A regular Avocado feature chronicling how historical events shaped our current political and cultural climates
In her own mind, Mary Steichen Calderone was hardly radical. She was a practicing Quaker and a well-regarded doctor; a mother of three, she expressed pride in her role as “a mother and a grandmother and a “great-grandmother.” Even at … Continue reading History Thread: Fighting “Raw Sex” in the Classroom
By the mid-1960s, many expected the next Civil Rights battleground to be in education. Martin Luther King lamented that “the history books, which had almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, only served to intensify the … Continue reading History Thread: Propaganda and Poppycock in “The Land of the Free”
In 1914, white supremacy was as dominant in America as ever. Ben Tillman, the one-eyed Senator from South Carolina who in his youth led the Paramilitary Redshirts in taking over his state, proclaimed that “this is a white man’s country … Continue reading History Thread: William Monroe Trotter vs. D.W. Griffith
In 1974, America was coming apart at the seams. Disillusioned by Watergate, infuriated by foreign oil embargoes and spikes in meat prices, frightened by terrorism, cults and kidnapped heiresses, depressed by an economic downturn, there seemed little respite from misery. … Continue reading History Thread: The Year of Pitching Dangerously
Header image from National Lampoon (October 1973), art by Dick Ayers. All other illustrations are from New York Magazine’s The Illustrated Secret History of Watergate, online here. Last Tuesday, Nixon henchman and Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy died at age … Continue reading History Thread: Gordon Liddy’s Greatest Hits
Few people outside of Texas had heard of Barbara Jordan prior to July 25, 1974. Jordan grew up in Houston’s 5th Ward, a poor, overwhelmingly Black neighborhood full of “shotgun houses” managed by white landowners. Her father Ben, was a … Continue reading History Thread: Barbara Jordan Takes Down a President
In 1958, Clennon Washington King, Jr. was a part-time professor at Alcorn State in Mississippi. Son of an activist who’d worked for Booker T. Washington, King generated controversy for calling the NAACP “a tool for conniving whites” while also warning … Continue reading History Thread: James Meredith and the Pride of Ole Miss
When Gary Thomas Rowe moved to Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s, he desperately wanted to be a policeman. Born in 1933 in Savannah, Rowe spent his twenties helping ATF agents bust Georgia moonshiners in exchange for surplus rifles. He applied … Continue reading History Thread: I Was a Klansman for the FBI
On December 29, 1890, the Indian Wars climaxed with the Wounded Knee Massacre, where the 7th US Cavalry killed 300 members of the Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota. The massacre’s immediate causes were the government’s decision to dissolve the Great Sioux … Continue reading History Thread: The Last Ghost Dance
On November 24th, 1965 General Joseph Mobutu formally seized power in the Republic of Congo. Mobutu was a member of the Ngbandi people, long looked down upon by Congolese as a backward agrarian people. During the ’50s, he served the … Continue reading History Thread: A Brief History of Mobutu’s Zaire
Few poets achieve lasting fame or cultural impact: in that sense, at least, Ezra Pound deserves notice. The abrasive, brilliant writer from Philadelphia made his mark in the literary salons of London in the 1910s, in Paris during the “Lost … Continue reading History Thread: The Madness of Ezra Pound
On August 30, 1945 two American war corespondents entered Tokyo. The Second World War still hadn’t formally ended – Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s surrender two days later – but Clark Lee of International News Service and Harry Brundidge of Cosmopolitan … Continue reading History Thread: The Making of Tokyo Rose
Part One here. As 1868 dawned, Andrew Johnson grew bolder and his adversaries, increasingly frustrated. Washington life fell into a dismal pattern, observed French journalist Georges Clemenceau, that yielded only deadlock and chaos: At each session [Congress] add a shackle … Continue reading History Thread: The Saturday Morning Massacre
Andrew Johnson was a stubborn man. From his hardscrabble childhood in North Carolina, when he escaped from indentured servitude; as an unschooled Tennessee tailor who taught himself (helped by his wife Eliza) to read and write, developing a taste for … Continue reading History Thread: Andrew Johnson’s Dignity
On 7th June 2020, the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London was decorated by protestors during an anti-racism demo. The painted message claimed that Churchill was a racist … and they are absolutely right. Winston Churchill was a … Continue reading Was Churchill Antifa?
On June 19, 1954, Senator Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming walked into the Capitol Building with his arms full of boxes and papers. A Capitol police officer recognized Hunt and offered his assistance; Hunt handed the officer a .22 caliber … Continue reading History Thread: Nightmare in Lavender
Today’s History Thread marks the anniversary of Joseph McCarthy’s humiliation at the Army-McCarthy hearings. The present author has written about the Red Scare several times in the past, but has only glancingly touched on Tailgunner Joe. McCarthy enjoyed a four … Continue reading The History Thread Has No Sense of Decency
A few weeks ago I devoted a History Thread to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970. Just eleven days later, on May 15th, another campus shooting shocked the nation. While Kent State remains widely known (enough to inspire … Continue reading The Jackson State History Thread
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shooting, one of the most traumatic moments of the Vietnam War era. I’ve previously written around it (writing articles on Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia and the backlash to the shooting … Continue reading The Kent State History Thread
In 1849, rumors of untold riches across the ocean reached China. In California, or Gold Mountain as the Chinese knew it, the discovery of gold initiated a massive influx of settlers from across the globe. “Good many Americans speak of … Continue reading How We Got Here: Chinese America’s Fight for “Simple Justice”
Sixth in a series of articles on McCarthyism and the Red Scare; see Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five. By any standards, Ruth A. M. Schmidt was a remarkable woman. Born in Brooklyn in April 1916, Schmidt became interested … Continue reading How We Got Here: Ruth Schmidt Browses the Washington Bookshop
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