Unsung History

Latest Episodes:

Freedpeople in Indian Territory Feb 28, 2022

Show notes

When the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee (or Creek), and Seminole Nations – known as “The Five Civilized Tribes” by white settlers – were forcibly moved from their lands in the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), they brought their possessions with them, including the people of African descent whom they had enslaved.

After the Civil War, these slaves were freed and freedpeople were included in the allocation of Native lands undertaken by the Dawes Commission, making them the one group of former slaves to receive some reparations. However, like freedpeople in the South, their status and rights were often precarious and changed over time, especially with the establishment of Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

To learn more, I’m joined by Dr. Alaina E. Roberts, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, Date Unknown; Oklahoma Historical Society.”

Additional Sources:

“Freedmen History,” Oklahoma Historical Society.
We're not going anywhere': Choctaw Freedmen cite history, ties to Tribal Nation in fight for citizenship, by Allison Herrera, KOSU, September 22, 2021.
“Black Freedmen struggle for recognition as tribal citizens,” by Sean Murphy, AP News, May 1, 2021.
“7 questions about Freedmen answered,” by Brian Oaster, High Country News, October 11, 2021.
“Tribes to Confront Bias Against Descendants of Enslaved People,” by Chris Cameron and Mark Walker, The New York Times, May 28, 2021.

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Alice Dunbar-Nelson Feb 21, 2022

Show notes

NOTE: Alice Dunbar-Nelson's story includes acts of sexual violence. Listeners may wish to skip past the introduction to avoid this content.

Poet, essayist, and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson is perhaps best known as the widow of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, but she is a remarkable figure in her own right.

Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who had only recently been freed from slavery and an unknown father, Alice graduated from Straight University (later Dillard University), became a teacher, and quickly started her own writing career. Throughout her life, Alice continued to teach and to write and to speak out on issues of women’s suffrage and civil rights for African Americans.

To learn more about Alice Dunbar-Nelson, I’m joined by Dr. Tara T. Green, Professor of African American and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of the 2022 book, Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.”

Additional Sources:

“Feminize Your Canon: Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” by Joanna Scutts, The Paris Review, September 28, 2020.
“An Unsung Legacy: The work and activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” by Grace Miller, Unbound Blog, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, March 12, 2020.
“I am an American! The Authorship and Activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson [Virtual Exhibit],” The Rosenbach, Free Library of Philadelphia.
“Alice Dunbar-Nelson Reads [Virtual Exhibit],” The University of Delaware.
Writings of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

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The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion Feb 14, 2022

Show notes

On February 14, 1945, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean and surviving a run-in with a Nazi U-Boat, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion disembarked the Île-de-France in Glasgow, Scotland.

The task awaiting the only all-Black, all-female battalion overseas during World War II was daunting. There were airplane hangars filled with a backlog of millions of pieces of mail sitting in Birmingham, England, addressed from friends and family to service members stationed across Europe.

Despite segregation and poor working and living conditions, the Six Triple Eight made quick work of the postal backlog, doing their part to lift morale among the American military personnel stationed in Europe.

To learn more about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, I’m joined now by writer Kaia Alderson, author of Sisters in Arms: A Novel of the Daring Black Women Who Served During World War II.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Inspection of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion,” Courtesy of the U.S. Army.

Additional Sources:

“6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (Women's Army Corps),” Prepared by Kathleen Fargey, AAMH-FPO, U.S. Army, February 14, 2014.
“The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service,” by Judith A. Bellafaire, U.S. Army Center for Military History Publication 72-15.
“The 6888 Postal Directory Battalion- Heroes of World War II [video],” Marking History Channel, July 21, 2021.
“The Black Female Battalion That Stood Up to a White Male Army,” by Christina Brown Fisher, The New York Times, June 17, 2020.
“The SixTripleEight: No Mail, Low Morale,” National World War II Museum, February 10, 2021.
“Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Military’s Only All-Black Female Band Battled the War Department and Won,” by Carrie Hagen, Smithsonian Magazine, March 28, 2019.

Related Episodes of Unsung History:

“The Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II,” with Dr Katherine Sharp Landdeck
“Alaska Territorial Guard in World War II,” with Dr. Holly Guise
“Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War,” with Dr. Tanya Roth

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Julia Chinn Feb 07, 2022

Show notes

Julia Chinn was born into slavery in Kentucky at the tail end of the 18th Century. Despite laws against interracial marriage, Richard Mentor Johnson, the ninth Vice President of the United States, called Julia Chinn his wife, and he recognized their daughters together as his. Johnson left Julia in charge of his Blue Spring Farm when he was away in DC for months at a time, and Julia ran the household and plantation, managed the business affairs, and worked as both manager and nurse at the Chocktaw Academy boarding school for Native American boys on the property. When the Marquis de Lafayette visited Blue Spring, Julia Chinn organized a magnificent celebration in his honor, a party for 5,000 guests, where her daughters performed on the piano.

