K.P.Kollenborn

Who was Charley Parkhurst?

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 13:05:00 +0000

By Tim Arango from The New York Times

originally published Dec. 5, 2018

Overlooked No More: Charley Parkhurst, Gold Rush Legend With a Hidden Identity

A swashbuckling, one-eyed stagecoach driver lived her life disguised as a man. After her death, the revelation that she was a woman provoked widespread astonishment.

Charley Parkhurst was a legendary driver of six-horse stagecoaches during California’s Gold Rush — the “best whip in California,” by one account.

The job was treacherous and not for the faint of heart — pulling cargos of gold over tight mountain passes and open desert, at constant peril from rattlesnakes and desperadoes — but Parkhurst had the makeup for it: “short and stocky,” a whiskey drinker, cigar smoker and tobacco chewer who wore a black eyepatch after being kicked in the left eye by a horse.

And there was one other attribute, this one carefully hidden from the outside world. When Parkhurst died in 1879 at age 67, near Watsonville, Calif., of cancer of the tongue, a doctor discovered that the famous stagecoach driver was biologically a woman. Charley, it turned out, had been short for Charlotte.

“The discoveries of the successful concealment for protracted periods of the female sex under the disguise of the masculine are not infrequent, but the case of Charley Parkhurst may fairly claim to rank as by all odds the most astonishing of them all,” The San Francisco Call wrote not long after her death, in an article that was reprinted in The New York Times under the headline “Thirty Years in Disguise.”

Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst was born in 1812 in New Hampshire. Abandoned by her parents, she was consigned to an orphanage, from which historians believe she ran away wearing boys’ clothes. She wound up in Worcester, Mass., where she got a job cleaning horse stables. She also found a mentor, Ebenezer Balch, who taught her how to handle horses.

“The story goes that while in the poor house he discovered that boys have a great advantage over girls in the battle of life, and he desired to become a boy,” The Providence Journal in Rhode Island wrote in an article after her death, as reporters on both coasts tried to piece together her life.

After working as a stagecoach driver on the East Coast for several years, Parkhurst journeyed west, like so many Americans seeking fortune and reinvention in California. She traveled by ship to Panama, traversed a short overland route, and then boarded another ship to San Francisco, where she arrived in 1850 or 1851.

In California, she quickly became known for her ability to move passengers and gold safely over important routes between gold-mining outposts and major towns like San Francisco or Sacramento. “Only a rare breed of men (and women),” wrote the historian Ed Sams in his 2014 book “The Real Mountain Charley,” “could be depended upon to ignore the gold fever of the 1850s and hold down a steady job of grueling travel over narrow one-way dirt roads that swerved around mountain curves, plummeting into deep canyons and often forded swollen, icy streams.”

Parkhurst wore “long-fingered, beaded gloves,” Sams wrote, to hide her feminine hands. She was considered one of the safest stagecoach drivers — not a daredevil, like so many of her contemporaries — and had a special rapport with the horses. She drove for Wells Fargo, at least once moving a large cargo of gold across the country.

A 1969 article about Parkhurst in the Travel section of The New York Times evoked some of the perils she faced: “Indians and grizzly bears also were a major menace. The state lines of California in the post-Gold Rush period were certainly no place for a lady, and nobody ever accused Charley of being one.”

“The only feminine trait her acquaintances could recall,” the article added, “was her fondness for children.”

Once she was kicked in the eye by a horse, which was perhaps startled by a rattlesnake; that earned her the nickname “One-Eyed Charley,” for the black patch she wore over her left eye.

Parkhurst’s story has long been shrouded in myth and thinly sourced anecdotes. (A well-worn tale has her killing a famous bandit known as Surgarfoot after he held up her stagecoach on the route between Mariposa and Stockton.)

In “Charley’s Choice,” a 2008 work of historical fiction, the writer Fern J. Hill imagines that as a child, Parkhurst told a friend of her dreams of driving a stagecoach. When the friend replied, “You can’t, you’re a girl,” young Charlotte decided then and there to live as a man.

And in another novel, “The Whip,” by Karen Kondazian (2012), Parkhurst is cast as a straight woman who wanted her freedom.

“I would have done that,” Ms. Kondazian said in a telephone interview. “I would have probably put on men’s clothes, to be free like a man.”

She added: “You can kind of use her in any way you want, because we don’t have the total facts about her.”

Some historians say that had Parkhurst lived today, she might well have identified as gay or transgender. “Being gay at that time was seen as negative,” said Mark Jarrett, a textbook publisher who included Parkhurst in a new book intended to comply with a California law requiring social studies curriculums to recognize the historical role of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“It was illegal, it was a crime,” he said, “so people didn’t go around professing what their real identities were. They were hidden identities.”

In the late 1860s, with the growing popularity of railroads, stagecoach driving became a dying profession. Parkhurst retired and opened a saloon for a time, and also worked as a lumberjack in Northern California. After she died, The Santa Cruz Sentinel wrote, “Her accumulations were regular and her wealth considerable at the time of her death, which took place in a lonely cabin, with no one near and her secret her own.”

Parkhurst could claim one other distinction: An 1867 registry in Santa Cruz County lists a Charles Darkey Parkhurst from New Hampshire as having registered to vote — more than 50 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the franchise. While there is no evidence she voted in the 1868 presidential election, her gravestone in Watsonville is etched with these words: “The First Woman to Vote in the U.S.” (The claim is generally doubted by historians.)

Even in the 19th century, however, there was admiration for Parkhurst’s feat of disguise.

“The only people who have occasion to be disturbed by the career of Charley Parkhurst are the gentlemen who have so much to say about ‘woman’s sphere’ and ‘the weaker vessel,’ ” The Providence Journal wrote. “It is beyond question that one of the soberest, pleasantest, most expert drivers in this State, and one of the most celebrated of the world-famed California drivers was a woman. And is it not true that a woman had done what woman can do?”

www.nytimes.com

Pride Comes Before the Fall: 10 Fascinating Details About Confederate States of America You Don’t Know

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000

By Larry Holzwarth on History Collection

The Confederate States of America were born in 1861 and suffered many disappointments in its short life. The Confederacy never achieved recognition by any other nation and prosecuted a war which had no formal end. The Civil War began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, which preceded the secession of four states which were critical to the Confederacy – Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The Southern leaders who led the formation of the Confederacy were unabashed in their support of the slavery system. Its Vice-President, Alexander Stephens stated clearly that the new government formed by the seceding states rested upon “…the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.”

Both Delaware and Maryland were states in which slavery was legal but neither chose to join the Confederacy, although Maryland did send troops to fight in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederate Government entered into treaties with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Tribes, and granted representation for the Five Civilized Tribes in the Confederate Congress. As in the United States Constitution, a site for a new capital city for the Confederacy was specified in its Constitution, although it was never built and Richmond, Virginia served as the Capital for most of the war.

Here are some interesting facts regarding the Confederate States of America which are often overlooked.

Government Intervention in Private Industry

Although the Confederate States seceded in part to support the rights of freedmen and to limit the intrusion of federal government it quickly established national policies which seized property and forced compliance with the war effort. The South had a widely agrarian economy and little industry in comparison to the North, but nonetheless would have been ranked as the fourth richest economy in the world in 1860 had it been recognized as independent of the United States.

In both agriculture and manufacturing a significant portion of the work force was slave labor. Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works, the third largest in North America, used slaves for almost half of its work force. Nearby the Gallego Flour Mills was the largest producer of high quality milled flour in the world. It too used a significant number of slaves to support operations.

The Confederate Government almost immediately sought to seize control of industry and agriculture in the Confederacy. Nearly all of the products produced by Confederate factories and farms were needed to support the war effort, and Conscription acts passed in 1862 and 1863 gave the government authority to dispense exemptions to those who filled government contracts – thus protecting their workers from being subject to the draft while supplying the government.

Though the North far excelled the Confederacy in manufacturing, 70% of pre-secession exports from the United States had come from the South. The combination of a confused tariff policy, with local interests outweighing those of the government in Richmond and the Union blockade of Southern ports soon stripped the Confederacy of this economic advantage.

Early in the war cotton growers and brokers hoarded their bales in the hope of obtaining higher prices from Europe due to shortages of the commodity. This severely weakened the cash flow to the Southern Railroads, which moved cotton from the inland plantations to the ports. The loss of jobs as a result left the railroads in a poor position to support the war effort and the Confederate Government responded by 1863 when it placed control of all Southern Railroads in the hands of its military commanders.

Suppression of Civil Liberties

The Confederate States Government frequently and virulently condemned Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant throughout the Civil War, trying to impress the rest of the world with the idea that the Confederacy was the true cradle of American liberty and freedom. But suppression of civil liberties in the South was forceful and widespread.

In August 1861 the Confederate Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act and the Sequestration Act. The first made it mandatory for any citizen in the Confederacy to formally acknowledge support of the government or be subject to arrest and deportation. The second gave the government the authority to confiscate the property of any non-citizen. The Confederate government invoked the Sequestration Act to seize Monticello, the former home of Thomas Jefferson, which was then owned by a United States Naval Officer.

That same month Jefferson Davis created the office of Habeas Corpus Commissioner. The Commissioner had the power of the courts and could arrest anyone in the Confederate States and imprison them indefinitely, without being formally charged, denying them legal representation. Persons so charged often found the only means of escaping their quandary was to join the army as demonstrated proof of loyalty.

By Autumn of 1862 travel in the South required the obtaining of a pass, issued by the government, and enforced by the military and by the Confederate Secret Police. The sale of intoxicating liquor was banned at the same time.

The required use of travel passes – essentially domestic passports – led to the Army establishing manned checkpoints and searches on trains and in depots to ensure all travelers were carrying the appropriate documentation. Those found to be in non-compliance with the law fell into either military custody as a possible deserter or spy, or into the hands of the Habeas Corpus Commission as an undesirable alien. Abuses of both laws to settle old grudges were widespread.

Conscription

The first military draft law to be enacted in North America was passed by the Confederate Congress in the Spring of 1862. White men between 18 and 35 years of age were determined by the government to belong to the Confederate Army for a period of three years, and all men then enlisted in the Army were extended, regardless of the terms of their enlistment, to a period of three years. The draft law specified that draftees would serve in regiments from their home state, and that draftees could purchase substitutes to serve in their stead. By September the law was extended to include all white men up to the age of 45. Draftees were called up based on the state’s ability to equip and pay them.

By 1863 the system of substitution was abolished and by 1864 men up to the age of 50 – and beginning at age 17 – were subject to the draft. Exemptions for men in specific occupations such as critical war related industries were allowed. Another form of exemption was the Twenty Negro Law. The law allowed those who owned 20 or more black slaves to be exempt as they were needed to oversee them at their work.

Conscription in the Confederacy was problematic from the beginning and grew worse as the war dragged on. Besides being fraught with fraud and deceptive practices, the practice of each state operating its own system was unreliable. Casualty lists from the front and a high rate of desertion – particularly from those under 18 and over 50 – made the demand for more men never ending.

This weakened the war effort as it took away men needed to meet the Confederacy’s demand for the goods necessary to conduct the war. Shortages among the troops of all the necessities of war grew in part because the means of distributing them were simply not there. Still Confederate leaders in the field, particularly Robert E. Lee, demanded more and more men for their armies.

Conscription in the South proved to be a major failing of the Confederacy. By the spring of 1865, as Lee was entrenched at Petersburg, all exemptions had been abolished and veterans who had lost one leg or one arm in battle were being retained in the ranks, albeit in mostly support assignments.

Failed Diplomacy

In the early days of the Confederacy many of its leaders were reliant on the sale of cotton to Great Britain and France to help achieve what the Confederate States never gained – international recognition as an independent nation. In this they ignored the fact that the European powers had other sources of cotton besides the American South – Egypt was one – and the British were dependent on large amounts of imported foodstuffs from the Union.

When the United States bluntly warned the British that recognition of or overt support for the Confederacy would mean war with the United States it was taken to heart by British leaders. Despite this several prominent British political figures advocated for support of the Confederacy for diverse reasons. The Confederates failed to capitalize on this early support and after Lincoln made the war in part a crusade to abolish slavery the potential for British intervention ended.

French ruler Napoleon III supported the idea of the UK and France issuing a joint recognition of the Confederate States, but the threat of war with the US was too much for the British Parliament to swallow, especially as British economic interests were strongly tied to the United States.

Both the French and the British did provide some support to the Confederacy, over the loud protests of the Lincoln administration. British shipyards built several blockade runners for the use of the Confederate Navy and opened their ports to Confederate ships. France provided a loan of $15 million through several financiers and capitalists, most of which was used to acquire ships.

The question of European intervention came to an end in the summer of 1863 when several European military observers reported the devastation of Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and the nearly simultaneous fall of Vicksburg. With those two events it was evident that the South could not prevail and unwilling to antagonize the United States further, talk of European support of the South came to an end.

Food shortages

The South (and the North) had a largely agrarian economy. In 1860 about 85% of the population of the United States lived on small farms or rural communities, and excess crops were usually traded or sold locally. In the South, the large amounts of arable land planted in cotton prevented the growth of sufficient food crops to feed the region.

Several Confederate states attempted to discourage the planting of cotton, which large planters were reluctant to discontinue as a cash crop, confident in a coming boom market in Europe. Many wealthy cotton planters believed that the increase in European cotton prices would help fuel European intervention. In frustration Georgia passed quotas for cotton, exceeding of which would be criminal. Still planters stuck to their “proven” cash crop even as the blockade strangled trade.

With not enough food being grown and imports blocked by Union ships, shortages of all foods and medicines were soon evident, and grew worse with each month the war went on. The demand of the Armies in the field added to the woes of the home front.

