Unsung History

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Quilting & the New Deal Jun 17, 2024

Show notes

As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods included quilts, sometimes quickly-made utilitarian bedcoverings, but also artistic quilts worthy of exhibition. Quilts were featured in other New Deal Projects, too, like the WPA Handicraft Projects, part of the Women’s and Professional Projects Division. Throughout the Great Depression, the programs of the New Deal created a supportive and innovative environment for the art of quiltmaking.

Joining me in this episode is historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Janneken Smucker, Professor of History at West Chester University and author of A New Deal for Quilts.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “A Mazurka played on harmonica,” performed by Aaron Morgan and recorded as part of a WPA project by Sidney Robertson Cowell on July 17, 1939, in Northern California; the recording is available via the Library of Congress.The episode image is “Grandmother from Oklahoma and her pieced quilt. California, Kern County,” take by Dorothea Lange in February 1936 through the U.S. Farm Security Administration; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Additional Sources:

“The Works Progress Administration,” PBS American Experience.
“Works Progress Administration (WPA),” History.com, Originally posted July 13, 2017, and updated September 21, 2022.
“Question 22: 1940 Census Provides a Glimpse of the Demographics of the New Deal,” by Ashley Mattingly, Prologue Magazine, National Archives, Summer 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2.
“Women and the New Deal,” Living New Deal.
“Women’s Work Relief in the Great Depression,” by Martha H. Swain, History Now, February 2004
“WPA sewing project kept Hoosier women working through the Great Depression,” by Dawn Mitchell, Indy Star, January 19, 2018.
“‘We Patch Anything’: WPA Sewing Rooms in Fort Worth, Texas,” Living New Deal, May 27, 2013.
“Frugal and Fashionable: Quiltmaking During the Great Depression,” The Quilt Index.
“WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project,” Milwaukee Public Museum.

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The Federal Theatre Project Jun 10, 2024

Show notes

Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed over 12,000 actors and put on over 1200 productions in 29 states. Led by Hallie Flanagan, the FTP, using only a small fraction of the total WPA budget, employed theater professionals; entertained audiences, some two-third of whom had never attended theater before the FTP; and helped launch the careers of people like director Orson Welles and playwright Arthur Miller. However, despite its success and small budget, the Federal Theater Project, was controversial, both for its supposed communist affiliations and because of the perception that theater wasn’t worthy of receiving federal tax dollars. After four years, Congress axed the project, immediately putting out of work 8,000 people across the country.

Joining me in this episode to tell us more about the Federal Theatre Project is Dr. Paul Gagliardi, Teaching Associate Professor at Marquette University and author of All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The Broadway blues,” composed by Carey Morgan, with lyrics by Arthur Swanstrom; this performance was recorded by vocalist Aileen Stanley and conductor Rosario Bourdon on August 10, 1920, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph from A Sailor's Ballad, performed at St. James Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Federal Theatre Project; the image is available in the Library of Congress, Music Division, Federal Theatre Project Collection.

Additional Sources:

“Hallie Flanagan Davis,” Vassar Encyclopedia.
“The WPA Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939,” Library of Congress.
“The Works Progress Administration,” PBS American Experience.
“The Federal Theatre: Revisiting the Dream [video],” The Living New Deal, October 17, 2022.
"Voodoo Macbeth - Trailer and Interview - Orson Welles - 1936 [video],” Shakespeare Network, posted on YouTube on May 2, 2021.
“The Play That Electrified Harlem,” by Wendy Smith; originally published in the January-February 1996 issue of Civilization magazine and reposted on the Library of Congress website.
“Federal Theatre Project,” by Paula Becker, HistoryLink, October 30, 2002.
“The theater project that sparked a congressional probe — and culture war,” by James Shapiro, The Washington Post, May 26, 2024.
“F.D.R.'S WPA FTP; At Moderate Box Office Prices the TheatreGoing Public Is Inexhaustible,” by Brooks Atkinson, The New York TImes, May 28, 1939.

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The Red Summer of 1919 & Black Resistance Jun 03, 2024

Show notes

In 1919, racial tensions in the US, exacerbated by changes brought about by the first wave of the Great Migration and by the return of Black soldiers who demanded equal citizenship from the country they’d fought for, boiled over into a summer of violence. In Washington, DC, 39 people died after days of fighting between white mobs and Black citizens who stood their ground and fought back. The events of the Red Summer are just one example of the ways that Black Americans have resisted white supremacy. Our guest this episode, Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, the Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Chair of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College and author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, discusses five remedies by which Black people have responded and continue to respond to white supremacy.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “My way's cloudy,” a traditional negro spiritual, arranged by H.T. Burleigh, and performed by Contralto Marian Anderson and a backing orchestra conducted by Rosario Bourdon, in Camden, New Jersey, on December 10, 1923; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.

