UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
Recent Episodes
Oct. 18, 2021
The Original Fight for the Equal Rights Amendment
After the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, enfranchising (some) women, lots of questions remained. If women could vote, could…
Oct. 11, 2021
Zitkála-Šá
Writer, musician, and political activist Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on February 22, 1876, on the…
Oct. 4, 2021
Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War
Nearly 350,000 American women served in the US military during World War II. Although the women in the military didn’t engage in …
Sept. 27, 2021
Freedom Suits in Maryland & DC, 1790-1864
Slavery was legal in Maryland until November 1, 1864, when a new state constitution prohibited the practice of slavery. Lincoln’s…
Sept. 20, 2021
Chef Lena Richard
Over a decade before Julia Child’s The French Chef appeared on TV, a Black woman chef hosted her own, very popular cooking show o…
Sept. 13, 2021
African American AIDS Activism
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), in 2018, 13% of the US population was Black and African Am…
Sept. 6, 2021
The Coors Boycott
In the mid-1960s, to protest discriminatory hiring practices, Chicano groups in Colorado called for a boycott of the Coors Brewin…
Aug. 30, 2021
Phrenology & Crime in 19th Century America
In Nineteenth Century America there was a strong reformist push to know and improve the self. One key tactic Americans used to le…
Aug. 23, 2021
Chesapeake Bay Pirates & the 19th Century Oyster Wars
In Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th century, oyster harvesting was a big business. There were so many oyster harvesters harvesting…
Aug. 16, 2021
Prohibition in the 1850s
Popular depictions of prohibition in the United States usually show the speakeasies, bootleggers, flappers, and bathtub gin of th…
About the Host
Kelly Therese Pollock
Producer & Host
Kelly has always been the kind of person who asks questions — lots of questions — to anyone who will listen and answer. With a BA in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (where she wrote a thesis on feminist witches), Kelly has turned her questioning to politics and history where she digs deep into stories that aren’t getting enough attention.
By day Kelly is an administrator at the University of Chicago, where she has worked since 2004.
Kelly lives on the southside of Chicago with her husband, two kids, and two cats. When she’s not podcasting or working you can find Kelly with knitting needles in her hands. If she could knit and podcast at the same time she would.