Southern families sought alternatives for coffee, by 1863 nearly non-existent in the South. Some replaced coffee beans with toasted okra pods, others used the leaves of the chicory plant as a substitute. Items like flour became scarce despite the presence of multiple mills in the south. There was no way to move the grains to the mills, and little grain to begin with.

By 1853 food riots were commonplace in many of the South’s larger cities, including the capital at Richmond, where the Congress and administration witnessed the fruit of their labors. The combination of food shortages and the rampant inflation eroding the strength of the Confederate dollar continued to grow worse until the end of the war, when the southern railroads were completely destroyed, and the means of moving what little food there was became non-existent.

The Glanders Epizootic

Although the Civil War was revolutionary in its use of trains to move large numbers of troops quickly, it still required what all armies for several millennia had required – horses and mules. Horses and mules pulled wagons, ambulances, artillery, carried cavalry, provided power to erect buildings, and did all of the labors they have done seemingly since time began. On the battlefield they were just as susceptible to injury as their human masters, and the armies of both sides of the conflict required thousands of them to support the war.

In the Confederate Army it was common practice for cavalry mounts to be privately owned until 1863, when the Army began to issue mounts. Depots were established in areas near the fronts for the stabling and care of horses. One such depot, near Lynchburg Virginia, stabled more than 6800 horses over fifteen months, of which only about one thousand made it to the army. The rest died or were rendered unfit for service by glanders.

Glanders is an infectious disease, often fatal, which is transmitted via body fluid and was likely spread throughout the closely stabled horses at water troughs. Lynchburg was not the only site where glanders struck Confederate livestock. From 1861 to 1866 an epizootic of glanders wreaked havoc on Confederate mules and horses. Animals became ill, weakened and died, or were shot when symptoms displayed to prevent the spread of the disease.

When the Civil War began about 2.5 million horses and mules were available in the South, more than half of these were lost during the war. By contrast, Union troops had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh mounts and draft animals available to them throughout the war. The loss of animals had a negative impact on the mobility of the Confederate troops by the end of the war.

Glanders was experimented with as a biological weapon by German troops in the First World War. It is now known to be treatable with antibiotics, unavailable to the medical practitioners of the Civil War. There hasn’t been a case of the disease reported in the United States since the 1940s, but during the period of the Civil War it ravaged the stock of the Confederate Army.

State’s Rights

One of the leading arguments for secession was that each state voluntarily entered its contract with the Union and thus each state retained the right to voluntarily leave it, based on the sovereignty of its people. It has been argued that this adherence to the rights of individual states over the authority of a central government is a leading cause of the failure of the Confederacy.

Both President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Alexander Stephens were elected to single six year terms of office under the Confederate Constitution. Davis took many steps to centralize authority, such as the conscription laws, over which he was opposed by several state governors and his Vice President, who called Davis’s usurpation of authority tyrannical. “History proved the dangers of such unchecked authority,” said Stephens in opposition to a strong central government.

By 1863 some governor’s opposition to conscription had led them to deny the use of troops from their state by the central government, claiming that they were needed defend against local threats. When the draft exemption for newspaper editors and reporters was eliminated many states protested that it was a thinly veiled attempt to stifle dissent by sending editors into the Army.

Despite the wide range of political differences in the Confederate Congress and throughout its government, the emergence of organized political parties did not take place in the Confederacy. Without a two party system the debate during the Congressional elections of 1863 were largely without any national, or even regional focus, and instead concentrated on narrow personal levels.

Jefferson Davis was a former US Senator and Secretary of War and was well aware of the need to prosecute a major war through an unbending, united effort. His attempt to consolidate the power he needed to do so made him largely unpopular as President of the Confederacy, and the growing shortages at home and military failures after 1863 further eroded his authority and popularity.

Patent Office

As an independent nation with its own government and laws, the Confederate States of America soon acquired much of the bureaucracy of modern governments, including a Post Office, Mint, (by taking over former US Mints) and Patent Office. Rufus Rhodes, a former official of the United States Patent Office from Mississippi, served as the only Commissioner of the Confederate Patent Office. During its first year in existence – 1861 – the office issued 57 patents, in contrast with the over three thousand issued by the US Patent Office.

Over a third of the patents issued during the first year were for improvements to firearms or other weapons of war, although other patents for farm implements, a steam driven plow, textile machines, and other inventions were issued. The patent office suffered from a lack of working space (it was located on the third floor of the Mechanic’s Institute in Richmond) and reference materials, as well as a budget which precluded the acquisition of books and technical literature essential to its work.

Over the course of its existence the Confederate Patent Office would issue 266 patents. The design and manufacture of the armor plate which covered the former USS Merrimack leading to its becoming the CSS Virginia was patented by its designer, and contested by its builder. Both were awarded patents for their work on the ship.

Review of the surviving records of the Confederate Patent Office reveals how some of the privations of war affected the South as the war went on. By 1863, shortages of leather led to the application of no fewer than four patents for wooden soled shoes.

The Confederate Patent Office issued one of the first patents which was developed around submarine technology, for the CSS H L Hunley. The prevalence of the Union blockade led to numerous patents being applied for based on new methods of destroying Union ships, including mines, electric torpedoes, and delayed fuses. The Confederate Patent Office and its records were officially destroyed after the fall of Richmond, but further research into many of the innovations found there continued under the auspices of the US Navy after the war.

The Confederate States Army

Officially the Confederate States Army was founded as a volunteer force by the Provisional Confederate Congress, with control of its operations in the hands of Provisional President Jefferson Davis in February 1861. The loss of records during and following the war make it difficult to estimate the total number who served in it, some believe that somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million while others propose 750,000 to 1,000,000 as more realistic numbers. In addition, an untold number of slaves were forced into service to build encampments, fortifications, roads, and other support needed for military operations.

The Confederate Army’s organization was based on that of the United States Army, unsurprisingly since many senior Confederate officers had served in the US Army at some point. The Army was made up of infantry, cavalry, and artillery and the basic unit of command was a company, theoretically made up of one hundred soldiers. Ten companies made a regiment. As the war went on and casualties were absorbed while replacements were scarce, most regiments sank to less than half their optimal size.

There were several field armies, which in the South were normally named for the region of their operation, as opposed to the Northern custom of naming them for major rivers. Robert E Lee commanded the largest Confederate Army, called the Army of Northern Virginia.

Regiments were raised, trained and supplied by the individual states and bore the name of their state and their regimental number, for example 4th Virginia. Eventually over 1,000 regiments were raised by the Confederate states for the army, in comparison the Union raised over 2,000.

In the early years of the war the Confederate Armies were successful in combat in the East, mostly in Virginia and Maryland, and less so in the west. Casualties were enormously high for both sides. Despite the long-lived legend of the Confederate’s esprit d’corps, by 1864 Jefferson Davis estimated that there were over 100,000 men then labeled as deserters in the South, having seen enough of war and the growing strength of the Union armies.

Confederate States Navy

Although it lasted but a short time (1861-1865) and won no major victories against the Union Navy which disrupted the Union blockade, the Confederate States Navy achieved a reputation for daring, innovation, and professionalism. At its high point it counted over 100 ships, most of which operated in American coastal waters and rivers.

It produced one of the first ironclad warships, which sank one US wooden ship, ran another aground, and would have done more damage if not for the timely arrival of a suitable opponent for its new technology. It produced the first submarine which sank an enemy vessel in combat, although it sank itself in the process, killing its crew. The Navy was supplemented by the use of privateers – contracted commerce raiders to capture or destroy enemy ships – which operated mainly out of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, despite Lincoln’s pronouncement that captured privateers would be treated as pirates (they weren’t).

In conjunction with the Navy the Confederate government operated the Confederate States Lighthouse Board, which worked with the Navy but was officially part of the Treasury Department. It was tasked with maintaining operational safe navigation beacons along the coast. It also formed the Confederate States Marine Corps, which adopted many of the traditions of the United States Marine Corps.

The Navy’s greatest success and certainly its greatest fame – other than the ironclad Virginia– came from its commerce raiders, CSS Alabama and CSS Shenandoah. Alabama was built in Birkenhead, England and completed a raiding cruise under Captain Raphael Semmes in which it captured or destroyed 65 Union ships. Although a commissioned ship of the Confederate Navy it never in its career entered a Confederate port. It was caught and destroyed by USS Kearsgarge.

CSS Shenandoah was built in the Clyde in Scotland and transferred to the Confederate Navy while at sea before undertaking a voyage to the Indian and Pacific Oceans to destroy Union commercial ships and whalers. In late June 1865 its Captain, James Waddell, learned of Lee’s surrender from a captured crew, later in August he learned that the war was over from the crew of a British ship. Waddell took his ship to Liverpool, surrendering there on November 6 1865, the last surrender of a Confederate unit of the Civil War. Like Alabama, Shenandoahnever entered a Confederate port during its service in the Confederate States Navy.

HistoryCollection

The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 15:36:00 +0000

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
This article appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of The Independent Review

Contrary to popular perception, the Old West was much more peaceful than American cities are today. The real culture of violence on the frontier during the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians.

The Not-So-Wild, Wild West

In a thorough review of the “West was violent” literature, Bruce Benson (1998) discovered that many historians simply assume that violence was pervasive—even more so than in modern-day America—and then theorize about its likely causes. In addition, some authors assume that the West was very violent and then assert, as Joe Franz does, that “American violence today reflects our frontier heritage” (Franz 1969, qtd. in Benson 1998, 98). Thus, an allegedly violent and stateless society of the nineteenth century is blamed for at least some of the violence in the United States today.

In a book-length survey of the “West was violent” literature, historian Roger McGrath echoes Benson’s skepticism about this theory when he writes that “the frontier-was-violent authors are not, for the most part, attempting to prove that the frontier was violent. Rather, they assume that it was violent and then proffer explanations for that alleged violence” (1984, 270).

In contrast, an alternative literature based on actual history concludes that the civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was not very violent. Eugene Hollon writes that the western frontier “was a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than American society today” (1974, x). Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill affirm that although “[t]he West . . . is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life,” their research “indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved” (1979, 10).

What were these private protective agencies? They were not governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on keeping order. Instead, they included such organizations as land clubs, cattlemen’s associations, mining camps, and wagon trains.

So-called land clubs were organizations established by settlers before the U.S. government even surveyed the land, let alone started to sell it or give it away. Because disputes over land titles are inevitable, the land clubs adopted their own constitutions, laying out the “laws” that would define and protect property rights in land (Anderson and Hill 1979, 15). They administered land claims, protected them from outsiders, and arbitrated disputes. Social ostracism was used effectively against those who violated the rules. Establishing property rights in this way minimized disputes—and violence.

The wagon trains that transported thousands of people to the California gold fields and other parts of the West usually established their own constitutions before setting out. These constitutions often included detailed judicial systems. As a consequence, writes Benson, “[t]here were few instances of violence on the wagon trains even when food became extremely scarce and starvation threatened. When crimes against persons or their property were committed, the judicial system . . . would take effect” (1998, 102). Ostracism and threats of banishment from the group, instead of threats of violence, were usually sufficient to correct rule breakers’ behavior.

Dozens of movies have portrayed the nineteenth-century mining camps in the West as hot beds of anarchy and violence, but John Umbeck discovered that, beginning in 1848, the miners began forming contracts with one another to restrain their own behavior (1981, 51). There was no government authority in California at the time, apart from a few military posts. The miners’ contracts established property rights in land (and in any gold found on the land) that the miners themselves enforced. Miners who did not accept the rules the majority adopted were free to mine elsewhere or to set up their own contractual arrangements with other miners. The rules that were adopted were often consequently established with unanimous consent (Anderson and Hill 1979, 19). As long as a miner abided by the rules, the other miners defended his rights under the community contract. If he did not abide by the agreed-on rules, his claim would be regarded as “open to any [claim] jumpers” (Umbeck 1981, 53).

The mining camps hired “enforcement specialists”—justices of the peace and arbitrators—and developed an extensive body of property and criminal law. As a result, there was very little violence and theft. The fact that the miners were usually armed also helps to explain why crime was relatively infrequent. Benson concludes, “The contractual system of law effectively generated cooperation rather than conflict, and on those occasions when conflict arose it was, by and large, effectively quelled through nonviolent means” (1998, 105).

When government bureaucrats failed to police cattle rustling effectively, ranchers established cattlemen’s associations that drew up their own constitutions and hired private “protection agencies” that were often staffed by expert gunmen. This action deterred cattle rustling. Some of these “gunmen” did “drift in and out of a life of crime,” write Anderson and Hill (1979, 18), but they were usually dealt with by the cattlemen’s associations and never created any kind of large-scale criminal organization, as some have predicted would occur under a regime of private law enforcement.

In sum, this work by Benson, Anderson and Hill, Umbeck, and others challenges with solid historical research the claims made by the “West was violent” authors. The civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was much more peaceful than American cities are today, and the evidence suggests that in fact the Old West was not a very violent place at all. History also reveals that the expanded presence of the U.S. government was the real cause of a culture of violence in the American West. If there is anything to the idea that a nineteenth-century culture of violence on the American frontier is the genesis of much of the violence in the United States today, the main source of that culture is therefore government, not civil society.

