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Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society

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Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society

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Phi Alpha Theta is the National History Honor Society for Colleges and Universities.

Phi Alpha Theta, founded in 1921, is the National History Honor Society for Four Year Colleges and Universities. Our mission is to promote the study of history through the encouragement of research, good teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among students and teachers of History.

09/11/2026

Today marks twenty-five years since September 11, 2001.

We remember the 2,977 people who were killed that morning at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We remember the first responders who ran toward danger, and the forty passengers and crew of Flight 93 who fought back and kept a fourth hijacked plane from reaching its target. We also remember the thousands more who have since died from illnesses tied to their time at Ground Zero, honored today for the first time with their own moment of silence.

A quarter century is long enough that many of our members were not yet born, and long enough that the people who lived through it are growing older. Both are reasons to keep telling this story clearly and carefully, the way historians do.

If you have a memory of that day, or of someone you lost, we would be honored to hold space for it in the comments.

09/07/2026

Happy Labor Day from all of us at Phi Alpha Theta.

Here is a detail that surprises people: the holiday itself is twelve years older than its status as a federal holiday. The first Labor Day parade happened on September 5, 1882, when somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 workers marched through Lower Manhattan, organized by New York's Central Labor Union. Nobody agrees on who actually had the idea. Some credit Peter J. McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Others credit Matthew Maguire, a machinist and CLU secretary. The U.S. Department of Labor still lists the founder as disputed.

It took another twelve years, and a genuinely difficult national crisis, the Pullman Strike, before Congress made it a federal holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill on June 28, 1894, while the strike was still going on.

Whatever your plans today, we hope you get a real day off. Any labor history buffs in the group? What is the detail about this holiday that always surprises people when you tell them?

09/01/2026

Calling all student historians! The Welebaethan: A Journal of History at Cal State Fullerton is accepting submissions for their next issue, and we wanted our members to know about it. They're looking for scholarly articles and essays (including article-length theses), plus reviews of books, exhibitions, films, and games of interest to historians.

The deadline is Tuesday, September 15, 2026 at noon PDT. CSUF students can submit directly, and students from other institutions can too, as long as a faculty member sends a brief letter of recommendation straight to the journal by the deadline. Full guidelines are at welebaethan.org/submissions.

Know a student sitting on a paper that deserves a wider audience? Tag them below!

08/24/2026

Two hundred and twelve years ago today, the White House was burning.

On August 24, 1814, British troops marched into Washington and set fire to the Capitol, the Treasury, and the President's House. The story most of us learned in school centers on First Lady Dolley Madison, who refused to leave until Gilbert Stuart's life-size portrait of George Washington was safely out of the building.

It's a great story. It's also incomplete.

The people who actually did the physical work of unscrewing the massive frame from the wall and getting the canvas out the door were White House steward Jean Pierre Sioussat, gardener Thomas McGrath, and Paul Jennings, an enslaved man who worked in the household and later became the first person to publish a memoir of life inside the White House. Jennings' own account, written decades afterward, is one of the only firsthand records of what actually happened that day, and it gives credit to the people who did the lifting.

None of this makes Dolley Madison's role less real. She was the one who insisted the portrait be saved and stayed in a house under threat to make sure it happened. But the fuller version, the one with more names in it, is simply better history than the version with just one.

What's a story from your own research where the popular version left someone important out?

08/14/2026

Nashville, get ready. Our 2027 Biennial Convention lands at the Sheraton Grand Nashville Downtown, January 6–8, and the theme says it all: History in the Heartland. Three days of paper presentations, chapter reunions, and celebrating the research you've been working on all year. We're already looking forward to Music City in January (turns out it's a great time to visit). Registration details are coming soon.

Who's already planning their trip?

08/05/2026

Here's a fact that surprises almost everyone: the Statue of Liberty's foundation went into the ground two full years before the statue herself ever set foot (well, torch) in New York Harbor.

On August 5, 1884, in a downpour so heavy it kept away half the invited guests, the cornerstone for Lady Liberty's pedestal was laid on what was then called Bedloe's Island. About 1,500 people showed up anyway, roughly a third of them French. The statue itself was still being assembled in Paris. It wouldn't arrive, dismantled into 350 crated pieces, for another year.

The pedestal almost didn't get built at all. Congress refused to fund it, New York's governor vetoed state money for it, and it took a public fundraising campaign (Joseph Pulitzer among those leading it) to finish the job in time.

We love this one because it's a reminder that the monuments we take for granted usually have a messier, more human backstory than the postcard version. What's a landmark near you with a surprising origin story like this one? Tell us in the comments.

07/29/2026

People sometimes talk about history like it's a closed book. All the facts settled, nothing left to find. We'd push back on that a little.

The past doesn't change, sure. But our understanding of it shifts all the time. A box of letters turns up in an attic. An archive gets digitized, and suddenly a scholar in Ohio can read a document that used to sit locked in one building an ocean away. Someone asks a question nobody thought to ask before. And the story we all thought we knew gets a little truer.

That's the part we love around here. History isn't a monument you visit. It's a conversation that's still going.

When's the last time something you read made you rethink a piece of history you thought was settled?

07/27/2026

A gentle nudge for our faculty advisors: fall is closer than it looks, and the chapters that start strong are usually the ones already thinking about it now.

The first induction, that first meeting, a guest lecture, a research night, the small welcome that makes a nervous sophomore feel like they actually belong. None of it has to be elaborate. It just helps to start early.

So we'll ask: what's the first thing your chapter does each fall to bring new members in? Share it below. Somebody else reading this probably needs exactly that idea.

07/24/2026

If you studied history, you've heard the question at least a hundred times: "so what are you going to do with that?"

Here's the answer we wish more people led with. You learn to read critically when the clock's running. To build a case from evidence and defend it to people who disagree. To find the one thread that matters in a pile of conflicting sources. To write clearly enough to change someone's mind. To tell a claim from a fact.

Every employer we know says they're desperate for exactly those skills. Historians spend years building them. With a new school year almost here, that's worth saying out loud, especially to the students in your life who are still deciding.

07/22/2026

We'll just say it: we're already excited about Nashville.

The Phi Alpha Theta Biennial Convention, "History in the Heartland," brings members from more than 1000 chapters to the Sheraton Grand Nashville Downtown, January 6 through 8, 2027. Three days of scholarship, good conversation, and a city that knows a thing or two about telling a story.

Registration is open now, and the Call for Papers closes November 13. If January feels far away, trust us, it arrives fast once the fall semester starts.

All the details are here: phialphatheta.org/2027-phi-alpha-theta-biennial

Address

134 Whitaker Road, Suite A
Tampa, FL
33549

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 4:30pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+18133574329

Website

http://www.phialphatheta.org/

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