Unsung History

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Zitkála-Šá Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

Writer, musician, and political activist Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where she lived until she was eight.

When Zitkála-Šá was eight years old, missionaries came to the reservation to recruit children to go to White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute. Despite her mother’s pleading, Zitkála-Šá begged to go to the school with her older brother. She later wrote that she regretted the decision almost immediately, but after three years in the boarding school she no longer felt at home on the reservation either.

Throughout her life Zitkála-Šá continued to live in two worlds, using her writing and speaking to advocate for the rights of Native Americans. She taught at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the most well-known of the off reservation boarding schools, where she came into conflict with the school’s founder and headmaster Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, whose motto was “Kill the Indian, save the man.” She studied violin and wrote articles in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly, critical of the boarding schools and the trauma the children experienced. Prof. William F. Hanson of Brigham Young University she wrote an opera, the Sun Dance Opera, based on the sacred Sioux ritual that had been banned by the federal government.

In 1926, Zitkála-Šá and her husband, Captain Raymond Bonnin, who was also Yankton Dakota, co-founded the National Council of American Indians to "help Indians help themselves" in government relations. Many conflicts had to be resolved by Congress and the Bonnins were instrumental in representing tribal interests. Zitkála-Šá was the council’s president, public speaker, and major fundraiser, until her death in 1938.

To help us learn more, I’m joined by Dr. P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo), Professor Emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the editor of two books of Zitkála-Šá’s writings: Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera and "Help Indians Help Themselves": The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons-Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), who graciously assisted in fact checking 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 episode image is: “Zitkala Sa, Sioux Indian and activist, c. 1898,” by Gertrude Kasebier, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Recommended Organization for Donation:

Native American Rights Fund

Additional Sources and Links:

American Indian Stories, Zitkála-Šá
Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkála-Šá
Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery by Zitkala-S̈a, Charles H. Fabens, and Matthew K. Sniffen. Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1924.
Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkala-Sa, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist by Gina Capaldi (Author) and Q. L. Pearce (Author)
Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), National Park Service
“Zitkála-Šá: Trailblazing American Indian Composer and Writer” [video], UNLADYLIKE2020: THE CHANGEMAKERS, PBS.

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Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Nearly 350,000 American women served in the US military during World War II. Although the women in the military didn’t engage in combat their presence was vital to the American effort, in clerical work as well as in driving trucks, operating radios and telephones, repairing and flying planes, and of course, in nursing.

Women’s active duty was a temporary wartime measure, but when the war ended, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and General Omar Bradley, among others, argued for the continued presence of women in the military. Rep. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine introduced the Women's Armed Services Integration Act to Congress in January 1948, and President Truman signed the bill into law on June 12, 1948.

From the end of World War II through the Cold War, women in the United States military navigated a space that welcomed and needed their service but put limits on their participation. To help us learn more, I’m joined by Dr. Tanya Roth, author of the new book, Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “WAF Officer candidate salutes in front of US flag. Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. November 1952.” The image source is the U.S. Air Force, and it is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“Pregnant Women to Be Allowed To Stay in the Military Forces,” New York Times, July 8, 1975
“Over 200 Years of Service: The History of Women in the U.S. Military,” uso.org.
“Women in the Army,” U.S. Army.
“Truman and Women’s Rights,” Truman Library Institute.
“Women in the Military Academies: 40 Years Later,” Department of Defense.
“Women in the Vietnam War,” History.com.

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Freedom Suits in Maryland & DC, 1790-1864 Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

Slavery was legal in Maryland until November 1, 1864, when a new state constitution prohibited the practice of slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation the year before had declared slaves in the Confederate states to be free, but Maryland was in the union and not included in the proclamation. From the late 18th Century until the Civil War, enslaved families in Prince George’s County, Maryland, brought over a thousand legal suits against hundreds of slaveholding families, arguing for their freedom.

In these freedom suits, enslaved individuals sued for their freedom based on issues of breach of contract or unjust detainment. When an enslaved person won a freedom suit the individual would be granted their freedom, and it could sometimes provide the basis for future lawsuits by family members, but the institution of slavery persisted.

In 1791, Edward Queen, an enslaved man at the White Marsh Plantation in Prince George's County, sued Rev. John Ashton, a Jesuit slaveholder, for his freedom in the Maryland General Court. In Edward Queen’s petition he said he was “descended from a freewoman,” his grandmother, Mary Queen, and thus was being illegally held in bondage. In May 1794 the all-white jury decided that Mary Queen was not a slave, and thus Edward Queen should be freed and awarded 1997 pounds of tobacco, at least a third of which went to Queen’s lawyers.