The Real Cause of Violence in the American West

The real culture of violence in the American West of the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians. It is untrue that white European settlers were always at war with Indians, as popular folklore contends. After all, Indians assisted the Pilgrims and celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them; John Smith married Pocahontas; a white man (mostly Scots, with some Cherokee), John Ross, was the chief of the Cherokees of Tennessee and North Carolina; and there was always a great deal of trade with Indians, as opposed to violence. As Jennifer Roback has written, “Europeans generally acknowledged that the Indians retained possessory rights to their lands. More important, the English recognized the advantage of being on friendly terms with the Indians. Trade with the Indians, especially the fur trade, was profitable. War was costly” (1992, 9). Trade and cooperation with the Indians were much more common than conflict and violence during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney relate how Thomas Jefferson found that during his time negotiation was the Europeans’ predominant means of acquiring land from Indians (1994, 56). By the twentieth century, some $800 million had been paid for Indian lands. These authors also argue that various factors can alter the incentives for trade, as opposed to waging a war of conquest as a means of acquiring land. One of the most important factors is the existence of a standing army, as opposed to militias, which were used in the American West prior to the War Between the States. On this point, Anderson and McChesney quote Adam Smith, who wrote that “‘[i]n a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.’” (1994, 52). A standing army, according to Anderson and McChesney, “creates a class of professional soldiers whose personal welfare increases with warfare, even if fighting is a negative-sum act for the population as a whole” (52).

The change from militia to a standing army took place in the American West immediately upon the conclusion of the War Between the States. The result, say Anderson and McChesney, was that white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army. On their own, they were much more likely to negotiate peacefully. Thus, “raid” replaced “trade” in white–Indian relations. Congress even voted in 1871 not to ratify any more Indian treaties, effectively announcing that it no longer sought peaceful relations with the Plains Indians. Anderson and McChesney do not consider why a standing army replaced militias in 1865, but the reason is not difficult to discern. One has only to read the official pronouncements of the soldiers and political figures who launched a campaign of extermination against the Plains Indians.

On June 27, 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman was given command of the Military District of the Missouri, which was one of the five military divisions into which the U.S. government had divided the country. Sherman received this command for the purpose of commencing the twenty-five-year war against the Plains Indians, primarily as a form of veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized railroad corporations and other politically connected corporations involved in building the transcontinental railroads. These corporations were the financial backbone of the Republican Party. Indeed, in June 1861, Abraham Lincoln, former legal counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, called a special emergency session of Congress not to deal with the two-month-old Civil War, but to commence work on the Pacific Railway Act. Subsidizing the transcontinental railroads was a primary (if not the primary) objective of the new Republican Party. As Dee Brown writes in Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow, a history of the building of the transcontinental railroads, Lincoln’s 1862 Pacific Railway Act “assured the fortunes of a dynasty of American families . . . the Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons, Trowbridges, Lanworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords, Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells, and dozens of others” (2001, 49), all of whom were tied to the Republican Party.

The federal railroad subsidies enriched many Republican members of Congress. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania “received a block of [Union Pacific] stock in exchange for his vote” on the Pacific Railroad bill, writes Brown (2001, 58). The Pennsylvania iron manufacturer and congressman also demanded a legal requirement that all iron used in constructing the railroad be made in the United States. Republican congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts was a shovel manufacturer who became “a loyal ally” of the legislation after he was promised shovel contracts (Brown 2001, 58). A great many shovels must have been required to dig railroad beds from Iowa to California.

Sherman wrote in his memoirs that as soon as the war ended, “My thoughts and feelings at once reverted to the construction of the great Pacific Railway. . . . I put myself in communication with the parties engaged in the work, visiting them in person, and assured them that I would afford them all possible assistance and encouragement” (2005, 775). “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress [of the railroads],” Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant in 1867 (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 264).

The chief engineer of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroads was Grenville Dodge, another of Lincoln’s generals during the war with whom Sherman worked closely afterward. As Murray Rothbard points out, Dodge “helped swing the Iowa delegation to Lincoln” at the 1860 Republican National Convention, and “[i]n return, early in the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Dodge to army general. Dodge’s task was to clear the Indians from the designated path of the country’s first heavily subsidized federally chartered trans-continental railroad, the Union Pacific.” In this way, Rothbard concludes, “conscripted Union troops and hapless taxpayers were coerced into socializing the costs of constructing and operating the Union Pacific” (1997, 130).

Immediately after the war, Dodge proposed enslaving the Plains Indians and forcing them “to do the grading” on the railroad beds, “with the Army furnishing a guard to make the Indians work, and keep them from running away” (Brown 2001, 64). Union army veterans were to be the “overseers” of this new class of slaves. Dodge’s proposal was rejected; the U.S. government decided instead to try to kill as many Indians as possible.

In his memoirs, Sherman has high praise for Thomas Clark Durant, the vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad, as “a person of ardent nature, of great ability and energy, enthusiastic in his undertaking” (2005, 775). Durant was also the chief instigator of the infamous Credit Mobilier scandal, one of the most shocking examples of political corruption in U.S. history. Sherman himself had invested in railroads before the war, and he was a consummate political insider, along with Durant, Dodge, and his brother, Senator John Sherman.

President Grant made his old friend Sherman the army’s commanding general, and another Civil War luminary, General Phillip Sheridan, assumed command on the ground in the West. “Thus the great triumvirate of the Union Civil War effort,” writes Sherman biographer Michael Fellman, “formulated and enacted military Indian policy until reaching, by the 1880s, what Sherman sometimes referred to as ‘the final solution of the Indian problem’” (1995, 260).

What Sherman called the “final solution of the Indian problem” involved “killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places.” “These men,” writes Fellman, “applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three [men] despised. . . . Sherman’s overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians,” whom he regarded as “a less-than-human and savage race” (1995, 260).

All of the other generals who took part in the Indian Wars were “like Sherman [and Sheridan], Civil War luminaries,” writes Sherman biographer John Marszalek. “Their names were familiar from Civil War battles: John Pope, O. O. Howard, Nelson A. Miles, Alfred H. Terry, E. O. C. Ord, C. C. Augur . . . Edward Canby . . . George Armstrong Custer and Benjamin Garrison” (1993, 380). General Winfield Scott Hancock also belongs on this list.

Sherman and Sheridan’s biographers frequently point out that these men apparently viewed the Indian Wars as a continuation of the job they had performed during the Civil War. “Sherman viewed Indians as he viewed recalcitrant Southerners during the war and newly freed people after: resisters to the legitimate forces of an ordered society” (Marszalek 1993, 380). Marszalek might well have written also that Southerners, former slaves, and Indians were not so much opposed to an “ordered society,” but to being ordered around by politicians in Washington, D.C., primarily for the benefit of the politicians’ corporate benefactors.

“During the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan had practiced a total war of destruction of property. . . . Now the army, in its Indian warfare, often wiped out entire villages” (Marszalek 1993, 382). Fellman writes that Sherman charged Sheridan “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War” (1995, 270). Sheridan’s troops had burned and plundered the Shenandoah Valley after the Confederate army had evacuated the area and only women, children, and elderly men remained there (Morris 1992, 183). Even Prussian army officers are said to have been shocked when after the war Sheridan boasted to them of his exploits in the Shenandoah Valley. “[Sherman] insisted that the only answer to the Indian problem was all-out war—of the kind he had utilized against the Confederacy,” writes Marszalek. “Since the inferior Indians refused to step aside so superior American culture could create success and progress, they had to be driven out of the way as the Confederates had been driven back into the Union” (1993, 380).

Sherman’s compulsion for the “extermination” of anyone opposed to turning the U.S. state into an empire expressed the same reasoning he had expressed earlier with regard to his role in the War Between the States. In a letter to his wife early in the war, he declared that his ultimate purpose was “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.” Mrs. Sherman responded by expressing her similar wish that the conflict would be a “war of extermination, and that all [Southerners] would be driven like the swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing” (qtd. in Walters 1973, 61). Sherman did his best to take his wife’s advice, especially during his famous “march to the sea.” It is little wonder that Indian Wars historian S. L. A. Marshall observes, “[M]ost of the Plains Indian bands were in sympathy with the Southern cause” during the war (1972, 24).

General Sherman

One theme among all of these Union Civil War veterans is that they considered Indians to be subhuman and racially inferior to whites and therefore deserving of extermination if they could not be “controlled” by the white population. Sherman himself thought of the former slaves in exactly the same way. “The Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of the negroes if they are released from the control of the whites,” he once said (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 296). He believed that intermarriage of whites and Indians would be disastrous, as he claimed it was in New Mexico, where “the blending of races had produced general equality, which led inevitably to Mexican anarchy” (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 297).

Sherman described the inhabitants of New Mexico, many of whom were part Mexican (Spanish), part Indian, and part Negro, as “mongrels.” His goal was to eliminate the possibility that such racial amalgamation might occur elsewhere in the United States, by undertaking to effect what Michael Fellman called a “racial cleansing of the land” (1995, 264), beginning with extermination of the Indians.

General Sheridan

Sherman, Sheridan, and the other top military commanders were not shy about announcing that their objective was extermination, a term that Sherman used literally on a number of occasions, as he had in reference to Southerners only a few years earlier. He and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” he said. Sherman announced his objective as being “to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 270). According to Fellman, Sherman gave “Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (1995, 271).

In case the media back east got wind of such atrocities, Sherman promised Sheridan that he would run interference against any complaints: “I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 271). In later correspondence, Sherman wrote to Sheridan, “I am charmed at the handsome conduct of our troops in the field. They go in with the relish that used to make our hearts glad in 1864–5” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 272).

Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. army’s actions matched its leaders’ rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods (the Indians even made fish hooks out of dried buffalo bones and bow strings out of sinews).

By 1882, the buffalo were all but extinct, and the cause was not just the tragedy of the commons. Because buffalo hides could be sold for as much as $3.50 each, an individual hunter would kill more than a hundred a day for as many days as he cared to hunt on the open plain. This exploitation of a “common property resource” decimated the buffalo herds, but the decimation was also an integral part of U.S. military policy aimed at starving the Plains Indians. When a group of Texans asked Sheridan if he could not do something to stop the extermination of the buffalo, he said: “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 265).

The escalation of violence against the Plains Indians actually began in earnest during the War Between the States. Sherman and Sheridan’s Indian policy was a continuation and escalation of a policy that General Grenville Dodge, among others, had already commenced. In 1851, the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold 24 million acres of land to the U.S. government for $1,410,000 in a typical “trade” (as opposed to raid) scenario. The federal government once again did not keep its side of the bargain, though, reneging on its payment to the Indians (Nichols 1978). By 1862, thousands of white settlers were moving onto the Indians’ land, and a crop failure in that year caused the Santee Sioux to become desperate for food. They attempted to take back their land by force with a short “war” in which President Lincoln placed General John Pope in charge. Pope announced, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made” (qtd. in Nichols 1978, 87).

At the end of the month-long conflict, hundreds of Indians who had been taken prisoner were subjected to military “trials” lasting about ten minutes each, according to Nichols (1978). Most of the adult male prisoners were found guilty and sentenced to death—not based on evidence of the commission of a crime, but on their mere presence at the end of the fighting. Minnesota authorities wanted to execute all 303 who were convicted, but the Lincoln administration feared that the European powers would not view such an act favorably and did not want to give them an excuse to assist the Confederacy in any way. Therefore, “only” 38 of the Indians were hanged, making this travesty of justice still the largest mass execution in U.S. history (Nichols 1978). To appease the Minnesotans who wanted to execute all 303, Lincoln promised them $2 million and pledged that the U.S. Army would remove all Indians from the state at some future date.

One of the most famous incidents of Indian extermination, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, took place on November 29, 1864. There was a Cheyenne and Arapaho village located on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. These Indians had been assured by the U.S. government that they would be safe in Colorado. The government instructed them to fly a U.S. flag over their village, which they did, to assure their safety. However, another Civil War “luminary,” Colonel John Chivington, had other plans for them as he raided the village with 750 heavily armed soldiers. One account of what happened appears in the book Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars (1972) by the renowned military historian S. L. A. Marshall, who held the title of chief historian of the European Theater in World War II and authored thirty books on American military history.

Chivington’s orders were: “I want you to kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 37). Then, despite the display of the U.S. flag and white surrender flags by these peaceful Indians, Chivington’s troops “began a full day given over to blood-lust, orgiastic mutilation, rapine, and destruction—with Chivington . . . looking on and approving” (Marshall 1972, 38). Marshall notes that the most reliable estimate of the number of Indians killed is “163, of which 110 were women and children” (39).

Upon returning to his fort, Chivington “and his raiders demonstrated around Denver, waving their trophies, more than one hundred drying scalps. They were acclaimed as conquering heroes, which was what they had sought mainly.” One Republican Party newspaper announced, “Colorado soldiers have once again covered themselves with glory” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 39).

An even more detailed account of the Sand Creek Massacre, based on U.S. Army records, biographies, and firsthand accounts, appears in Dee Brown’s classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West: “When the troops came up to [the squaws,] they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. . . . There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. . . .The squaws offered no resistance. Every one . . . was scalped” (1970, 89). Brown’s narrative gets much more graphic. The effect of such behavior was to eliminate forever the possibility of peaceful relations with these Indian tribes. They understood that they had become the objects of a campaign of extermination. As Brown writes, “In a few hours of madness at Sand Creek, Chivington and his soldiers destroyed the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men” (92). For the next two decades, the Plains Indians would do their best to return the barbarism in kind.

Wounded Knee

The books by Brown and Marshall show that the kind of barbarism that occurred at Sand Creek, Colorado, was repeated many times during the next two decades. For example, in 1868 General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered Custer to attack a Cheyenne camp with infantry, which Custer did. The attack led Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy to report to Washington that “General Hancock’s expedition . . . has resulted in no good, but, on the contrary, has been productive of much evil” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157). A report of the attack prepared for the U.S. secretary of the interior concluded: “For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few straggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, and injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting, that must, sooner or later, bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of Heaven” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157).

