UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
Recent Episodes
June 5, 2023
Racial Conflict in the U.S. Army During the Vietnam War Era
In September 1969, African American journalist Wallace Terry reported on “another war being fought in Vietnam — between black and white Americans.” After the 1948 integration of the military, the U.S. Army had tried to be col...
May 29, 2023
Black Soldiers & their Families in the Civil War
As soon as the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, free Black men in the North rushed to enlist, but they were turned away, as President Lincoln worried that arming Black soldiers would lead to …
May 22, 2023
The Oneida Perfectionist Religious Community
In 1848, a group of religious perfectionists, led by John Humphrey Noyes, established a commune in Oneida, New York, where they lived and worked together. Women in the community had certain freedoms compared to the outside wo...
May 15, 2023
The Diversity Visa Lottery
In the 1980s undocumented Irish immigrants convinced United States lawmakers to create a program that would provide a path to citizenship for individuals without family connections in the United States. That program eventuall...
May 8, 2023
Women & the Law in Revolutionary America
Despite a plea from Abigail Adams to her husband to “Remember the Ladies,” women, especially married women, didn’t have many legal rights in the Early Republic. Even so, women used existing legal structures to advocate for th...
May 1, 2023
Project Confrontation: The Birmingham Campaign of 1963
In 1963, on the heels of a failed desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King., Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to take a stand for Civil Rights in “the Most Segregated City in ...
April 24, 2023
The Plant Revolution and 19th Century American Literature
During the 19th Century, growing international trade and imperialist conquest combined with new technologies to transport and care for flora led to a burgeoning fascination with plant life. American writers, from Emily Dickin...
April 17, 2023
The 1972 Occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
While voters were casting their ballots in the 1972 presidential election, Native demonstrators had taken over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, DC, barricading themselves in with office furniture and prepa...
April 10, 2023
The Southern Strategy
In the decades following the Civil War, African Americans reliably voted for the Republican Party, which had led the efforts to outlaw slavery and enfranchise Black voters; and white southerners reliably voted for the Democra...
April 3, 2023
Harold Washington
In 1983, Harold Washington took on the Chicago machine and won, with the help of a multiracial coalition, becoming the first Black mayor of Chicago. Winning the mayoral election was only the first fight, and 29 of the 50 alde...
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.