the VRA, it's useful to listen to Coretta Scott King: “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it every generation.” She understood nonviolent direct action was "militant" and essential and spent her entire life fighting.
Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King holding hands marching with others in the Selma to Montgomery March.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
You don't see the 1913 Suffrage Procession as groundbreaking?
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Thank you
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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
GIVEAWAY! Dead Weight is coming out next week and to celebrate I'm giving away two copies that have been personally bitten by Uggi and will be personally signed by me and shipped to the winners wherever they live! To enter just like and share this post and I'll select the winners on May 26th!
Uggi the dog next to my hand, holding a copy of Dead Weight Two copies of Dead Weight with teethmarks
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Chester is reminding me to enjoy the lovely weather.
A small white fluffy dog on a leash with his tongue out with a blooming tree in the background
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 29/04/2026
This is coming from a place of warmth and acceptance… -It’s ‘sleight of hand’ -It’s ‘bated breath’ -It’s ‘lo and behold’ -It’s ‘one fell swoop’ -It’s ‘brass tacks’ -It’s ‘free rein’
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The Map Center @mapcenter.com · 26/04/2026
It's a shame that "defend your culture" always means "hate strangers different from you" and never "enact anti-pollution laws so that you can go fishing with your grandkids the way your grandpa taught you."
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
And the goose and duck poop.
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Aubrey Gordon @yrfatfriend.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
FINALLY, an episode about alleged sex cults and weighing your own poop!!
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
men can’t understand what it’s like for women to see story after story after story of women being victims of sexual violence in a culture where it’s routine; what it’s like to live in a world that is fundamentally hostile to our existence. it’s a wonder we leave the fucking house, let alone thrive.
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Jerad Walker @jeradwalker.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
What a beautiful moment.
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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
How to end an interview: In 1889, Frederick Douglass told a visitor to his DC home that any government that would "grant the right of suffrage and deny itself the power to protect that right is...a sham and a fraud." Then he grabbed his violin and played the Star Spangled Banner.
Mr. Douglass rose, and, taking the violin, played once more to the delight of the PRESS representative "The Star Spangled Banner, and the goodbye was exchanged, and thus closed the longest interview ever obtained with the "Sage of Cedar Hill."
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
In 1854, after watching the federal government deploy 2000 federal troops and spend $40,000 sending Anthony Burns back into slavery, Boston's Amos Adams Lawrence said “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”
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Omg. WTF is Happening? @lalahaenzy.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
I didn't think it could get any better, but this is golden
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
An amazing read. Lessons from Minnesota.
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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 27/01/2026
brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
One of my favorites!
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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 11/01/2026
Hi, I’m John Marks, I’m a public historian and writer. I’ve been helping history museums prepare for the nation’s 250th anniversary for 9 years now. Despite everything else happening in history, I’m still excited about this anniversary—and you should be too. Here’s why. 🧵 /1
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 30/12/2025
I'm going to share my CPTSD-informed end-of-year reflective exercises. I'm not a therapist, just a veteran of it and this is the kind of language that works for me. 1) a) One sheet of paper, 10min: what moved forward this year, even A TINY BIT: progress toward a goal or an internal shift, whatever.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Liking this from work at a historic site with sold out tickets this morning. Very aware what day it is.
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Kevin M. Levin @civilwarmemory.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
This is incredible news. Today, Virginia officials will unveil a statue of Barbara Johns at the Capitol to replace one of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had stood for more than a century. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
washingtonpost.com
Statue of Black teen who fought segregation replaces Robert E. Lee at U.S. Capitol
Barbara Rose Johns was only 16 when she led a walkout in 1951 to protest horrendous conditions at her segregated high school for Black students in rural Farmville, Virginia.
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Leah Sottile @leahsottile.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
If you can believe it, January 1, 2026 marks ten years since the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. For Portland Monthly, I wrote about how the ensuing decade was dominated by anxious men and a culture of lawlessness. www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-cit...
pdxmonthly.com
The Takeover of Malheur Kicked Off a Decade of Lawlessness
The wildlife refuge occupation set the stage for Trump, January 6, and so much more.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
My hot take: Pies are good. All of them. Anytime is a good time for pie.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
> @samsteindc.bsky.social
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