As the war on the Cheyenne continued, Custer and his troops apparently decided that to “kill or hang all the warriors,” as General Sheridan had ordered, “meant separating them from the old men, women, and children. This work was too slow and dangerous for the cavalrymen; they found it much more efficient and safe to kill indiscriminately. They killed 103 Cheyenne, but only eleven of them were warriors” (Brown 1970, 169).

Marshall calls Sheridan’s orders to Custer “the most brutal orders ever published to American troops” (1972, 106). This is a powerful statement coming from a man who wrote thirty books on American military history. In addition to ordering Custer to shoot or hang all warriors, even those that surrendered, Sheridan commanded him to slaughter all ponies and to burn all tepees and their contents. “Sheridan held with but one solution to the Indian problem—extermination—and Custer was his quite pliable instrument,” writes Marshall (1972, 106).

One of the oddest facts about the Indian Wars is that Custer famously instructed a band to play an Irish jig called “Garry Owens” during the attacks on Indian villages. “This was Custer’s way of gentling war. It made killing more rhythmic,” writes Marshall (1972, 107). During an attack on a Kiowa village on September 26, 1874, soldiers killed more than one thousand horses and forced 252 Kiowas to surrender. They were thrown into prison cells, where “each day their captors threw chunks of raw meat to them as if they were animals in a cage” (Brown 1970, 270). On numerous occasions, fleeing Indians sought refuge in Canada, where they knew they would be unmolested. Canadians built their own transcontinental railroad in the late nineteenth century, but they did not commence a campaign of extermination against the Indians living in that country as the government did in the United States.

No one denies that the U.S. government killed tens of thousands of Indians, including women and children, during the years from 1862 to 1890. There are various estimates of the number of Indians killed, the highest being that of historian Russell Thornton (1990), who used mostly military records to estimate that about forty-five thousand Indians, including women and children, were killed during the wars on the Plains Indians. It is reasonable to assume that thousands more were maimed and disabled for life and received little or no medical assistance. The thousands of soldiers who participated in the Indian Wars lived in a culture of violence and death that was cultivated by the U.S. government for a quarter of a century.

Conclusions

The culture of violence in the American West of the late nineteenth century was created almost entirely by the U.S. government’s military interventions, which were primarily a veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized transcontinental railroad corporations. As scandals go, the war on the Plains Indians makes the Credit Mobilier affair seem inconsequential. There is such a thing as a culture of war, especially in connection with a war as gruesome and bloody as the war on the Plains Indians. On this topic, World War II combat veteran Paul Fussell has written: “The culture of war . . . is not like the culture of ordinary peace-time life. It is a culture dominated by fear, blood, and sadism, by irrational actions and preposterous . . . results. It has more relation to science fiction or to absurdist theater than to actual life” (1997, 354). Such was the “culture” the U.S. Army created throughout much of the American West for the quarter century after the War Between the States. It is the “culture” that all military interventions at all times have created, and it contrasts sharply with the predominantly peaceful culture of the stateless civil society on the American frontier during much of the nineteenth century.

Fussell made this statement based on his personal experiences in combat, but it echoes the scholarly writing of Ludwig von Mises (who, let us remember, was also an Austrian army officer who had substantial combat experience during World War I): “What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate Instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.” Human cooperation under the division of labor in the civil society “bursts asunder,” Mises wrote, whenever “citizens turn into warriors” and resort to war (1998, 827).

It is not true that all whites waged a war of extermination against the Plains Indians. As noted earlier and as noted throughout the literature of the Indian Wars, many whites preferred the continuation of the peaceful trade and relations with Indians that had been the norm during the first half of the nineteenth century. (Conflicts sometimes occurred, of course, but “trade” dominated “raid” during that era.) Canadians built a transcontinental railroad without a Shermanesque campaign of “extermination” against the Indians in Canada. It is telling that the Plains Indians often sought refuge in Canada when the U.S. Army had them on the run.

The U.S. government dehumanized the Plains Indians, describing them as “wild beasts,” in order to justify slaughtering them, just as Sherman and his wife, among many others, dehumanized Southerners during and after the War Between the States. The same dehumanization by the government’s propaganda machine would eventually target Filipinos, who were killed by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the U.S. Army during their 1899–1902 revolt against the U.S. conquest of their country barely a decade after the Indian Wars had finally ended. President Theodore Roosevelt “justified” the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos by calling them “savages, half-breeds, a wild and ignorant people” (qtd. in Powell 2006, 64). Dehumanization of certain groups of “resisters” at the hands of the state’s propaganda apparatus is a prerequisite for the culture of war and violence that has long been the main preoccupation of the U.S. state.

It was not necessary to kill tens of thousands of Indians and imprison thousands more in concentration camps (“reservations”) for generations in order to build a transcontinental railroad. Nor were the wars on the Plains Indians a matter of “the white population’s” waging a war of extermination. This war stemmed from the policy of the relatively small group of white men who ran the Republican Party (with assistance from some Democrats), which effectively monopolized national politics for most of that time.

These men utilized the state’s latest technologies of mass killing developed during the Civil War and its mercenary soldiers (including the former slaves known as “buffalo soldiers”) to wage their war because they were in a hurry to shovel subsidies to the railroad corporations and other related business enterprises. Many of them profited handsomely, as the Credit Mobilier scandal revealed. The railroad corporations were the Microsofts and IBMs of their day, and the doctrines of neomercantilism defined the Republican Party’s reason for existing (DiLorenzo 2006). The Republican Party was, after all, the “Party of Lincoln,” the great railroad lawyer and a lobbyist for the Illinois Central and other midwestern railroads during his day.

www.independent.org

References

Anderson, Terry, and P. J. Hill. 1979. An American Experiment in Anarcho-capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West. Journal of Libertarian Studies 3: 9–29.

Anderson, Terry, and Fred L. McChesney. 1994. Raid or Trade? An Economic Model of Indian-White Relations. Journal of Law and Economics 37: 39–74.

Benson, Bruce. 1998. To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. New York: New York University Press for The Independent Institute.

Brown, Dee. 1970. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt.———. 2001. Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow. New York: Owl Books.

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2006. Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know about Dishonest Abe. New York: Crown Forum.

Fellman, Michael. 1995. Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.

Franz, Joe B. 1969. The Frontier Tradition: An Invitation to Violence. In The History of Violence in America, edited by Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, 127–54. New York: New York Times Books.

Fussell, Paul. 1997. The Culture of War. In The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John Denson, 351–57. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.

Hollon, W. Eugene. 1974. Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kennett, Lee B. 2001. Sherman: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins.

Marshall, S. L. A. 1972. Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars. New York: Da Capo Press.

Marszalek, John F. 1993. Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: Vintage Books.

McGrath, Roger. 1984. Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Mises, Ludwig von. 1998. Human Action. Scholar’s Edition. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Morris, Roy. 1992. Sheridan: The Life & Wars of General Phil Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

Nichols, David A. 1978. Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Powell, Jim. 2006. Bully Boy: The Truth about Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy. New York: Crown Forum.

Roback, Jennifer. 1992. Exchange, Sovereignty, and Indian-Anglo Relations. In Property Rights and Indian Economies, edited by Terry Anderson, 5–26. Savage, Md.: Roman & Littlefield.

Rothbard, Murray N. 1997. America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861. In The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John Denson, 119–33. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.

Sherman, William T. 2005. Memoirs. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Thornton, Russel. 1990. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press.

Umbeck, John. 1981. Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights. Economic Inquiry 19: 38–59.

Walters, John Bennett. 1973. Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, and Professor of Economics at Loyola College in Maryland.

Unlikely World War II Soldiers Awarded Nation’s Highest Honor

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 11 Nov 2018 13:33:00 +0000

Nearly 70 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, Japanese-American soldiers receive the country’s highest civilian honor.

by BARBARA MARANZANI

Almost immediately after the December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, the loyalty of all those of Japanese descent living in America, regardless of their citizenship status, was called into question. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the War Department to establish military zones in much of the western United States. Under this order, residents with “Foreign Enemy Ancestry” could be placed under surveillance, detained and even relocated by military fiat. Few Americans of European ancestry were detained under this order, which was primarily directed at those of Japanese descent. Eventually, more than 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the U.S. mainland were forcibly removed and interned in 10 relocation centers. There, the detainees were subjected to harsh conditions that included overcrowding, water shortages, sub-standard housing and exposure to extreme weather.

In Hawaii, where ethnic Japanese accounted for more than one-third of the islands’ population, first-generation Japanese and Nisei faced similar suspicions. Although few in Hawaii were relocated, their freedoms were severely curtailed. Many military advisors expressed their concerns over the loyalty of Japanese residents serving in the armed forces, and efforts were soon underway to remove those who had served prior to Pearl Harbor. Members of the Hawaii National Guard were temporarily disarmed, and local ROTC students and cadets were dismissed from service. Determined to prove their loyalty to the United States and come to the defense of their fellow Hawaiians, these former servicemen formed a civilian aide group, the “Varsity Victory Volunteers” or VVV, which provided the physical labor needed for the massive construction of U.S. military bases in the Pacific.

Impressed with the VVV’s determination–and swayed by vocal protests over treatment of the Nisei soldiers–the War Department reversed course, announcing the formation of an all-Nisei combat unit, the 100th Infantry Battalion. After nearly a year of training on the U.S. mainland, the 100th was deployed to North Africa in September 1943, where it participated in the attacks on Monte Cassino, the breakout from Anzio and the final Allied Offensive push from Rome to the Arno River. In August of that year, the 100th was reorganized and became part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT), another Japanese-American unit, under which it would serve for the rest of the war.

Formed just six months after the 100th, the 442nd RCT included additional soldiers from Hawaii, but was primarily comprised of volunteers from the internment camps and Japanese Americans who had served in the U.S. Army prior to the war. In June 1944, they too were deployed to Europe, where they fought in eight major campaigns in France, Italy and Germany. In October of that year, they played a key role in the bloody rescue of the “Lost Battalion,” an Allied unit that had been trapped and surrounded by Axis forces in the Vosges forest in France. In April 1945, the men of the 442nd–many of whom had family members living in U.S. internment camps–were among the first Allied troops to participate in the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, a sobering experience that would haunt many of them for decades. Eventually, more than 13,000 soldiers would serve in the regiment, with more than 700 members killed or missing in action.

The 442nd became the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history. In less than two years of combat, the unit earned more than 18,000 awards, including 9,486 Purple Hearts, 4,000 Bronze Stars and 21 Medals of Honor. Upon their return to the United States, they were praised by President Harry Truman for their brave stand both home and abroad, and were even the subject of a 1951 film, “Go for Broke”; the film’s title was derived from the unit’s official slogan. Many members of the 442nd went on to distinguished careers in science, academia and government, including nine-term U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii, who lost an arm due to World War II combat injuries and was among those attending Wednesday’s event.

Also honored at the ceremony were the more than 6,000 Japanese Americans who served in the Military Intelligence Service, or MIS, during the war. These members, many of whom were recruited directly from internment camps, provided translation and interrogation assistance to the war effort. The MIS is perhaps best known for the crucial role it played in deciphering a captured set of Japanese military documents, known as the “Z Plan,” which outlined plans for a final, large-scale counterattack on Allied forces in 1944. The discovery of the Z Plan has been hailed as one of the most important military intelligence successes of World War II.

www.history.com

Wolf Land - a history of wolves in Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 23 Sep 2018 18:03:00 +0000

Wolves from Oppian of Apamea Cynegetica, 10th Century.

Wolves in Ireland were once an integral part of the Irish countryside and culture, but are now extinct. The last wild wolf in Ireland is said to have been killed in 1786, three hundred years after they were believed to have been wiped out in England and a century after their disappearance in Scotland.

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) is a canine of the order Carnivora, an apex predator largely feeding on ungulates. The earliest radiocarbon date for Irish wolf remains come from excavated cave sites in Castlepook Cave, north of Doneraile, County Cork, and dates back to 34,000 BC. Wolf bones discovered in a number of other cave sites, particularly in the counties of Cork, Waterford and Clare indicate the presence of wolves throughout the Midlandian ice age which probably reached its peak between 20,000 BC and 18,000 BC. By about 14,000 BC Ireland became separated from Great Britain, which, itself, still formed part of mainland Europe, to become an island. Wolves were one of just a few species of land animal in Ireland that survived through the Nahanagan Stadial, a cold period that occurred between 10,800 BC and 9500 BC. Wolves were a major part of Ireland's postglacial fauna, as evidenced by their prominence in ancient Irish myths and legends, in a number of place names (both Irish and English), in archaeological sites, along with a considerable number of historical references. The ringforts, a common feature of the Irish landscape, were built partly as a defense against wolves and to protect livestock, over the period 1000 BC to AD 1000.