Even while trusting Julia with this authority and openly discussing their relationship, Richard never emancipated Julia Chinn; she remained his property until her death.

Joining me to discuss Julia Chinn is Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of an upcoming book on Julia Chinn.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is an artist rendition by Matthew Weflen.

Sources:

“Disorderly Communion: Julia Chinn, Richard Mentor Johnson, and Life in an Interracial, Antebellum, Southern Church,” by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, The Journal of African American History, Volume 105, Number 2, Spring 2020.
The Erasure and Resurrection of Julia Chinn, U.S. Vice President Richard M. Johnson’s Black Wife,” by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Association of Black Women Historians, March 3, 2019.
“He became the nation’s ninth vice president. She was his enslaved wife.” by Ronald G. Shafer, Washington Post, February 7, 2021.
“The Lost Story Of Julia Chinn,” by Leslie Potter, Kentucky Life, February 19, 2020.
“Choctaw Indian Academy,” by Deana Thomas, Explore Kentucky History.

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Who was Carol Lane? Jan 31, 2022

Show notes

In fall 1947 the Shell Oil Company hired a Women’s Travel Director named Carol Lane, who served in the role until she retired in 1974. Lane’s job was to encourage women to travel, showing them the joys of touring the country by car. Lane herself traveled around the United States and Canada, speaking to women’s clubs and on radio and TV, giving travel tips and packing demonstrations. Eventually, she even awarded women who developed local travel safety programs with the Carol Lane Award.

So who was Carol Lane? To learn the answer to that question, I’m joined on this episode by historian Melissa Dollman, author of the digital dissertation, Changing Lanes: A Reanimation of Shell Oil’s Carol Lane, which was the source I consulted in writing the introduction to this episode.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is from the booklet Carol Lane’s Dress-O-Graph, from 1953, which is in the public domain.

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The Amerikadeutscher Volksbund & the Newark Minutemen in the 1930s Jan 24, 2022

Show notes

The rise of Nazism before World War II wasn’t limited to Germany. The German-Americna Bund (Amerikadeutscher Volksbund) formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1936, to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany. It quickly grew to 70 local groups around the country, with 20 training camps where kids aged 8-18 practiced military drills and wore Nazi-style uniforms. By 1939, 20,000 people attended the Bund’s Pro American Rally in Madison Square Garden.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Jewish American gangsters who had been running liquor businesses suddenly had more time on their hands, and they decided to fight back against the Bund. In Newark, New Jersey, Abner “Longie” Zwillman formed a secret organization called the Minutemen to fight the Nazis. The Minutemen, who operated from 1933 to 1941, would break up Bund meetings using their fists, baseball bats, and stink bombs. The Minutemen were based in New Jersey, but Jewish gangsters around the country fought the Bund, including in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.

To help us learn more, I’m joined on this episode by Leslie K. Barry, author of the historic novel, Newark Minutemen: A True 1930s Legend about One Man's Mission to Save a Nation's Soul Without Losing His Own, whose uncle was a Minuteman in Newark in the 1930s.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is: “German American Bund parade in New York City on East 86th St.,” World-Telegram photo, New York, 1937, Public Domain. The audio clip is from the German American Bund Rally on February 20, 1939, and is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“There Were American Nazi Summer Camps Across the US in the 1930s,” by George Dvorsky, Gizmodo, November 19, 2015.
“American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund,” by Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, June 5, 2017.
“When Nazis Took Manhattan,” by Sarah Kate Kramer, NPR: All Things Considered, February 20, 2019.
“American Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers Have Been Around Since the 1930’s,” by Eric Ginsburg, Teen Vogue, November 26, 2018.
“American Nazism and Madison Square Garden,” The National World War II Museum, April 14, 2021.
“Field of Vision - A Night at the Garden [video],” directed by Marshall Curry.

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Mary Ann Shadd Cary Jan 17, 2022

Show notes

Mary Ann Shadd Cary, born in Delaware in 1823, was a teacher, a writer, an abolitionist, a suffragist, and a lawyer, and is considered to be the first Black woman to publish and edit a newspaper in North America, The Provincial Freeman. When abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked readers of his newspaper in 1848 for suggestions on how to improve life for African Americans, Shadd Cary answered: “We should do more and talk less,” and she spent her life following that motto in both the United States and in Canada, despite the challenges she faced both as an African American and as a woman.

To help us understand more, I’m joined by Dr. Jane Rhodes and Dr. Kristin Moriah. Dr. Rhodes is a Professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Moriah is Assistant Professor of African American Literary Studies at Queen's University and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) at Penn State where her projects include digitizing Mary Ann Shadd Cary's papers.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is the only known photograph of Mary Ann Shadd Cary; the photographer is unknown.