Despite legal maneuvering by slaveholders to make freedom suits more difficult for the enslaved, as many as 50 of Edward Queen’s enslaved relatives won their own freedom suits on the argument that Mary Queen was not a slave, and thus her descendents should not be enslaved.

Joining me to help us learn more about freedom suits is William G. Thomas III, the Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, and author of A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: "Twenty-eight fugitives escaping from the Eastern Shore of Maryland," Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. The image is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law & Family. William G. Thomas III, Kaci Nash, Laura Weakly, Karin Dalziel, and Jessica Dussault. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“Anna: One woman's quest for freedom in early Washington, D.C.,” Animating History, Michael Burton, Kwakiutl Dreher, William G. Thomas III. 2018.
The Georgetown Slavery Archive
“Rev. John Ashton,” Archives of Maryland.
“Missouri’s Dred Scott Case, 1846-1857,” Missouri State Archives.

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Chef Lena Richard Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

Over a decade before Julia Child’s The French Chef appeared on TV, a Black woman chef hosted her own, very popular cooking show on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. At a time when families were just beginning to own televisions, Chef Lena Richard’s show was so popular that it aired twice a week.

Richard started working as a cook as a teenager for the wealthy Vairin family who employed her mom as a domestic servant. When their cook left, Alice Vairin gave Richard a trial run as cook and was so impressed that she hired her on the spot. Vairin later sent Richard to cooking schools, first locally and then at the prestigious eight-week Fannie Farmer Cooking School in Boston.

In addition to her television show, Richard’s storied career included launching a catering business; stints as head chef at the Bird and Bottle Inn in Garrison, New York, and the Travis House Restaurant and Inn, in Colonial Williamsburg; two of her own restaurants in New Orleans, Lena’s Eatery and Lena Richard’s Gumbo House; a cooking school; a frozen food business; and a best-selling Creole cookbook, New Orleans Cookbook.

Joining me to help us learn more about Chef Lena Richard are two guests: Chef Dee Lavigne of New Orleans, owner of Deelightful Cupcakes and Assistant Production Producer for the Sunday Morning News Food Segment on WWL-TV4; and Dr. Ashley Rose Young, Historian of the American Food History Project at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode images Courtesy of Newcomb Archive, Vorhoff Library Special Collections, Tulane University.

Sources:

“Meet Lena Richard, the Celebrity Chef Who Broke Barriers in the Jim Crow South,” by Lily Katzman, Smithsonian Magazine, June 12, 2020
“The Story of Lena Richard,” by Sarah Nerney, Colonial Williamsburg, August 22, 2020.
“Creole Cuisine: Lena Richard,” Google Arts & Culture, based on the exhibit in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
“Learning from the best: Lena Richard’s Creole Cookbook,” Rachael Garder-Stephen, Adam Matthew: A SAGE Publishing Company Blog, March 12, 2021.
“America's Unknown Celebrity Chef,” Sidedoor Podcast, June 9, 2020.

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African American AIDS Activism Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), in 2018, 13% of the US population was Black and African American, but 42% of new HIV diagnoses in the US were from Black and African American people. This discrepancy is not new.

On June 5, 1981, the CDC first published an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) titled “Pneumocystis Pneumonia” that suggested that there might be “a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis” to explain a number of infections they were seeing among gay men.

This early identification of HIV/AIDS as a disease of white gay men colored the response to the epidemic. As gay men organized AIDS education and support networks they built organizations staffed by white volunteers and situated in gay neighborhoods in major urban centers. Because of racism and segregation many of those gay neighborhoods were largely white, and the education and support campaigns didn’t reach the Black and brown communities that were also affected by the disease.

In response, African American AIDS activists formed their own organizations from the beginning of the crisis. African American AIDS activism was diverse and creative from the early days of the pandemic, and it continues today, but it’s often been missing from popular media and historical writing about AIDS.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the background of African American AIDS activism and interviews Dan Royles, Assistant Professor of History at Florida International University and author of To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS, which was recently named a Finalist in the 2021 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image by Tobe Mokolo on Unsplash.