According to the Annals of Loch Cé, the poet Cúán úa Lothcháin (died 1024) was "slain by the men of Tethfa. God performed a ‘poet's miracle,' manifestly, on the party that killed him, for they died an evil death, and their bodies were not buried until wolves and birds preyed upon them." Among one of the earliest historic references to wolves attacking people in Ireland occurs in the Annals of Tigernach under the year 1137: The Blind one of ... that is, Giolla Muire, was killed by wolves. Under the year 1420 in the Annála Connacht is the statement "Wolves killed many people this year." In 1571, as a result of its comprehensive destruction by "James Mac Maurice ... (and) ... the warlike troops of the Clann-Sweeny and Clann-Sheehy", Kilmallock "became the receptacle and abode of wolves" In 1573, the aftermath of the battle of Bel-an-Chip was described - "Noisy were the ravens and carrion-crows, and other ravenous birds of the air, and the wolves of the forest, over the bodies of the nobles slain in the battle on that day." In 1581 William Odhar O Carroll was put "unsparingly to the sword, and detested (the thought of) shewing him quarter or mercy. They slew him, and left his body under the talons of ravens and the claws of wolves." In the aftermath of the Desmond rebellion, the body of a Dr. Saunders was found in Desmond in early 1583 who perished miserably, having fallen a victim to famine and the effects of exposure to the weather, and whose body was discovered partially devoured by wolves In the aftermath of the wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Francisco de Cuellar turned to check upon a companion only to find him dead. There he lay on the ground with more than six hundred other dead bodies which the sea cast up, and the crows and wolves devoured them, without there being any one to bury them.

The port books of Bristol record between a yearly average of between 100 and 300 wolfskins exported from Ireland throughout the 1500s and a total of 961 skins in a single year. Pilib Ó Súilleabháin Béirre (c. 1590 – 1660), writing of Ireland and particularly Munster after the end of the Nine Years' War, described the aftermath: THUS the war was finished. Ireland was almost entirely laid waste and destroyed, and terrible want and famine oppressed all, so that many were forced to eat dogs and whelps: many not having even these, died. And not only men but even beasts were hungry. The wolves, coming out of the woods and mountains, attacked and tore to pieces, men weak from want. The dogs rooted from the graves rotten carcases partly decomposed. And so there was nought but abundance of misery ...Throughout most of the first half of the 17th century, Ireland had a substantial wolf population of not less than 400 and may be as high as 1000 wolves at any one time. One of the nicknames used for Ireland at this time was “wolf-land”.

The first instance of legislation against Irish wolves dates back to 1584 when John Perrot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered Robert Legge to come up with a scheme to encourage the destruction of problem wolves. Further records of legislation occur in 1610 and 1611. In 1614, an Englishman named Henric Tuttesham was offered £3 for every wolf he killed. The wolf population at the time was high enough for Tuttesham to be authorised to keep four men and 24 hounds in every county for seven years, a total of 128 men and 768 hounds. The bulk of anti-wolf legislation occurred during the decade following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. A number of writers from this time period suggest that as a result of ongoing military campaigns in Ireland, particularly the Cromwellian wars 1641-1652 and the devastation of much of the country and, with increasing numbers of farmed animals, wolf numbers were increasing and seen as a threat to business.

The level of rewards and bounties established by Oliver Cromwell's regime attracted a few professional wolf hunters to Ireland, mostly from England. Politically, the prospect of numbers of armed Irish roaming around the country hunting wolves was not acceptable, given the ongoing conflict between the Irish and the new English settlers, so it was seen as much safer for the English authorities to encourage men from their own country to deal with the wolf problem. The problems caused by wolves were considered serious enough by Cromwell's government to impose a ban on the exportation of Irish Wolfhounds.

In 1652 the Commissioners of the Revenue of Cromwell's Irish Government set substantial bounties on wolves, £6 for a female, £5 for a male, £2 for a subadult and 10 shillings for a cub. In the same year, measures were taken for the destruction of wolves in the Barony of Castleknock, county Dublin. A grand total of £243 5s 4d was paid for wolf kills in Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim formerly within the precinct of Galway in 1655 or 1665, depending on the author. Between the period July 1649 and November 1656 the total amount of bounty paid out for wolf kills in Ireland as a whole was £3,847. Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim had proportionately more wolves than the rest of the country, given that large tracts of this area were relatively untouched by humans.[1] A Captain Edward Piers was leased land over a five-year period in Dunboyne, County Meath on the condition that he kill fourteen wolves and 60 foxes. In the 1690s Rory Carragh was hired to kill the last two wolves in one part of Ulster and was equipped with a boy and two wolf dogs. The last reliable observation of a wolf in Ireland comes from County Carlow when a wolf was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster for killing sheep in 1786.

History Behind Friday the 13th

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 19:21:00 +0000

Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel, a horror film franchise and not one but two unwieldy terms—paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia—that describe fear of this supposedly unlucky day.

THE FEAR OF 13

Just like walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat or breaking a mirror, many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. Though it’s uncertain exactly when this particular tradition began, negative superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries.

While Western cultures have historically associated the number 12 with completeness (there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months and zodiac signs, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 gods of Olympus and 12 tribes of Israel, just to name a few examples), its successor 13 has a long history as a sign of bad luck.

The ancient Code of Hammurabi, for example, reportedly omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules. Though this was probably a clerical error, superstitious people sometimes point to this as proof of 13’s longstanding negative associations.

Fear of the number 13 has even earned a psychological term: triskaidekaphobia.

WHY IS FRIDAY THE 13TH UNLUCKY?

According to biblical tradition, 13 guests attended the Last Supper, held on Maundy Thursday, including Jesus and his 12 apostles (one of whom, Judas, betrayed him). The next day, of course, was Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The seating arrangement at the Last Supper is believed to have given rise to a longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen—specifically, that it was courting death.

Though Friday’s negative associations are weaker, some have suggested they also have roots in Christian tradition: Just as Jesus was crucified on a Friday, Friday was also said to be the day Eve gave Adam the fateful apple from the Tree of Knowledge, as well as the day Cain killed his brother, Abel.

THE THIRTEEN CLUB

In the late-19th century, a New Yorker named Captain William Fowler (1827-1897) sought to remove the enduring stigma surrounding the number 13—and particularly the unwritten rule about not having 13 guests at a dinner table—by founding an exclusive society called the Thirteen Club.

The group dined regularly on the 13th day of the month in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage, a popular watering hole Fowler owned from 1863 to 1883. Before sitting down for a 13-course dinner, members would pass beneath a ladder and a banner reading “Morituri te Salutamus,” Latin for “Those of us who are about to die salute you.”

Four former U.S. presidents (Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and Theodore Roosevelt) would join the Thirteen Club’s ranks at one time or another.

FRIDAY THE 13TH IN POP CULTURE

An important milestone in the history of the Friday the 13th legend in particular (not just the number 13) occurred in 1907, with the publication of the novel Friday, the Thirteenth written by Thomas William Lawson.

The book told the story of a New York City stockbroker who plays on superstitions about the date to create chaos on Wall Street, and make a killing on the market.

The horror movie Friday the 13th, released in 1980, introduced the world to a hockey mask-wearing killer named Jason, and is perhaps the best-known example of the famous superstition in pop culture history. The movie spawned multiple sequels, as well as comic books, novellas, video games, related merchandise and countless terrifying Halloween costumes.

WHAT BAD THINGS HAPPENED ON FRIDAY 13TH?

On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land.

Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky.

In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including:

1.) the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940)
2.) the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964)
3.) a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970)
4.) the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972)
5.) the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996)
6.) the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012)

Reprinted: history.com
SOURCES
“The Origins of Unlucky Friday the 13th,” Live Science.
“Friday the 13th: why is it unlucky and other facts about the worst day in the calendar,” The Telegraph.
“13 Freaky Things That Happened on Friday the 13th,” Live Science.
“Here’s Why Friday the 13th is Considered Unlucky,” Time.
“Friggatriskaidekaphobes Need Not Apply,” New-York Historical Society.

Where The Bleep Did That Curse Word Come From?

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 01:41:00 +0000

We all have our favorite curse words to use when we're feeling angry, frustrated, upset, excited, surprised. Curse words provide a lot when it comes to expressing emotion. But, where did those filthy (yet cathartic) expressions come from? Well, we took a deep look into some of the most common swears around. Warning: vulgar language ahead...

sh*&

The word sh*& has been around since the early 1500s, and it is used mainly to describe an "obnoxious person." The word stems from the Middle Dutch schiten and the Middle English shiten (meaning "to defecate"). In the early 1920s, people began to use this curse word when describing something they don't care about (not giving a sh*&). Then, in the 60s, it was used to refer to someone who was drunk or sh*&faced. And, these days people use it to describe countries and locations they find unappealing (sh*&hole, anyone?)

A$$h*&#

This curse word (meaning "something bad" or "a mean person") dates all the way back to the 1300s, originating from the Middle English word, arshole. Back then, it was mainly used to describe someone's rear. Fast forward to the 1930s, when the word became more commonly used in reference to a "contemptible person." Today, we tend to keep up with this usage, showcasing our extreme distaste for someone by calling them . . . this term. (And, don't forget the hole part of the word when you are going for this meaning, because otherwise you're just calling that person a donkey.)

The F word

There are a lot of theories behind the origins of the swear word, f*&# (meaning "to have sex" or "to meddle"). It is believed that it originated from the Middle Dutch fokken, meaning "to thrust, copulate with." However, the truth behind the word still remains unknown because it was banned by the dictionary at the time it originated. What we do know is the word was first seen written in 1495–1505. In the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary it appeared as fukkit and was later seen written by the poet Sir David Lyndesay as we know it today. In the 1900s, it grew into a word used to describe a very bad mistake and to tell someone to leave you alone.

B!#ch

While the word b!#ch (or a "lewd woman" or "female dog") is a rather common term these days (and can be used in both positive and negative ways), back in the 1800s, it was considered more offensive than the word whore. B!#ch actually dates back to before the year 1000 though. (It could be featured as one of our oldest words!) It originates from the Middle English word bicche. But, it wasn't written until the 1400s when it was first seen in a play to describe a woman.

G#dd@mn

This swear word (which is normally used to express disgust) can be offensive to those with religious backgrounds (since it's seen as saying the Lord's name in vain). Stemmed from late Middle English, this word came about in the 1400s and became more popular as time went on. The word d@mn itself originates from damnare, a Latin word meaning "to condemn." Fun fact: During the Hundred Years War, the French were said to refer to the English soldiers as "les goddems" because of their excessive use of profanities.

M%therf*c%er

According to Slate, the phrase m%therf*c%er (referring to someone who or something that is despicable) first came about in the "late 19th and early 20th centuries" and was originally documented during a "Texas Court of Appeals’ account." It was here that a witness referred to a defendant as a “G!d d@mned m#ther-f—ing, b@st@#%ly son-of-a-b—h.” Wow. Then in World War II, the phrase became a more popular way to say someone or something is irritating or ruthless. But, as the 1950s rolled around, the word "m%therf*c%er" took a turn for the good if you can believe it. It became used in a more favorable way to describe someone you're close with. For example, "I love him madly, he’s my m—erf—ng man," which was a line from the 1954 poetry book, The Life.

He!!

We've all heard (or used) the phrase, go to he!! at least once or twice in our lifetime. But, where does this curse word come from? Sure, we know it has something to do with heaven and the other place, but did you know it stems from the Gothic halja, which translates to the "underworld"? The term came about sometime before 900 and could also possibly be related to Old Norse hel, which is found in Norse mythology (North Germanic people with ties to Norse paganism) and is the name of the ruler of the "evil dead."

Pi$$

The word pi$$ might not be as offensive as some of the other curse words on this list, but it's still kind of foul. It can refer to anything from using the restroom to being exceedingly angry. And, the United Kingdom uses it to reference someone who has had one too many cocktails. The word came about somewhere between 1250–1300, originating from the Old French word pissier. In World War II, it was used to describe someone who was performing badly: pi$$-poor. Later, in 1947, the word was more commonly used to reference someone who was angry or irritated.

B@st@rd

When formally used, the word b@st@rd simply means a child who is "born out of wedlock." However, when using it as a curse word, it refers to an "unpleasant or despicable person." It's been said that the word originated somewhere between 1250–1300 and is possibly from Old French. In the late 16th century, the use of the word became prevalent when describing a "brat, or small child" and later became a more crude term in the 1800s.

Cr@p

The word cr@p (meaning "to talk nonsense" or "excrement") is kind of like the less distasteful way to say s#*t. Nonetheless, the word is still considered a crude curse word. The word comes from the Middle Dutch word, krappe ("to cut off, pluck off"). Then, in the 15th century, it became a word you'd use more frequently to describe someone or something that is considered "nonsense."

Ready for some great fake swear words on Screen you Fracking Smeghead?

Orson Scott Card cautioned against using invented swears in fiction because the fake “oaths” risked making the story silly. Fair enough. But, frak it, sometimes cussing is the only way to let it out. On-screen rules occasionally prohibit or limit profanity. So, screenwriters get creative. Even Fantastic Mr. Fox had to release some heat (“This is going to be a total cluster-cuss,” “You scared the cuss out of us”). Using cuss as a cuss is cute, but pretty vanilla. For real kapow, here are some of the most creative fake swears seen on screen.

"Blurgh, you jagweed"

Liz Lemon first uttered “Blurgh!” in a 2007 episode of 30 Rock. It was so good, so compelling a swear that she used it three other times in the episode. It’s been immortalized ever since as a word expressing “revulsion, deflation, and disgust.” Tina Fey, who plays Ms. Lemon and who is the show’s creator, explained to GOOD Magazine that Blurgh was one of the invented swears the writers came up with while trying to circumvent the no-swear policy of network television. Jagweed, another zesty example of lewd-Lemon lexicon, is synonymous with “douchebag.” The fake cuss is a funny corruption of jerk off and jack off (you know, relating to the masturbatory undertaking).

