UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
Recent Episodes
July 4, 2022
Independence Day
On July 4, Americans will eat 150 million hot dogs, spend $1 billion on beer, and watch 16,000 fireworks displays (and those are …
June 27, 2022
The 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riot
On a hot weekend night in August 1966 trans women fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin …
June 20, 2022
Two-Spirit People in Native American Cultures
In the summer of 1990, at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the t…
June 13, 2022
The Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village
The 12-story Women’s House of Detention, situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City, from 1932 to 1974, was cent…
June 6, 2022
The Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement
Queer suffragists were central to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States from its earliest days. However, in a moveme…
May 30, 2022
Chinese Grocery Stores in the Mississippi Delta
During Reconstruction, cotton planters in the Mississippi Delta recruited Chinese laborers to work on their plantations, to repla…
May 23, 2022
Patsy Mink
In Patsy Mink’s first term in Congress in 1965, she was one of only 11 women serving in the US House of Representatives, and she …
May 16, 2022
The US-Born Japanese Americans (Nisei) who Migrated to Japan
In the decades before World War II, 50,000 of the US-born children of Japanese immigrants (a quarter of their total population) m…
May 9, 2022
Thai Americans & the Rise of Thai Food in the United States
There are around 300,000 Thai Americans but almost 5,000 Thai restaurants in the United States. To understand how Thai restaurant…
May 2, 2022
Mary Paik Lee
Mary Paik Lee (Paik Kuang Sun) was born in the Korean Empire on August 17, 1900, and was baptized by American Presbyterian minist…
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.