Sources:

To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against Hiv/AIDS, by Dan Royles, 2020.
“Forty years after first documented AIDS cases, survivors reckon with 'dichotomy of feelings,'” by Alex Berg, NBC News, June 5, 2021.
“Pneumocystis Pneumonia --- Los Angeles,” MMWR, Reported by MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, Div of Clinical Immunology-Allergy; Dept of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; I Pozalski, MD, Cedars-Mt. Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles; Field services Div, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC. June 5, 1981
“HIV and African American People,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The Coors Boycott Sep 06, 2021

Show notes

In the mid-1960s, to protest discriminatory hiring practices, Chicano groups in Colorado called for a boycott of the Coors Brewing Company, launching what would become a decades-long boycott that brought together a coalition of activists that would include not just Chicano and Latino groups, but also African American groups, union organizers, LGBT activists, students, environmentalists and feminists.

These groups had a variety of motivations for their involvement in the boycott and varied success in achieving their goals. Although the formal boycott ended by the late 1980s, some activists continue to boycott Coors beer to today.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Coors boycott and interviews Allyson P. Brantley, Assistant Professor of History & Director of Honors and Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the University of La Verne in Southern California, and author of the 2021 book Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors & Remade American Consumer Activism.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: 1970s-era “Boycott Coors Beer” broadside. Printed by the Howard Quinn Co.

Sources:

Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors & Remade American Consumer Activism by Allyson P. Brantley.
“The Coors Boycott: When A Beer Can Signaled Your Politics,” by B. Erin Cole & Allyson Brantley, Colorado Public Radio, October 3, 2014,
“‘A Political Fight Over Beer’: The 1977 Coors Beer Boycott, and the Relationship Between Labour–Gay Alliances and LGBT Social Mobility,” by Kieran Blake, Midland Historical Review, January 24, 2020.
“TEAMSTERS PRIDE AT WORK: A LOOK BACK AT THE COORS BOYCOTT,” International Brotherhood of Teamster, June 2, 2017.

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Phrenology & Crime in 19th Century America Aug 30, 2021

Show notes

In Nineteenth Century America there was a strong reformist push to know and improve the self. One key tactic Americans used to learn more about themselves was phrenological readings. They would pay practical phrenologists, like Orson Squire Fowler and his younger brother, Lorenzo Niles Fowler for readings of their skulls or their children’s skulls.

In Lorenzo Fowler’s reading of Emily Sawyer, he concluded a thirteen-page analysis by saying: “Cultivate as much as you can the organs marked smallest in your Chart + properly guide and exercise the stronger ones + thus produce a harmony of mental and physical action.” By using the phrenological readings of themselves or their children, Nineteenth Century Americans could apply the advice to become the best version of themselves.

Practical phrenologists weren’t interested only in reform of the self, but in larger societal reform as well. For practical phrenologists, prisons were the site of both research and reform; they argued for the elimination of capital punishment and the reform of prisons to include re-education instead of punishment.

Despite the reform impulse of phrenologists, phrenology was also used as a scientific reason to justify racism and gender stereotyping. American phrenologists were sympathetic to liberal causes including the antislavery movement, even while claiming the superiority of the European brain.

By the early 20th century phrenology had been largely discredited in the public, but some of the concepts of phrenology, including propensities and physical localization in the brain of different characteristics have persisted.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of phrenology in 19th Century America and interviews Courtney Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi State University, and author of the February 2021 book, An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “A head marked with images representing the phrenological faculties, with a key below. Coloured wood engraving, ca. 1845, after H. Bushea and O.S. Fowler.” Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

Sources:

An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America by Courtney E. Thompson
"Facing a Bumpy History: The much-maligned theory of phrenology gets a tip of the hat from modern neuroscience," by Minna Scherlinder Morse, Smithsonian Magazine, October 1997.
"Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: 'Enough of the Marvellous'" by Peter McCandless. The Journal of Southern History, 58(2), 199-230. doi:10.2307/2210860.
The History of Phrenology on the Web by John van Wyhe
Encyclopedia of medical history by Roderick E. McGrew and Margaret P. McGrew, 1985.

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Chesapeake Bay Pirates & the 19th Century Oyster Wars Aug 23, 2021

Show notes

In Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th century, oyster harvesting was a big business. There were so many oyster harvesters harvesting so many oysters that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia had to start regulating who could harvest oysters and how they could do so. Creating the regulations was the easy part; enforcing them was much harder. The illegal harvesting of oysters by oyster pirates continued, even after the creation of the Maryland State Oyster Police Force in 1868 and a similar force in Virginia in 1884.