“You fusking cloff-prunker”

In the early 1990s, the British comedy sketch show A Bit of Fry & Laurie was a platform for Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie to engage in hilarious bouts of wordplay. Aside from “The Language Conversation” (an episode focusing on the flexibility and arbitrariness of language), the most inventive displays of lexical wizardry were the meaningless but nevertheless obscene-sounding tell-offs: “You fusking cloff-prunker” and “Skank off, you cloffing cuck, you're all a load of shote-bag fuskers, so prunk that up your prime-ministering pim-hole." When asked to explain what cloff-prunker means, Stephen Fry explains it’s a practice whereby “one person frangilates another’s slimp . . . and smuctat[es] them avially.” Very clear.

"Frak!"

Frak is one of the most well-known fake swears in fiction. Its appearances off the mothership Battlestar Galactica, in entertainment as divergent as Gossip Girl and the Dilbert comic strip, demonstrate frak’s immense appeal. A futuristic stand-in for the f-word, frak first appeared in the 1978 series Battlestar Galactica. Originally spelled “frack,” the word was revamped for the 2010 revival of the series so that it reflected its true “four-letter-word” nature. Though not an intention of the producers, the respelling now differentiates the fictional swear from the practice of fracking . . . frak fracking!

"Frell!"

Farscape’s frell is another example of how writing teams imaginatively side-step the boundaries of what can be said on TV. According to a Farscape fan site, frell is used by Sebaceans, bipedal beings that look uncannily like humans (and can be played by them on the show, to the producers’ relief). Frell replaces the “coarse Anglo-Saxon monosyllable indicating sexual intercourse,” i.e., our old favorite: the f-word.

"Gorram!"

In 2002, Joss Whedon combined Western and sci-fi genres in Firefly, set in the year 2517. The language of the show is a mix of English and Chinese, reflecting Whedon’s visionary world in which the U.S. and China are the two most powerful cultures on the planet. Gorram is a substitute for God damn, and may be a “Chinglish” pronunciation of the swear according to Mentalfloss.com. Some fans question if gorram is actually a Chinese word, or somehow related to similar sounding words meaning “testicles,” “rotten,” and “f-d up” in various Chinese dialects. Others say there is no connection to Chinese. However, Charles Dickens coined gormed in the 1800s, possibly as a mild form of “gosh darned” (and therefore of “God damned”) so this one may be older than BrownCoats know.

“What the cabbage?”

The leap from adult sci-fi genres to a child’s fantasy adventure cartoon is not insignificant. Especially considering this slideshow is about invented cuss words. Adventure Time appeals to both kids and parents through the interactions of the protagonists, Finn and Jake, with magical characters in the Land of Ooo. Along the way English words conjuring (for some) utter doom and dismay—like lump, cabbage, and math—are cheekily used in especially emotional dialogue: “I lumping hate them!,” “What the cabbage?,” and “I wanna go to sleep and you’re creeping me the math out!” While not coined from scratch, these cusses are certainly creative.

"Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerfherder! "

Hop aboard the Millennium Falcon to venture back into the universe of fake swears. Star Wars is rife with inventive curse words, from f-bomb alternatives (farkled and krong), insults (laser brain and the Huttese E chu ta), to general expletives like vape and varp. In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia insults Han Solo as a nerfherder, someone who—as anyone from Alderaan would know—herds nerfs or “foul-smelling furry quadrupeds bred for meat across the galaxies.” Nerfherders had a bad reputation for being dirty and smelling like nerfs.

“Shazbot!”

Coincidentally, while the human survivors on Battlestar Galactica were yelling “Frack you!” to the Ceylons, Mork (in Mork & Mindy) was exclaiming “Shazbot!” Robin Williams, the actor portraying Mork, might have invented the Orkan profanity in a moment of ad-libbed genius. Shazbot evokes the smelly “shiz” of a robot, and it was comfortably used in place of the four-letter word for the smelly droppings of a human.

"Smeggy, smegging smegger!”

“. . . smeg off . . . you annoyingly little smeggy, smegging smegger!” proclaims a character in the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. Based on this insult, in which smeg so flexibly morphs into any part of speech, it seems smeg can be used in place of at least a couple choice curse words. Adding head is a nice option if going for a version of shizhead (we have to euphemize; we know you understand). The Red Dwarf screenwriters claim no association, but this coined obscenity has a fairly disgusting real cousin in English (and in physical anatomy): smegma is the “thick, cheeselike secretion” that collects beneath and around male and female netherparts. That’s smegging gross.

“Where the smurf are we?”

To help you move on from that last smegging visual, we’ll turn to The Smurfs. The little blue mushroom-dwellers use the word smurf to mean just about anything: “Our village has been smurfed by a smurf that smurfs smurf.” “When you smurf that smurf, you smurf off a whole series of smurfed smurfections . . . .” Only Smurfs truly understand what one Smurf-speaking Smurf is smurfing. Smurf comes close to a minced oath for God in Papa Smurf’s cries of “Great smurfs!” and “Name of a smurf!” In the 2011 movie, there was no smurf about it: Smurf became a smurf-word: “Where the smurf are we?”

Resource: Dictionary.com

Freedom for California’s Indians

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 18:08:00 +0000

BY STACEY L. SMITH

APRIL 29, 2013

On April 27, 1863, nearly five months after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, California abolished its system of forced apprenticeship for American Indians. Under the apprenticeship provisions of the state’s Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, several thousand California Indians, mostly children, had suffered kidnapping, sale and involuntary servitude for over a decade.

Newly elected California Republicans, eager to bring California in line with the national march toward emancipation, agitated for two years in the early 1860s to repeal Indian apprenticeship. And yet those Republicans’ limited vision of Indian freedom — one in which Indians would be free to reap the fruits of their labor, but not free from the duty to labor altogether — made for an incomplete Indian Emancipation Proclamation. Although California was distant from the battlefields of the Civil War, the state endured its own struggle over freedom that paralleled that of the North and the South.

The Republican campaign to abolish Indian servitude ran up against nearly a century of coerced Indian labor in California. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, thousands of California Indians worked on missions and ranches, bound to their employment through a combination of economic necessity, captivity, physical compulsion and debt.

With the United States’ conquest of California in 1847, the discovery of gold in 1848 and the formation of a state government in 1849, new American lawmakers expanded and formalized Indian servitude to meet growing demands for labor. The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians authorized whites to hold Indian children as wards until they reached adulthood. Indian adults convicted of vagrancy or other crimes could be forced to work for whites who paid their bail.

Skyrocketing demand for farmworkers and domestic servants, combined with violence between Indians and invading whites in the northwestern part of the state, left Democrats in war-torn counties clamoring for the expansion of the 1850 Indian act. A “general system of peonage or apprenticeship” was the only way to quell Indian wars, one Democrat argued. A stint of involuntary labor would civilize Indians, establish them in “permanent and comfortable homes,” and provide white settlers with “profitable and convenient servants.” In 1860, Democrats proposed new amendments to the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that allowed whites to bind Indian children as apprentices until they reached their mid-20s. Indian adults accused of being vagrants without steady employment, or taken as captives of war, could be apprenticed for 10-year terms. The amendments passed with little debate.

As the nation hurtled toward a war over slavery, Californians watched as their own state became a battleground over the future of human bondage. Apprenticeship laws aimed at “civilizing” the state’s Indians encouraged a robust and horrific slave trade in the northwestern counties. Frontier whites eagerly paid from $50 to $100 for Indian children to apprentice. Groups of kidnappers, dubbed “baby hunters” in the California press, supplied this market by attacking isolated Indian villages and snatching up children in the chaos of battle. Some assailants murdered Indian parents who refused to give up their children.

Once deposited in white homes, captive apprentices often suffered abuse and neglect. The death of Rosa, a 10-year-old apprentice from either the Yuki or Pomo tribes, provides a grim case in point. Just two weeks before the repeal of Indian apprenticeship, the Mendocino County coroner found the dead girl “nearly naked, lying in a box out of doors” next to the home of her mistress, a Mrs. Bassett of Ukiah. Neighbors testified that the child was sick and restless and that Basset shut her out of the house in the middle of a raging snowstorm. Huge bruises on Rosa’s abdomen suggested that Bassett had mercilessly beaten the ill child before tossing her out into the blizzard. Mendocino officials never brought charges in the case.

The horrors of kidnapping and apprenticeship filled the state’s newspapers just as antislavery California Republicans swept into power in 1861-2. Republicans assailed the apprentice system and blamed Democrats for the “abominable system of Indian apprenticeship, which has been used as a means of introducing actual slavery into our free State.” George Hanson, an Illinois Republican whose close relationship with Abraham Lincoln earned him an appointment as Northern California’s superintendent of Indian affairs, vowed to eliminate the state’s “unholy traffic in human blood and souls.” He tracked down and prosecuted kidnappers in the northwestern counties (with mixed success) and petitioned the State Legislature to abolish the apprenticeship system.

In 1862, Republican legislators proposed two new measures to overturn the 1860 apprenticeship amendments. Democrats blocked these bills and insisted that apprenticeship “embodied one of the most important measures” for Indians’ “improvement and civilization.” Indian servitude lived on.

By the time the legislature met again in the spring of 1863, however, all signs pointed to the destruction of the apprenticeship system. Republicans won firm majorities in both houses of the State Legislature, and in January California became the first state to endorse Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Republicans again proposed to repeal the apprenticeship amendments, and this time they achieved their goal with no debate or dissent. Involuntary labor for American Indians died quietly.

Or did it? Republicans had eliminated all the 1860 amendments authorizing the forced apprenticeship of American Indians. But they had left intact sections of the original 1850 act that mandated the forcible binding out of Indian convicts and vagrants. Moreover, repeal only prevented future apprenticeships; Republican legislation did not liberate Indians already legally apprenticed. After repeal, as many as 6,000 Indian children remained servants in white homes.

The incomplete nature of Indian emancipation in California reflected Republicans’ own ambivalence toward Indian freedom. Most Republicans opposed the kidnapping and enslavement of Indians. They believed that Indians, like former African-American slaves, should be entitled to reap the economic rewards of their own work. On the other hand, they asserted that the key to “civilizing” Indians was to force them to participate in the California labor market. They could not be free to support themselves through traditional mobile hunting and gathering practices that removed their labor from white supervision and tied up valuable natural resources. Such a lifestyle was, in Republicans’ minds, little more than idle vagrancy. Just as their Republican colleagues on the East Coast argued that ex-slaves should be schooled to labor by being bound to plantation wage work through long-term contracts, California Republicans began to advocate compulsory labor as the only way to cure Indian vagrancy.

The Republican vision for Indian freedom quickly took shape after the Civil War. Republican appointees who oversaw California’s Indian reservations compelled all able-bodied Indians to work on the reservation farms. Those who refused, or who pursued native food-gathering practices, forfeited the meager federal rations allotted to reservation Indians. By 1867, one Republican agent declared that “the hoe and the broadaxe will sooner civilize and Christianize than the spelling book and the Bible.” He advocated forcing Indians to work until they had been “humanized by systematic labor.” These policies persisted long after the war. At Round Valley Reservation, one critic observed in 1874 that “compulsion is used to keep the Indians and to drive them to work.” Indian workers received no payment for “labor and no opportunity to accumulate individual property.”

The ambiguous postwar liberty of California Indians reveals that the Civil War was a transcontinental conflict that reached west to the Pacific. The freedoms won in wartime, and the unfulfilled promises of emancipation, encompassed not only black and white, free and slave, but also American Indian peoples who suffered from distinctly Western systems of unfree labor. The Civil War and Reconstruction are best understood as truly national struggles over the meaning and limits of freedom, north, south and west.

resource: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/freedom-for-californias-indians/

On the April 22, 1850, to “craft its own code of compulsory labor”, an "Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” was passed which legally curtailed rights of Indians. It provided that:

"White persons or proprietors could apply to the Justice of Peace for the removal of Indians from lands in the white person’s possession"
"Any person could go before a Justice of Peace to obtain Indian children for indenture. The Justice determined whether or not compulsory means were used to obtain the child. If the Justice was satisfied that no coercion occurred, the person obtain a certificate that authorized him to have the care, custody, control and earnings of an Indian until their age of majority (for males, eighteen years, for females, fifteen years)." In actual practice this section lead to a trade system of kidnapped Indian children, either stolen from their parents or taken from the results of militia attacks during the 1850s and 1860s. Frontier whites often eagerly paid $50–$100 for Indian children to apprentice and so groups of kidnappers would often raid isolated Indian villages, snatching up children in the chaos of battle.
“If a convicted Indian was punished by paying a fine, any white person, with the consent of the Justice, could give bond for the Indian’s fine and costs. In return, the Indian was “compelled to work until his fine was discharged or cancelled.” The person bailing was supposed to “treat the Indian humanely, and clothe and feed him properly.” The Court decided “the allowance given for such labor.”” Local authorities were often required to hire out the “convicts” within the next 24 hours to the highest bidder essentially creating a system of selling slaves out of jail.
Indians could not testify for or against whites. It was illegal to sell or administer alcohol to Indians and if Indians were convicted of stealing any valuable or livestock, they could receive any number of lashes (as long as it was less than 25) and a fine of up to $200.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_enslavement_of_indigenous_peoples_in_California

Who was Isabel de Olvera?

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 20:45:00 +0000

A free woman of African descent living in Querétaro, Mexico, Isabel de Olvera joined a relief expedition to the recently colonized province of New Mexico in 1600. She would travel as a servant to a Spanish woman. Little is known about Olvera, except for an extraordinary deposition she filed with the Querétaro alcalde (mayor), don Pedro Lorenzo de Castilla. In front of three witnesses (a free black man, a mestiza woman, and a black slave woman), Isabel de Olvera dictated the following:

I am going on the expedition to New Mexico and have some reason to fear that I may be annoyed by some individual since I am a mulatta, and it is proper to protect my rights in such an eventuality by an affidavit showing that I am a free woman, unmarried and the legitimate daughter of Hernando, a Negro, and an Indian named Magdalena . . . . I therefore request your grace to accept this affidavit, which shows that I am free and not bound by marriage or slavery. I request that a properly certified and signed copy be given to me in order to protect my rights, and that it carry full legal authority. I demand justice.