The episode image is “National Guard during the 1919 Chicago Race Riots,” photograph by Jun Fujita; the photograph has no known copyright and is available via the Chicago History Museum, ICHi-065477.

Additional Sources:

“Close Ranks (1918),” W.E.B. Du Bois, Editorial from The Crisis, Reprinted on BlackPast.
“Returning Soldiers (1919),” W.E.B. Du Bois, Editorial from The Crisis, Reprinted in American Yawp.
“African-American Troops Fought to Fight in World War I,” by Richard Goldenberg, U.S. Department of Defense, February 1, 2018.
“An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging,” Yale University Library Online Exhibitions.
“Racial Violence and the Red Summer,” National Archives.
“Red Summer of 1919: How Black WWI Vets Fought Back Against Racist Mobs,” by Abigail Higgins, History.com, July 26, 2019.
“The Red Summer of 1919, Explained,” by Ursula Wolfe-Rocco, Teen Vogue, May 31, 2020.
“Hundreds of black deaths during 1919’s Red Summer are being remembered,” PBS NewsHour, July 23, 2019.
“The Red Summer of 1919,” by Julius L Jones, Chicago History Museum, July 26, 2019.
“Red Summer: The Race Riots of 1919,” National WWI Museum and Memorial.
“The deadly race riot ‘aided and abetted’ by The Washington Post a century ago,” by Gillian Brockell, The Washington Post, July 15, 2019.
“One Hundred Years Ago, a Four-Day Race Riot Engulfed Washington, D.C.,”by Patrick Sauer, Smithsonian Magazine, July 17, 2019.
“How a Brutal Race Riot Shaped Modern Chicago,” by Adam Green, The New York Times, August 3, 2019.
“Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood,” by Harry Haywood, Edited by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, University of Minnesota Press, May 8, 2012.
“Our History,” NAACP.

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The Reconstruction Era & its Aftermath May 27, 2024

Show notes

As the Civil War was drawing to a close, President Lincoln was preparing for what came after, with plans for reunification of the country, and he began to advocate for limited suffrage for Black Americans. John Wilkes Booth’s bullet cut short those plans, and Southerner Andrew Johnson, who was much more sympathetic to the former Confederacy, succeeded Lincoln. It wasn’t until Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, over Johnson’s veto, that federal troops enforced a true remaking of the former Confederate states, and for a brief period Black men voted and ran for office in the South in large numbers. In 1877, however, the federal troops withdrew, formally ending the Reconstruction era and leaving Black Americans alone to face a terror campaign of white supremacist violence.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Manisha Sinha, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Brethren Rise!” performed by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers in New York City on February 3, 1916; the song is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Black Legislators Elected During Reconstruction,” an 1872 lithograph by Currier and Ives; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom,” Fresh Air NPR, October 11, 2010.
“Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation,” Library of Congress.
“Hannibal Hamlin (1861–1865),” UVA Miller Center.
“Lincoln’s Successor Problem,” by Julie Witcover, Politico Magazine,” April 13, 2015.
“How did Lincoln end up with a Democrat for a vice president?” by Roger Schlueter, Belleville News Democrat, April 6, 2017.
“Andrew Johnson's Inauguration,” United States Senate.
“A Call for Reconciliation: Lincoln’s Final Speech,” by Nathan Cooper, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, July 29, 2020.
“The President's Last Public Address: April 11, 1865,” The American Presidency Project.
“Andrew Johnson,” The White House.
“Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction,” National Park Service.
“Reconstruction,” History.com, Originally posted October 29, 2009, and updated January 24, 2024.
“14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” National Archives.
“A Short Overview of the Reconstruction Era and Ulysses S. Grant's Presidency,” National Park Service.
“The Legacy of the Reconstruction Era’s Black Political Leaders,” by Olivia Waxman, Time Magazine, February 7, 2022.
“Disputed Election of 1876: The death knell of the Republican dream,” by Sheila Blackford, UVA Miller Center.
“Reconstruction Didn’t Fail. It Was Overthrown,” by Allen C. Guelzo, Time Magazine, April 30, 2018.

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The Southern Plantation System May 20, 2024

Show notes

Fictional depictions of Southern plantations often present romanticized visions of genteel country life, but for the people enslaved on plantations the reality was that of a forced labor camp. At the same time the plantation was also their home. And although they had no choice in where or how they lived, enslaved people did work to make their residences home, for instance by sweeping their yards, keeping items like books and ceramics, and even hiding personal objects in the walls or under the floor where they couldn’t be found by enslavers.

