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Episodes

July 19, 2021

The El Centro Hunger Strike of 1985

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…
Guest: Jessica Ordaz
July 12, 2021

Black Teachers & The Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina

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…
July 5, 2021

Homosexuality and the Left Before 1960

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 …
June 28, 2021

Sophonisba Breckinridge

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…
Guest: Anya Jabour
June 21, 2021

Susie King Taylor

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…
Guest: Ben Railton
June 14, 2021

The Jackson State Shootings in May 1970

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…
June 7, 2021

Knitting Brigades of World War I

Between America’s entry into World War I and the end of the war less than two years later, Americans knit 23 million articles of clothing and bandages for soldiers overseas, directed by the American Red Cross. How was this k…
Guest: Holly Korda
June 3, 2021

Introducing Unsung History

A podcast about the people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet. With host Kelly Therese Pollock. In each episode of Unsung History I’ll start us out with a short narrative answering the Who, What,…