Whether Isabel de Olvera’s deposition worked as a protector of her freedoms remains unknown to history. However, the document somehow made its way into the Spanish colonial archives, memorializing its progenitor and her understandings of personal freedom for generations of historians. Olvera understood that her cherished freedom could be restricted in two realms of bondage: slavery and marriage. In Querétaro, her freedoms were a matter of public knowledge. As the three witnesses verified, Isabel de Olvera was an unmarried mulatta woman of free status. Her future neighbors in the unknown north, however, might challenge those freedoms and Olvera’s status. Yet, despite her fear that she might “be annoyed by some individual” on the expedition to New Mexico, she agreed to make the journey. Perhaps she hoped to find increased freedoms in New Mexico, and not to remain long in the position of servant.

resources: www.blackpast.org

African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000

Timeline of Africans and Black Spaniards within the Spanish colonies:
http://www.blackpast.org/timelines/african-american-history-american-west-timeline

8 Things You May Not Know About American Money

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:31:00 +0000

On February 25, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the National Banking Act (originally known as the National Currency Act), which for the first time in American history established the federal dollar as the sole currency of the United States. On the law’s 150th anniversary, explore eight surprising facts about American money.

TIMELIME OF AMERICAN BILLS:
https://www.uscurrency.gov/content/history-american-currency

1. The Constitution only authorized the federal government to issue coins, not paper money.
Article One of the Constitution granted the federal government the sole power “to coin money” and “regulate the value thereof.” However, it said nothing about paper money. This was largely because the founding fathers had seen the bills issued by the Continental Congress to finance the American Revolution—called “continentals”—become virtually worthless by the end of the war. The implosion of the continental eroded faith in paper currency to such an extent that the Constitutional Convention delegates decided to remain silent on the issue.

2. Prior to the Civil War, banks printed paper money.
For America’s first 70 years, private entities, and not the federal government, issued paper money. Notes printed by state-chartered banks, which could be exchanged for gold and silver, were the most common form of paper currency in circulation. From the founding of the United States to the passage of the National Banking Act, some 8,000 different entities issued currency, which created an unwieldy money supply and facilitated rampant counterfeiting. By establishing a single national currency, the National Banking Act eliminated the overwhelming variety of paper money circulating throughout the country and created a system of banks chartered by the federal government rather than by the states. The law also assisted the federal government in financing the Civil War.

3. Foreign coins were once acceptable legal tender in the United States.
Before gold and silver were discovered in the West in the mid-1800s, the United States lacked a sufficient quantity of precious metals for minting coins. Thus, a 1793 law permitted Spanish dollars and other foreign coins to be part of the American monetary system. Foreign coins were not banned as legal tender until 1857.

4. The highest-denomination note ever printed was worth $100,000.
The largest bill ever produced by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 gold certificate. The currency notes were printed between December 18, 1934, and January 9, 1935, with the portrait of President Woodrow Wilson on the front. Don’t ask your bank teller for a $100,000 bill, though. The notes were never circulated to the public and were used solely for transactions among Federal Reserve banks.

5. You won’t find a president on the highest-denomination bill ever issued to the public.
The $10,000 bill is the highest denomination ever circulated by the federal government. In spite of its value, it is adorned not with a portrait of a president but with that of Salmon P. Chase, treasury secretary at the time of the passage of the National Banking Act. Chase later served as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The federal government stopped producing the $10,000 bill in 1969 along with these other high-end denominations: $5,000 (fronted by James Madison), $1,000 (fronted by Grover Cleveland) and $500 (fronted by William McKinley). (Although rare to find in your wallet, $2 bills are still printed periodically.)

6. Two American presidents appeared on Confederate dollars.
The Confederacy issued paper money worth approximately $1 billion during the Civil War—more than twice the amount circulated by the United States. While it’s not surprising that Confederate President Jefferson Davis and depictions of slaves at work in fields appeared on some dollar bills, so too did two Southern slave-holding presidents whom Confederates claimed as their own: George Washington (on a $50 and $100 bill) and Andrew Jackson (on a $1,000 bill).

7. Your house may literally have been built with old money.
When dollar bills are taken out of circulation or become worn, they are shredded by Federal Reserve banks. In some cases, the federal government has sold the shredded currency to companies that can recycle it and use it for the production of building materials such as roofing shingles or insulation. (The Bureau of Engraving and Printing also sells small souvenir bags of shredded currency that was destroyed during the printing process.)

8. The $10 bill has the shortest lifespan of any denomination.
According to the Federal Reserve, the estimated lifespan of a $10 bill is 3.6 years. The estimated lifespans of a $5 and $1 bill are 3.8 years and 4.8 years, respectively. The highest estimated lifespan is for a $100 bill at nearly 18 years. The federal government reports that approximately 4,000 double folds (forward, then backward) are required to tear a note.

resource: http://www.history.com

Following his beliefs: The Ralph Lazo Story

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:34:00 +0000

Following his beliefs led him to Manzanar

Ralph Lazo's decision to voluntarily join his Japanese American classmates in the internment camp still resonates 65 years later.

May 27, 2007|Cecilia Rasmussen | Times Staff Writerreprint: http://articles.latimes.com

Manzanar, Calif., May 1942.

It's a warm morning at the dusty, inhospitable World War II internment camp on the bleak edge of the Owens Valley. Latino teenager Ralph Lazo arrives by bus to join his Japanese American friends from Belmont High School. Lazo, a 16-year-old Mexican-Irish American, was motivated by loyalty and outrage at the internment of his friends. He became the only known non-spouse, non-Japanese who voluntarily relocated to Manzanar. "Who can say that I haven't got Japanese blood in my veins?" Lazo told The Times in a 1981 interview. That sentiment is voiced by actor Alexis Cruz , who plays Lazo in a 33-minute docudrama, "Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story." The film, which also uses archival footage, is part of a project to make local history and civics lessons more interesting for high school students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District recognized Lazo's act of friendship and loyalty last week as the Board of Education presented his relatives with a certificate for his contributions to the Japanese American community. Film participants, teachers and members of the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress group were also awarded certificates for the project, part of the board's Asian Pacific Heritage Month Resolution. Lazo was "an individual who showed courage. He stood up for his neighbors, doing the right thing at a difficult time," said John Esaki, who wrote and directed the film and is program director at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. "This story has been told hundreds of times, but never through the eyes of a Mexican American. He was legendary, winning the hearts of everyone at Manzanar, and it was hard to ignore such a powerful and enduring character."

The film, made for about $100,000, was produced by Visual Communications, an Asian

Pacific media arts center, and funded by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Project. It recreates the period after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. More than two months later, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an executive order for the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast, believing them to be a threat to national security.

Lazo, who was born in Los Angeles in 1925, grew up in the Temple Street neighborhood on Bunker Hill, a melting pot of Japanese, Basques, Jews, Latinos, Anglos, Filipinos, Koreans and African Americans. As he watched posters go up in community churches giving instructions for the internment process, "it really hit home," he told The Times in 1981. Anger overwhelmed him as he helped his friends hurriedly sell their belongings for a pittance. "Internment was immoral," he said. "It was wrong, and I couldn't accept it."

His father, John Houston Lazo, was a widower who supported Ralph and his sister, Virginia, by working for the Santa Fe Railroad and painting houses. When his father was on the road, Ralph Lazo often ate at the homes of Nisei friends -- second-generation Japanese Americans. He also played basketball on a Filipino community church team. In May 1942, prodded by Japanese American classmates "to come along," Lazo slipped aboard a train. He'd told his father that he was going to camp with his Japanese American friends but was vague about the particulars. "I think he thought I meant weekend camp," Lazo told The Times. But when his father learned that his son was at Manzanar, he made no effort to bring him home. "He was a wise man," Lazo said. "He knew I was safe."

No government official asked about his ancestry, he said. "Being brown has its advantages." Despite Manzanar's name, Spanish for "apple orchard," the area had been left barren decades earlier when Owens Valley water was diverted to Los Angeles. But Lazo helped to make the place as attractive as possible by planting trees. He also delivered mail and kept spirits up by holding holiday parties that featured punch, deviled-egg sandwiches and the Jive Bombers, the camp's dance band. He even played cupid, matchmaking several friends, according to Esaki, the filmmaker. "He was enthusiastic. He spoke a little Japanese and was a cheerleader who fired up the crowd at all the sporting events," Esaki said. Lazo told The Times that camp inmates tried to make the best of their situation. "We didn't just sit around and complain," he said. "In the summer, the heat was unbearable; in the winter, the sparsely rationed oil didn't adequately heat the tarpaper-covered pine barracks with the knotholes in the floor. The wind would blow so hard, it would toss rocks around."

When everything looked grim, Toyo Miyatake, a renowned photographer who captured poignant scenes at Manzanar with his contraband homemade camera, "would always point out the beauty around us," Lazo said. In 1944, Lazo was elected class president of Manzanar High School, even though he graduated at the bottom of a class of 150. "I didn't mind being at the bottom of that group," he told The Times. Government officials finally realized Lazo was not Japanese-American when he was drafted in August 1944. The U.S. Department of the Interior's War Relocation Authority touted the fact with a news release: "America's only non-Japanese evacuee, Ralph Lazo In fact, there were other non-Japanese at internment camps -- spouses of Japanese Americans and Japanese citizens.

Army Staff Sgt. Lazo served in the South Pacific during the campaign for the liberation of the Philippines. "The American G.I. couldn't tell the difference between a Japanese and a Filipino. That's why they assigned me." Soldiers "were killing the Filipinos and letting the Japanese go," he told The Times. He was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism in combat. After the war, Lazo graduated from UCLA and earned a master's degree from Cal State Northridge. He became a teacher and joined the struggle to win reparations for Japanese Americans, helping raise funds for a threatened class-action lawsuit. In 1988, Congress passed a law to award each surviving internee $20,000.

Lazo taught at San Fernando Junior High School, then at Grant and Monroe high schools before becoming a counselor at Valley College in 1970. There, he also mentored students who were disabled and worked to persuade more Latino parents to encourage their children to go to college and register to vote.

Dolores Huerta: Activist

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 19:09:00 +0000

“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”

—Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta has worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination. To further her cause, she created the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 and co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta stepped down from the UFW in 1999, but she continues her efforts to improve the lives of workers, immigrants and women.

Early Life

Activist and labor leader Dolores Fernández, better known as Dolores Huerta, was born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, the second child of Juan and Alicia (Chavez) Fernandez. The young family struggled, and by the time Dolores was three, her parents divorced and her mother moved Dolores and her two brothers to Stockton, California. Dolores maintained a relationship with her father, who later became a union activist and a New Mexico state assemblyman. Juan’s own political and labor activism later proved inspirational to Dolores.

Migrant Workers in Stockton, CA

When the family first arrived in Stockton, a farming community in the San Joaquin Valley, Alicia worked two jobs to provide for the family. Dolores’s grandfather, Herculano Chavez, took care of the children, serving as the children’s adult male figure. Dolores admired her mother, who was always encouraged her children to get involved in youth activities and become something. Alicia worked hard to provide music lessons and extracurricular activities for Dolores and her brothers. Dolores played violin and piano and took dance lessons. A good student, she was also a Girl Scout up until she turned 18, and she won second place in a national essay contest.

Despite her achievements, Dolores experienced the racism many Mexicans and Mexican Americans suffered from, especially those who were farm workers. At school she was sometimes treated with suspicion and scorn. She was once accused by a teacher of stealing another student’s work because the teacher was convinced that Dolores was incapable, due to her ethnic origin. However, with time, her family’s economic conditions improved. During World War II, Alicia ran a restaurant and then purchased a hotel in Stockton with her second husband, James Richards. The businesses served the farm workers and day laborers, offering affordable rates and welcoming the diversity of the area.

Dolores with her husband, Ventura

After graduating from Stockton High School, in 1947, Dolores Fernandez went through a marriage, the birth to two children and a divorce. After a series of unsatisfying jobs, she returned to school and eventually completed a teaching degree at Stockton College, part of the University of the Pacific. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher, but resigned because she was so distraught over the poor living conditions of her students, many of them children of farm workers. Determined to help, in 1955, she and Fred Ross started the Stockton chapter of the Community Services Organization (CSO), a grassroots group that worked to end segregation, discrimination and police brutality and improve social and economic conditions of farm workers. During this time, Dolores married Ventura Huerta, another labor activist. The couple would go on to have five children.

A Life of Activism

Cesar Chavez

In 1960, Dolores Huerta started the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA). She set up voter registration drives and lobbied politicians to allow non–U.S. citizen migrant workers to receive public assistance and pensions and provide Spanish-language voting ballots and driver's tests. During this time, Dolores met Cesar Chavez, a fellow CSO official, who had become its director. In 1962, both Huerta and Chavez lobbied to have the CSO expand its efforts to help farm workers, but the organization was focused on urban issues and couldn’t move in that direction. Frustrated, they both left the organization and, with Gilbert Padilla, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The two made a great team. Chavez was the dynamic leader and speaker; and Huerta the skilled organizer and tough negotiator.