Joining me in this episode to help us understand the importance of homemaking by enslaved plantation workers is historian Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, and author of This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Welcome, Honey, to Your Old Plantation Home,” composed by Albert Gumble with lyrics by Jack Yellen, and performed by the Peerless Quartet in New York on June 19, 1916; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox Project. The episode image is “Picking cotton on a Georgia plantation, 1858;” the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional sources:

“‘Gone With the Wind’ is also a Confederate monument, but on film instead of stone,” by Nina Silber, The Washington Post, June 12, 2020.
“How Gone With the Wind Took the Nation by Storm By Catering to its Southern Sensibilities,” by Carrie Hagen, Smithsonian Magazine, December 15, 2014.
“Why Confederate Lies Live On,” by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, May 10, 2021.
“The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” Jefferson Davis, D. Appleton and Company. 1880.
“The Plantation System,” National Geographic Education.
“Slavery, the Plantation Myth, and Alternative Facts,” by Tyler Parry, Black Perspectives, December 6, 2017.
“The Myth of the Peaceful Plantation,” by Wayne Curtis, The Daily Beast, Originally published on August 4, 2020, and updated on November 30, 2021.
“Plantations could be used to teach about US slavery if stories are told truthfully,” by Amy Potter and Derek H. Alderman, The Conversation, March 15, 2022.
“Inside America’s Auschwitz,” by Jared Keller, Smithsonian Magazine, April 4, 2016.

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Slavery & Incarceration in New Orleans May 13, 2024

Show notes

Shortly after New Orleans became a US city (via the Louisiana Purchase), the municipal council established one of the country’s first professional salaried police forces and began operation of Police Jail, both efforts aimed at the capture and control of enslaved people who had run away from or otherwise disobeyed their enslavers. The history of New Orleans and Louisiana is an intertwined history of slavery and incarceration, the effects of which can still be felt today.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. John Bardes, Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The Best Jazz Club In New Orleans,” by PaoloArgento, available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Slave prison (Calabozo), New Orleans,” by photographer A. Genthe, taken between 1920 and 1926; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional sources:

“Timeline: New Orleans,” PBS American Experience.
“Third Treaty of San Ildefonso,” by Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach, 64 Parishes.
“Louisiana Purchase, 1803,” United States Department of State Office of the Historian.
“‘Confined in the Dungeons’: Orleans Parish Prison and Self-Emancipated People,” Lauren Smith, Kathryn O’Dwyer, Editor, and with initial research contributions by Brett Todd, New Orleans Historical, accessed May 12, 2024.
“Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade,” by Joshua D. Rothman, Smithsonian Magazine, April 19, 2021.
“Lincoln’s 'laboratory': How emancipation spread across South Louisiana during Civil War,” by Andrew Capps, Lafayette Daily Advertiser, June 18, 2021.
“Why slavery as a punishment for crime was just on the ballot in some states,” PBS News Hour, November 18, 2022.
“‘You’re a slave’: Inside Louisiana’s forced prison labor and a failed overhaul attempt,” by Cara McGoogan, Washington Post, Published January 1, 2023, and updated January 3, 2023.
“Louisiana's over-incarceration is part of a deeply rooted pattern,” by Hassan Kanu, Reuters, February 1, 2023.

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The Jazz Maestros of Jim Crow America May 06, 2024

Show notes

Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie came of age in a deeply segregated country, battling racism to become celebrated musicians, composers, and band leaders whose music lives on. Joining me this week to discuss the lives and careers of these three musical geniuses is writer and journalist Larry Tye, author of The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Riverside Blues,” performed by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923; the song is in the public domain and available via the Internet Archive. The episode images are: “Count Basie,” taken by James J. Kriegsmann in 1955, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; “Louis Armonstrong,” Herbert Behrens / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; and “Duke Ellington,’’ Associated Booking (management), 1964, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“MLK Jr. on Jazz, The Soundtrack of Civil Rights,” by Mark Taylor, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, January 14, 2022.
“Duke Ellington, a Master of Music, Dies at 75,” by John S. Wilson, The New York Times, May 25, 1974.
“Seven facts to learn about Duke Ellington,” by Cristiana Lombardo, PBS American Masters, July 18, 2022.
“Duke Ellington,” Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“Louis Armstrong, Jazz Trumpeter and Singer, Dies,” by Albin Krebs, The New York Times, July 7, 1971.
“Louis Armstrong Biography,” Louis Armstrong House Museum.
“9 Things You May Not Know About Louis Armstrong,” by Evan Andrews, History.com, Originally published August 4, 2016 and updated June 1, 2023.
“Count Basie, 79, Band Leader and Master of Swing, Dead,” by John S. Wilson, The New York TImes, April 27, 1984.
“Count Basie Biography,” Rutgers University.
“William ‘Count’ Basie,” National Endowment for the Arts.

