American History Tellers

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The Gilded Age | Exclusion | 4 Aug 12, 2020

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Amid the glamor and growth of the Gilded Age, racism and anti-immigrant hostility swept the nation. With the end of Reconstruction, white communities across the South stripped African Americans of their hard-won political rights and economic gains. But a new generation of activists fought the growing wave of discrimination and violence. Booker T. Washington championed black education, and journalist Ida B. Wells waged a fierce campaign against lynching.

In the West, labor groups fueled anti-Chinese resentment, building support for the first major federal law limiting immigration. In the mid-1880s, white mobs from Wyoming to Washington descended on Chinese neighborhoods, stoking hysteria and casting immigrants out of their homes.

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The Gilded Age | How the Other Half Lives | 3 Aug 05, 2020

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In the spring of 1883, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt threw the grandest party New York had ever seen, claiming her spot at the top of the city’s social hierarchy. The Gilded Age drove feverish growth in America’s cities. Populations swelled. Skyscrapers and steel bridges soared above city skylines. And the new economic elite poured their outrageous fortunes into magnificent mansions and lavish balls.

But there were two sides to Gilded Age cities. Less than a mile away from Manhattan’s elegant brownstones, the poor eked out a living in sooty factories and crowded slums. In the 1880s and 1890s, reformers rose up to challenge inequality—galvanizing workers and exposing the dark underbelly of urban growth.

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The Gilded Age | Rise of the Robber Barons | 2 Jul 29, 2020

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In the 1870s and 1880s, businessmen clawed their way to the top of the new industrial economy, accumulating staggering fortunes. Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller ruthlessly eliminated his rivals one by one, seizing control over the nation’s refineries. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie revolutionized the industry with his relentless drive to cut costs. And banker J. P. Morgan conquered Wall Street, commanding vast amounts of capital to consolidate corporations.

But the concentration of wealth and power had dire consequences for ordinary Americans, and in the summer of 1877 frustrated workers fought back. They blocked freight trains, shut down major rail lines and crippled the nation’s economy.

The strike spread like wildfire and sparked deadly violence.

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The Gilded Age | Carnival of Corruption | 1 Jul 22, 2020

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In 1869, America connected its vast, sprawling territory with its most ambitious project to date: the transcontinental railroad. The country had just emerged from the ashes of the Civil War, and the railroad galvanized people from coast to coast, offering opportunity and promise. But corruption soon cast a pall over the nation.

Scandal after scandal tainted the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. A pair of unscrupulous investors schemed to drive up the price of gold, unleashing chaos from Wall Street to the nation’s farms. Prominent congressmen funneled public money into a sham corporation to profit off the railroad. And government agents conspired with whiskey distillers to defraud the Treasury of millions.

It was the dawn of the Gilded Age—an era of dramatic material progress and sordid greed and corruption.

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Stonewall | Eric Marcus Remembers the Voices of Stonewall | 5 Jul 15, 2020

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When the events of Stonewall happened in 1969, Eric Marcus was just a boy away at a New Jersey summer camp. Nearly 20 years later, he would document the voices of revolutionary LGBTQ activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Frank Kameny for his book, “Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights.”

While his work started out as a printed oral history, Marcus knew that taping those interviews would “one day have value beyond my book.” And he was right. Many of those interviews can be heard on the Making Gay History podcast, which he founded and hosts.

Today, Marcus talks about his conversations with people who shaped the early LGBTQ movement. He’ll also share what people who were patrons of the Stonewall Inn told him about their time there.

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Stonewall | Pride | 4 Jul 08, 2020

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After a late-night police raid on the Stonewall Inn in June 1969, the LGBTQ community fought back in the streets of Greenwich Village. Suddenly, the LGBTQ rights movement found itself catapulted onto the national stage.

But questions of how radical an approach to take would pit young activists against the pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. Even with the formation of new organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, questions emerged. Would it be better to take part in the political process? Or to stage confrontational “zaps?”

These new groups would soon be engulfed by in-fighting over goals, strategy, membership, and how the LGTBQ rights movement fit into the larger landscape of radical activism. Meanwhile, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson would form their own group – one that would speak directly to issues facing unhoused people, and the trans community in New York city.

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Stonewall | Why Don’t You Do Something? | 3 Jul 01, 2020

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Resistance at restaurants in San Francisco and Philadelphia showcased the building tension as trans activists challenged long-standing policies of discrimination. But leading gay rights groups continued to stress a calm, non-confrontational approach to reform.

That all changed in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn.

For police, it was just another raid, but this time would be different: the Stonewall’s patrons would fight back. The clashes on Christopher Street would become an uprising against police oppression with long-lasting reverberations for the LGBTQ rights movement.

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Stonewall | Turbulence | 2 Jun 24, 2020

Show notes

As the 1960s dawned, LGBTQ activists began to voice frustration with the gradual approach to civil rights advocated by groups like the Mattachine Society. If LGBTQ people wanted to make real progress, they concluded, they would need to take direct action — starting with tactics shared with the Black civil rights movement.

Through protests and sit-ins in places like New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco, LGBTQ activists started agitating for greater rights. They would tackle employment discrimination along with the widespread issues of police harassment, abuse, and entrapment, which targeted LGBTQ people nationwide.

But as white gay activists pushed for acceptance by a white, middle-class American majority, transgender activists and people color faced even greater challenges related to their race and gender identity. They would respond by forging their own communities and strategies to protect themselves from harassment and violence.

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Stonewall | Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary | 1 Jun 17, 2020

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In the summer of 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn sparked a riot on the streets of Greenwich Village. The protest marked a turning point in the gay rights movement. But the famed resistance in New York capped a movement that had been building for nearly two decades in America, as LGBTQ people mobilized to fight widespread and pervasive discrimination.

In the years following World War II, members of the LGBTQ community faced broad discrimination — from strict laws that oppressed them, churches that declared their very existence sinful, and a government that demonized them. They would push back against the American Psychological Association, the FBI and finally, the courts. Slowly, LGBTQ activism would emerge from out of the closet and onto the American scene.

This series follows strands of the gay rights movement in America from 1950 until 1970. But it’s just the beginning of a story about a fight for social and political equality — a battle that’s still being fought today.

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Encore: The Space Race | Photo Finish | 4 Jun 10, 2020

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JFK said that nothing in the 1960s was "...more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space..." than getting a man to the moon and back safely. As the Apollo 11 flight neared, the entire nation waited, enraptured. But back in the USSR, the Soviets were also making strides. Though the contest with the Soviets for technological superiority had always been a race, it was now a literal one - a U.S. manned spacecraft was about to chase down a Soviet robotic vessel.

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