Additional Selected Sources:

“Overlooked No More: How Mary Ann Shadd Cary Shook Up the Abolitionist Movement,” by Megan Specia, The New York Times, June 6, 2018.
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: History,” by Adrienne Shadd, Library and Archives Canada, November 1, 2019.
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Lawyer, Educator, Suffragist,” by Jennifer Davis, Library of Congress, February 28, 2019.
Black Women's Organizing Project, Center for Black Digital Research, Penn State
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: In the Here and Now (Day 1) [video],” Recorded on October 1, 2021.
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: In the Here and Now (Day 2) [video],” Recorded on October 2, 2021
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary Event Series: The Power of Black Art [video],” Recorded on October 9, 2021.

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The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike Jan 10, 2022

Show notes

In February, 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, a small group of unionized workers at the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, went on strike. When management failed to sign a promised contract by the April 1 deadline, more workers went on strike. And this time they had help from the Unemployed League. What started as a small walkout turned into a massive demonstration by 10,000 strikers, and a battle with the Ohio National Guard, and is now regarded as one of the most important strikes in U.S. history.

Joining me on this episode to help us learn more about the Auto-Lite strike is labor historian Dr. Bradley Sommer.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is the front page of The Toledo News-Bee on May 24, 1934.

Selected Sources:

“The More Things Stay the Same: Lessons from 1934,” by Bradley Sommer, Labor and Working-Class History Association, June 17, 2015.
“From Toledo to Standing Rock,” by Bradley Sommer, Jacobin, October 2016.
“Lou Hebert on the Auto-Lite Labor Strike,” C-SPAN, July 22, 2019.
“Auto-Lite Strike,” Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
“Blue-collar origins: Toledo is a city built on the back of labor,” by Jay Skebba, The Toledo Blade, September 2, 2019.

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The Suffrage Road Trip of 1915 Jan 03, 2022

Show notes

In September 1915, four suffragists set off from the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, in a brand-new Overland 6 convertible to make the 3,000-mile drive across the country to deliver a petition for women’s suffrage to President Woodrow Wilson on the opening day of Congress in December. Along the way they faced illness, terrible driving conditions, and opposition to women’s suffrage.

Joining me to help us learn more about the road trip, and especially the unsung Swedish immigrant heroines, driver Maria Kindberg and mechanic Ingeborg Kindstedt, is historian and activist, Anne Gass, author of the 2021 book, We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Suffrage envoy Sara Bard Field left and her driver, Maria Kindberg center, and machinist Ingeborg Kindstedt right during their cross-country journey to present suffrage petitions to Congress, September-December. United States Washington D.C, 1915,” Public Domain, Located at the Library of Congress. The audio recording clip is: “Fall in Line (Suffrage March),” Written by Zena S. Hawn, and Performed by the Victor Military Band on July 15, 1914, Public Domain, Internet Archive.

Selected Additional Sources:

“Rhode Island’s Two Unheralded Suffragists,” Small State Big History, by Russell DeSimone, January 11, 2020
“Historical Timeline of the National Womans Party,” Library of Congress
“Traveling for Suffrage Part 1: Two women, a cat, a car, and a mission,” by Patri O'Gan, National Museum of American HIstory, March 5, 2014
“Maria Kindberg,” Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame
“Ingeborg Kindstedt,” Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame
“Sara Bard Field (1882-1974),” by Tim Barnes, Oregon Encyclopedia

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Women-Led Slave Revolts Dec 27, 2021

Show notes

Enslaved Africans in what is now New York State and in the Middle Passage resisted their enslavement, despite the risk of doing so. In the previously accepted history of these slave revolts, the assumption was that men led the resistance, but Dr. Rebecca Hall dug deeper into the records and read against the grain to find the women warriors who fought for their freedom.

Joining me to help us learn more is Dr. Rebecca Hall, a scholar, activist and educator, who writes and speaks on the history of race, gender, law and resistance, and author of the recent highly-acclaimed graphic novel, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “Negro quarters, T.J. Fripp plantation, St. Helena Island (near Beaufort), S.C.” from the Library of Congress.

Selected Additional Sources:

Benton, Ned. “Dating the Start and End of Slavery in New York,”New York Slavery Records Index: Records of Enslaved Persons and Slave Holders in New York from 1525 though the Civil War, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Middle Passage, Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Slavery and Remembrance.
Hall, Rebecca. “Not Killing Me Softly: African American Women, Slave Revolts, And Historical Constructions of Racialized Gender,” Vol. 1, Issue 2 of The Freedom Center Journal, a joint publication of University of Cincinnati College of Law and the National Underground Railroad Center, June, (2010).
National Park Service, “The Middle Passage.”

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