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Negro League Baseball Apr 29, 2024

Show notes

In its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National League, to organize professional Black baseball, which was played at a very high level. Other professional Negro leagues followed, and for decades the stars of the game played in the Negro Leagues, until the National League and American League began to slowly accept Black players, starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Leslie Heaphy, Associate Professor of History at Kent State University at Stark, Vice President of the Society for American Baseball Research, founding editor of Black Ball, and author of The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Boogaboo (Fox Trot),” composed by Jelly Roll Morton and performed by Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers Camden, New Jersey, on June 11, 1928; the music is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.The episode image is from the fourth Negro League East-West All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago on August 23, 1936; the photograph is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“The History Of Baseball And Civil Rights In America,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Bud Fowler’s Life Blazed A Trail From Cooperstown,” by Isabelle Minasian, National Baseball Hall Of Fame.
“6 Decades Before Jackie Robinson, This Man Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier: Moses Fleetwood Walker played for a Major League Baseball team in the 1880s,” by Farrell Evans, History.com, Originally published April 27, 2022, and updated January 22, 2024.
“The Great Migration (1910-1970),” National Archives.
“The League [video],” Magnolia Pictures.
“A 20th Century Baseball Institution,” by Matt Kelly, MLB.com.
“The Negro League revolutionized baseball – MLB's new rules are part of its legacy,” by Dave Davies, NPR Fresh Air, July 10, 2023.
“The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.

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Log Cabin Republicans and the Gay Right Apr 22, 2024

Show notes

In 1977, a California state senator named John Briggs took to the steps of City Hall in San Francisco to announce a ballot initiative that would empower school boards to fire gay teachers based only on their sexual orientation. In response, gay activists around California mobilized, including gay Republicans, who formed among the first gay Republican organizations. In 1990, several of those California groups, together with groups across the country, combined into the Log Cabin Federation, which by 1992 had grown to 6000 members across 26 chapters.

Joining me in this episode to discuss this story and the longer history of Gay Republicans is historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Neil J. Young, author of Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Funky_30sec” by Grand_Project from Pixabay; the music is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Arguments at the United States Supreme Court for Same-Sex Marriage on April 28, 2015,” taken by Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.

Additional Sources:

“How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida's LGBTQ culture war,” by Jillian Eugenios, NBC News, April 13, 2022.
“Column: How 2.8 million California voters nearly banned gay teachers from public schools,” By Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2021.
“How Log Cabin Republicans Keep Out Of The Closet,” by NPR Weekend Edition Saturday, April 20, 2011.
“Kevin McCarthy should meet the Ronald Reagan of 1978,” by John Kenneth White, The Hill, June 3, 2021.
“Our History,” Log Cabin Republicans.
“The bizarre history of Log Cabin’s presidential endorsements,” by Chris Johnson, The Washington Blade, August 21, 2019.
“Melania Trump is set to make a return to her husband's campaign with a rare political appearance,” by Stephany Matat, The Washington Post, April 20, 2024.

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American Posture Panic Apr 15, 2024

Show notes

For several decades in the 20th Century, American universities, including elite institutions, took nude photos of their students, sometimes as often as twice a year, in order to evaluate their posture. In some cases students had to achieve a minimum posture grade in order to graduate. How did that practice develop, and how did it end? This week we’re discussing Americans’ obsession with posture with Dr. Beth Linker, the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Debutante Intermezzo,” composed and performed by Howard Kopp in 1916; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from “The posture of school children, with its home hygiene and new efficiency methods for school training,” from 1913, by Jessie H. Bancroft; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

“Correct Posture League.; Will Educate Children and Adults to Stand Up Straight,” The New York Times, April 2, 1914.
"College Slouch" Proved By Orthopedic Tests,” The Harvard Crimson, March 8, 1917.
“The Rise and Fall of American Posture,” by David Yosifon and Peter N. Stearns, The American Historical Review 103, no. 4 (1998): 1057–95.
“The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal,” by Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Times Magazine, January 15, 1995, Section 6, Page 26.
“It’s Not Too Late to Fix Your Posture,” by Thessaly La Force, Vogue Magazine, January 18, 2024.
“Six ways to improve your posture,” by Rebecca Newman, Financial Times, March 26 2024.
“Learn how to correct your posture in only 60 seconds,” by Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest, February 9, 2024.
“How to promote good posture and avoid becoming hunched over,” by Michele Stanten, The Washington Post, December 11, 2023.

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