The first of the Oyster Wars was in Virginia in 1882 when Governor William E. Cameron himself joined the expedition to raid the pirates. The first raid was a success, but Cameron quickly learned that pirates wouldn’t stay defeated for long, and the oyster wars continued. By the late 1880s the Oyster Wars turned deadly.

The Oyster Wars remained an important part of Chesapeake Bay history all the way until the “official” end of the Oyster Wars in 1959, although even that may have not truly been the end.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Oyster Wars and (with a little help from her son, Arthur, interviews Jamie Goodall, author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “The oyster war in Chesapeake Bay,” Drawing by Schell and Hogan. Harper's Weekly, Mar. 1, 1884, p. 136. Library of Congress.

Sources:

Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars by Jamie L. H. Goodall
National Geographic Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests & Legacy by Jamie L. H. Goodall
The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay by John R Wennersten
The daily dispatch. (Richmond, VA), 04 March 1883. Library of Congress.
"Oyster Wars," Baltimore Sun, February 10, 2015.
Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Since 1880 by Christine Keiner
"An Evolving Force: Natural Resources Police Celebrates 150th Anniversary," Maryland Department of Natural Resources, March 30, 2018.
“Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery” by Bradford Botwick and Debra A. McClane. Historical Archaeology, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 94–112.

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Prohibition in the 1850s Aug 16, 2021

Show notes

Popular depictions of prohibition in the United States usually show the speakeasies, bootleggers, flappers, and bathtub gin of the Roaring Twenties, but earlier attempts at prohibition stretch back far into the 19th century.

In 1851, Maine passed the first statewide prohibition law, and 12 other states quickly followed as temperance societies preached the evils of alcohol. Anti-prohibitionists, especially liquor dealers and hotel owners, decried the “tyranny of the majority” and fought back with their own PR campaigns and legal challenges.

Many of the methods that the anti-prohibitionists used and that were used by other moral minorities of the day (such as those fighting against Sunday Laws and those working toward racial equality) were precursors to the methods used in the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the 1850s Maine Laws and interviews Kyle Volk, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of HIstory at the University of Montana, and author of Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy, which discusses these early attempts at prohibition.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “The drunkard's children. A sequel to The bottle” by George Cruikshank, 1848, Wellcome Collection.

Sources:

Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy by Kyle Volk, 2017
“When Maine went dry,” by Kelly Bouchard, Portland Press Herald, October 2, 2011
The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History, and Results, Including a Life of Hon. Neal Dowby Henry Stephen Clubb, 1856.
“Throwback Thursday: Maine Becomes the First State to Outlaw Alcohol,” by Madline Bilis, Boston Magazine, June 2, 2016
“What if the Fourth of July were dry?” by Kyle Volk, Oxford University Press Blog, July 4, 2014
An inquiry into the effects of ardent spirits upon the human body and mind: with an account of the means of preventing, and of the remedies for curing them by Benjamin Rush, 1784.

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The Nativist Riots of Philadelphia in 1844 Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

In May of 1844, growing tensions between nativists and Irish Catholic immigrants in Philadelphia erupted into violence in the streets of the Irish Catholic Kensington district, prompted in part by a disagreement over whether the King James Bible should be read in public schools.

A citizen posse called by county sheriff Morton McMichael was unable to quell the violence, and the local state militia, under the command of General George Cadwalader stepped in to help, as homes and churches were destroyed, $150,000 in damages (equivalent to over $4 million today). Fourteen people were killed and as many as 50 were injured.

After two months of uneasy peace, the violence re-ignited, this time in the nativist district of Southwark where a Catholic church had been stockpiling weapons in anticipation of trouble. After a long stand-off, an hours-long battle between the military presence that arrived and the local nativists took over the streets of Southwark, as they fired at each other with guns and cannons. Another 15 people died, with fifty or more injuries.

The riots, which got national attention, had lasting effects in politics and city planning and in the development of the Catholic school system in Philadelphia.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Philadelphia riots and interviews George Mason University History Professor Zachary Schrag, author of The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Riot in Philadelphia. July 7th 1844. by H. Bucholzer, ca. 1844. New York: James Baillie, July 23. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654121/

Sources:

The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation by Zachary M. Schrag
"Nativist Riots of 1844," Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Zachary M. Schrag
"The Kensington Riots of 1844" by Melissa Mandell of Historical Society of Pennsylvania
"Chaos in the Streets: The Philadelphia Riots of 1844," Villanova University
A full and complete account of the late awful riots in Philadelphia (1844) by John Perry

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