UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
Recent Episodes
Jan. 30, 2023
The Green Book
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green published the first edition of what he called The Negro Motorist Green Book, a 16-page listing of businesses in the New York metropolitan area that would welcome African American customers. By its f...
Jan. 23, 2023
American Women Writers in Italy in the 19th Century
The second half of the nineteenth century was a momentous time in Italian history, marked by the unification of the peninsula and the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. Three American women writers had a front-seat view of th...
Jan. 16, 2023
The 1968 Student Uprising at Tuskegee Institute
Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and after months of increasing tension on campus, the students at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama occupied a building on campus where the Trustees were meeting, demanding...
Jan. 9, 2023
Shirley Chisholm
Throughout her life, Shirley Chisholm fought for coalitional change. She was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress in 1968, the first Black woman to run for President of the United States in 1972, co-fou...
Jan. 2, 2023
The Aerobics Craze of the 1980s
In the late 1960s, Air Force surgeon Dr. Kenneth Cooper was evaluating military fitness plans when he realized that aerobic activities, what we now call cardio, like running and cycling, was the key to overall physical health...
Dec. 26, 2022
Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate
Stede Bonnet lived a life of luxury in Barbados, inheriting from his father an over 400-acre sugarcane plantation, along with 94 slaves. But in late 1716, when he was 29 years old, Bonnet decided to leave behind his plantatio...
Dec. 19, 2022
Smallpox Inoculation & the American Revolution
In 1775, a smallpox outbreak struck the Continental Northern Army. With many of the soldiers too sick to fight, their attempted capture of Quebec on December 31, 1775, was a devastating failure, the first major defeat of the ...
Dec. 12, 2022
The Sea Islands Hurricane of 1893
On August 27, 1893, a massive hurricane struck the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, battering the Sea Islands and Lowcountry through the next morning. Around 2,000 people in the thriving African American community perishe...
Dec. 5, 2022
The Rise of the Labor Movement & Employer Resistance in the Late 19th…
After the Civil War, the simultaneous shift in the labor economy of the Southern United States and the second industrial revolution led to a growing interest in labor organizing. Newly formed labor organizations led a combine...
Nov. 28, 2022
Single Irish Women & Domestic Service in late 19th Century New York C…
As many as two million Irish people relocated to North America during the Great Hunger in the mid-19th Century. Even after the famine had ended, Irish families continued to send their teenaged and 20-something children to the...
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.