Episodes
The Wampanoag & the Thanksgiving Myth
Nov. 22, 2021
In Autumn of 1621, a group of Pilgrims from the Mayflower voyage and Wampanoag men, led by their sachem Massasoit, ate a feast together. The existence of that meal, which held little importance to either the Pilgrims or the …
Treaty Rights of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe
Nov. 15, 2021
Before the arrival of Europeans, the Ojibwe nation occupied much of the Lake Superior region, including what is now Ontario in Canada and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the United States. In 1850, President Zachary Ta…
Alaska Territorial Guard in World War II
Nov. 8, 2021
Prior to World War II, most of the US military deemed the territory of Alaska as militarily unimportant, to the point where the Alaska National Guard units were stationed instead in Washington state in August of 1941. That c…
The Stockbridge-Munsee Community & their Removal History
Nov. 1, 2021
The Stockbridge-Munsee Community , the People of the Waters that Are Never Still, were forced to move many times after they first encountered Europeans. In 1609, Dutch trader Henry Hudson sailed up the Mahicannituck, the Riv…
Fashion, Feminism, and the New Woman of the late 19th Century
Oct. 25, 2021
The late 19th Century ushered in an evolution in women’s fashion from the Victorian “True Woman” whose femininity was displayed in wide skirts and petticoats, the “New Woman” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was mod…
The Original Fight for the Equal Rights Amendment
Oct. 18, 2021
After the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, enfranchising (some) women, lots of questions remained. If women could vote, could they serve on juries? Could they hold public office? What about the array of state-laws that s…
Zitkála-Šá
Oct. 11, 2021
Writer, musician, and political activist Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where she lived until she was eight. When Zitkála-…
Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War
Oct. 4, 2021
Nearly 350,000 American women served in the US military during World War II. Although the women in the military didn’t engage in combat their presence was vital to the American effort, in clerical work as well as in driving …
Freedom Suits in Maryland & DC, 1790-1864
Sept. 27, 2021
Slavery was legal in Maryland until November 1, 1864, when a new state constitution prohibited the practice of slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation the year before had declared slaves in the Confederate states to be …
Chef Lena Richard
Sept. 20, 2021
Over a decade before Julia Child’s The French Chef appeared on TV, a Black woman chef hosted her own, very popular cooking show on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. At a time when families were just beginning to own televisions, Chef …
African American AIDS Activism
Sept. 13, 2021
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), in 2018, 13% of the US population was Black and African American, but 42% of new HIV diagnoses in the US were from Black and African American people. Thi…
The Coors Boycott
Sept. 6, 2021
In the mid-1960s, to protest discriminatory hiring practices, Chicano groups in Colorado called for a boycott of the Coors Brewing Company, launching what would become a decades-long boycott that brought together a coalition…
Phrenology & Crime in 19th Century America
Aug. 30, 2021
In Nineteenth Century America there was a strong reformist push to know and improve the self. One key tactic Americans used to learn more about themselves was phrenological readings. They would pay practical phrenologists, l…
Chesapeake Bay Pirates & the 19th Century Oyster Wars
Aug. 23, 2021
In Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th century, oyster harvesting was a big business. There were so many oyster harvesters harvesting so many oysters that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia had to start regulating who cou…
Prohibition in the 1850s
Aug. 16, 2021
Popular depictions of prohibition in the United States usually show the speakeasies, bootleggers, flappers, and bathtub gin of the Roaring Twenties, but earlier attempts at prohibition stretch back far into the 19th century.…
The Nativist Riots of Philadelphia in 1844
Aug. 9, 2021
In May of 1844, growing tensions between nativists and Irish Catholic immigrants in Philadelphia erupted into violence in the streets of the Irish Catholic Kensington district, prompted in part by a disagreement over whether…
Elizabeth Packard
Aug. 2, 2021
Elizabeth Packard was born in Massachusetts in 1816 into a comfortable home where her parents were able to provide for her education. She taught briefly at a girls’ school before at age 23 agreeing at her parents’ urging to …
Mary Mallon (The Sad & Complicated Story of "Typhoid Mary")
July 26, 2021
Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, immigrated from Northern Ireland to New York City at age 15, around 1883. She found work as a cook, a well paying job for an immigrant woman and worked for number of different f…
Migrant Incarceration and the 1985 El Centro Hunger Strike
July 19, 2021
In 1945, United States immigration officials opened the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp in El Centro, California, to be an administrative holding center for unauthorized Mexican migrants, many of whom had been working o…
Black Teachers & The Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina
July 12, 2021
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas that that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Although the process was slow and conten…
Homosexuality and the Left Before 1960
July 5, 2021
Political activism of queer people in the United States started long before the Stonewall riots in 1969. One surprising place that queer people found a home for their activism was in the Communist Party. The Communist Party …
Sophonisba Breckinridge
June 28, 2021
Sophonisba “Nisba” Preston Breckinridge, born April 1, 1866, was a woman of firsts. Breckinridge was the first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar to practice law in 1895; the first woman to earn a PhD in Political Science at…
Susie King Taylor
June 21, 2021
Susie King Taylor was born into slavery in Georgia in 1848. With the help of family members, she was educated and escaped, joining the Union army at the age of 14, to serve ostensibly as a laundress, but in reality as a nurs…
The Jackson State Shootings in May 1970
June 14, 2021
Just after midnight on May 15, 1970, officers opened fire on a group of unarmed students milling in front of a dorm on the campus of Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing two and wounding twelve. Although th…