In 1965, the AWA and the NFWA combined to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (later, simply the United Farm Workers). That year, the union took on the Coachella Valley grape growers, with Chavez organizing a strike of all farm workers and Huerta negotiating contracts. After five hard years, the United Farm Workers (now affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) signed an historic agreement with 26 grape growers that improved working conditions for farm workers, including reducing the use of harmful pesticides and initiating unemployment and healthcare benefits. In the 1970s, Huerta coordinated a national lettuce boycott and helped create the political climate for the passage of the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law to recognize the rights of farm workers to bargain collectively.

During the 1980s, Dolores Huerta served as vice president of the UFW and co-founded the UFW’s radio station. She continued to speak for a variety of causes, advocating for a comprehensive immigration policy and better health conditions for farm workers. In 1988, she nearly lost her life when she was beaten by San Francisco police at a rally protesting the policies of then-presidential candidate George H. W. Bush. She suffered six broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

Later Life

Dolores Huerta has been honored for her work as a fierce advocate for farm workers, immigration and women. She received the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award and was inducted in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. That year proved bitter-sweet for her as she also experienced the passing of her beloved friend Cesar Chavez. In 1998, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award, a year before she stepped down from her position at the United Farm Workers. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. The $100,000 award provided her the means to create the Dolores Huerta Foundation, whose purpose is to bring organizing and training skills to low-income communities. Huerta continues to lecture and speak out on a variety of social issues involving immigration, income inequality and the rights of women and Latinos.

Resource: www.biography.com

In 2006, Dolores Huerta visits Tucson High School and makes a speech. Within the speech, she states "Republicans Hate Latinos." In 2010, Arizona Attorney Tom Horne and other politicians used these words as their rationale for passing HB-2281-The Ethnic Studies Ban. In this interview, Dolores Huerta discusses the statement and its affect.

more about Latino History: rudyacuna.net

Women Prisoners of War at Castle Thunder: Civil War

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Fri, 05 May 2017 13:51:00 +0000

By Rebecca Beatrice Brooks

Castle Thunder at the fall of Richmond, 1865

Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, was one of the few Confederate prisons that held not only male prisoners of war but women prisoners as well. Located along Tobacco row, near Libby prison, Castle Thunder held around 100 women prisoners for various crimes, such as prostitution, spying and smuggling, although most of them were political prisoners. A few of these women were also female soldiers whose true identity had been discovered. An article published in the New York Times in July of 1863, states that some of the female prisoners were also wives and children of Union soldiers who were captured after the Union defeat at the second battle of Winchester. These women and children didn’t remain long at Castle Thunder as they were quickly transferred to the United States Hotel in Washington D.C. Women and African-American prisoners were kept in a separate building at the prison while male Confederate deserters and male political prisoners were held in another.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, 1863

Conditions at the prison were deplorable. Castle Thunder was filthy, overcrowded, disease-ridden and lacked adequate food and medical supplies for the prisoners. Executions of Confederate deserters took place in full view of the other prisoners and a notoriously brutal captain, George W. Alexander, patrolled the prison daily accompanied by his aggressive black dog, Nero, both whom taunted and terrorized the prisoners. The most famous of Castle Thunder’s women prisoners was Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. Walker was an army doctor for the 52nd Ohio Infantry who was taken prisoner after she encountered a group of Confederate soldiers at Tunnel Hill in Georgia. Due to her unconventional profession as well as her trademark military uniform, a pair of trousers worn under her skirt, a military jacket and a gypsy hat, Walker attracted a lot of attention from the press and locals in Richmond.

The Richmond Sentinel published the following account of her capture on April 22, 1864:

“The female Yankee surgeon captured by our pickets a short time since, in the neighborhood of the army of Tennessee, was received in this city yesterday evening, and sent to the Castle in charge of a detective. Her appearance on the street in full male costume, with the exception of a gipsey hat, created quite an excitement amongst the idle negroes and boys who followed and surrounded her. She gave her name as Dr. Mary E. Walker, and declared that she had been captured on neutral ground. She was dressed in black pants and black or dark talma or paletot. She was consigned to the female ward of Castle Thunder, there being no accommodations at the Libby for prisoners of her sex. We must not omit to add that she is ugly and skinny, and apparently above thirty years of age.”

Mary Bell, Confederate spy

Walker spent six months at the jail, during which she wrote numerous letters to the press describing the horrible conditions at the prison. She complained that her mattress was infested with insects, rats ran throughout the prison at night and food rations were meager and inedible. According to the book Dr Mary Edwards Walker, later in her life Walker once even complained of a guard who had fired at her while she stood in the doorway to her cell, just narrowly missing her head. On August 12th, prison officials finally released Walker in an attempt to avoid anymore negative press. For the rest of her life, Walker suffered from health problems caused by her malnutrition and exposure to disease at the prison. Other famous prisoners included two cousins, Mary and Mollie Bell. The Bells were secret soldiers who had disguised themselves as men in order to fight for the Confederacy. They fought for two years, under the command of General Jubal A. Early, and took part in a number of key battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville, before their true identities were discovered after a fellow soldier reported them.

Upon discovery, the Bells were sent to Castle Thunder in October of 1864 and held for three weeks. With no official crime to charge them with, prison officials finally released the cousins and sent them home to Pulaski County, Virginia. Castle Thunder remained an active Confederate prison until the fall of Richmond in April of 1865. Shortly before the city fell to the Union army, the prisoners were evacuated and sent to Danville, Virginia. The Union army later took control of the prison and used it for similar purposes. After the war ended, Castle Thunder was returned to its original owners but was destroyed in a large fire in 1879.

Resource: http://civilwarsaga.com/women-prisoners-of-war-castle-thunder/

11 surprising facts about marriage in the old days

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 01:09:00 +0000

Biblically, a traditional marriage has been defined by “a state instituted and ordained by God for the lifelong relationship between one man as husband and one woman as wife.” However, your ancestors hoped for in a “traditional marriage” isn’t quite the roses and white picket fence that they believe it to be. Even though the definition of marriage as “an agreement between two people” has never changed, if you take a look into history it seems as though the idea of traditional marriage has.

BY LISA DOUGLAS

FASHIONBEANS.COM

1. People didn’t marry for love.

In “traditional marriage," love was considered a childish notion that had no place in a marriage. A conservative once predicted that marrying for love would destroy the institution. In ancient Rome it was believed to be inappropriate for husbands and wives to be in love; Seneca, the philosopher, said that there was nothing more impure than a man loving his wife like a mistress. The advice in the 1700s was to get married to someone you could tolerate—progress! But it wasn’t until the 1920s that people started marrying for love en masse, coining the term “love marriage."

2. People weren’t happy to get married.

Loving, blissful commitment wasn’t exactly synonymous with the true traditional marriage our ancient ancestors experienced. Why? Marriage was an arrangement that many were forced into. Four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, marriage was equivalent to slavery; in the year 400 A.D. many church officials actually opposed marriage describing it as “bondage.”

3. People didn’t get married to have babies.

People got married for so many reasons! Because they were lonely, because their family needed a goat, because their parents couldn’t afford to feed them any longer, because they needed to strengthen their political position, or because a brother’s wife died and he needed a new one. Procreation was often a consequence of being married but it’s been proven that it often wasn’t the main goal, especially for families that weren't of the noble classes, who had large inheritances to think about.

4. The women didn’t have a say.

A blissful, traditional marriage is depicted as the husband and wife discussing issues and forming to decisions together for the good of their family. In a "traditional marriage,” this was not so. During American colonial times, William Blackstone stated that the “very existence of a woman is suspended during a marriage” and that she ceased to exist as a person without thought or voice. Basically, once she married, the woman’s job was to obey, cater to, and heed the word of her husband. Let's hope nobody's aiming for that in marriage these days, religious or not.

5. The woman didn’t have any rights.

In a “traditional marriage”, not only did a woman not have a say in family decisions, she didn’t have any rights either. After centuries of prejudice, finally in 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought for a woman’s rights within a marriage; this led to the abolishment of the existing law that during a dispute, males must be preferred to females. Furthermore, it was only in 1979 when head and master laws were abolished in most states, which stated that a husband could do whatever he wanted with his house, his family, and his wife and her possessions.

6. People didn’t have sex (and babies) with only their spouses.

In Biblical times, not only was polygamy not illegal, it was considered a man’s right to have multiple wives and mistresses. For example, Abraham had two wives and a concubine, Khaleb had five, Moses a mere two, but King Solomon had over 1,000 (though 300 were considered to be concubines)! Monogamy is actually a relatively new, Western invention.

7. It was hardly a bed of roses.

The loving visions of a man serving and caring for his wife just weren’t reality centuries ago. Women were seen as property and meant for specific purposes. hroughout time though, some mercy was shown to wives, as shown by Bernard of Siena in the 15th century, who instructed men to be kind and have as much compassion for their wives as they would a chicken or a pig. Talk about a low bar. Since a wife was considered her husband’s possession, he could do what he saw fit with her. This often involved “keeping her in line” through physical means. In his Corpus Jurius, Emperor Justinian suggested that it may not be right to beat your wife, but if you happened to see a reason to do it, you would just have to pay her afterwards. No biggie, right? Thankfully, by the late 1800s, this practice became more outdated; South Carolina was the first state to disallow the beating of wives. In 1920, it was outlawed nationwide. Now if only those crimes would be properly prosecuted and women were rightfully protected from their abusers.

8. It wasn’t always an agreement between two people in love.

It was only in the 13th century that Pope Alexander IV changed the laws and made marriage a sacrament between two people by taking it out of the hands of parents and putting it into the hands of the two participating (and—mostly—willing) parties. Before this, families viewed marriage as a bargaining tool to get what they needed, disregarding the feelings or desires of the individuals who were going to be married. In 500 A.D., Emperor Justinian passed a law allowing fathers to give away their daughters as young as 7 years old, thereby ensuring the family that their needs would be met early on. Arranged marriages weren’t the only third-party agreements that were made, sadly. Many women women found themselves in unique instances in which it would be required for them to be married. If a woman was raped, she would often have to marry her rapist; if her sister’s husband was left a widow, she would have to marry her late sister’s husband. The illusion of choice is hardly new for women.

9. Women didn’t necessarily choose to be intimate with their husbands.

In a traditional marriage, it could rightly be assumed that a wife would have the choice to be intimate with her husband. Not so! In 1736, Jurist Sir Mathew Hale declared that a wife couldn’t be raped, because in marriage, a woman gave up all rights to her body. Her husband could do whatever he wanted with it. Shockingly, as recent as 1993, the last states finally passed laws disallowing a man to force himself on his wife. Of course, it still happens all the time, and it's quite hard to prosecute.

10. You weren’t allowed to hold hands and show you loved each other.

In your mom’s view of traditional marriage, hugging and holding hands would be acceptable public displays of affection. However, in true traditional times, these were considered vile and severely frowned upon. In fact, Plutar called it disgraceful when a Roman senator was caught kissing his wife in public—it was such a scandal that the senator was forced to back down from his position.

11. People didn’t stay together forever.

Although the church tried really hard to keep people together by making it truly hard to divorce, people have been getting out of their unhappy arrangements for hundreds of years. In early Mesopotamia, Hammurabi's code gave husbands alternate options by stating instances in which they could get a refund on their spouse if they were unhappy. Both the Greeks and the Romans allowed divorce as well. Thanks to Henry VIII breaking from the Catholic church and founding his own church, just to marry Anne Boleyn, the people of Britain were forced to be okay with it. That rule often only applied to him and his (six!) marriages, though—convenient, huh?

Morning Olympian December 1908

By the 1800s, divorce was so common in the U.S. that the government opened an investigation into the matter and by the early 1900s, society was sure that marriage would soon be obsolete. Though the divorce rate increased throughout the 20th century, it's started to decline, with 2016 having the lowest American divorces on record since 1980.

10 Things You May Not Know About Andrew Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 15:28:00 +0000

Andrew Jackson at 250: President's legacy isn't pretty, but neither is history tennessean.com/story Historical reputations rise and fall; Jackson isn’t unique in this regard. But his case is peculiar in the extent of the fall and for what it says about historical memory. Oddly, Jackson’s reputation was the victim of his success. His sins were remembered because his achievements were so profound.

MARCH 15, 2017 By Christopher Klein

President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson called himself a Jeffersonian Democrat, while Thomas Jefferson called Jackson a dangerous man. Find out more about this "hero of the common man."

The first Irish-American president? The answer may surprise you. While John F. Kennedy was the first Irish-Catholic president, Andrew Jackson was the first chief executive with roots in the Emerald Isle. Check out that and nine other surprising facts about “Old Hickory.”

Jackson’s parents emigrated from Ireland.

Both of Jackson’s parents, Andrew and Elizabeth, were born in Ireland’s Country Antrim (in present-day Northern Ireland), and in 1765 they set sail with their two sons, Hugh and Robert, from the port town of Carrickfergus for America. The Jacksons settled with fellow Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the Waxhaws region that straddled North and South Carolina.

Both North Carolina and South Carolina claim to be his birthplace.

The seventh president was born on March 15, 1767, but exactly where is disputed. The Waxhaws wilderness was so remote that the precise border between North and South Carolina had yet to be surveyed. In an 1824 letter, Jackson wrote that he had been told that he had been born in his uncle’s South Carolina home, but dueling historic markers in both states still claim to be the true locations of Jackson’s birthplace.

Jackson killed a man in a duel.

The fiery Jackson had a propensity to respond to aspersions cast on his honor with pistols. Historians estimate that “Old Hickory” may have participated in anywhere between 5 and 100 duels. When a man named Charles Dickinson called Jackson “a worthless scoundrel, a paltroon and a coward” in a local newspaper in 1806, the future president challenged his accuser to a duel. At the command, Dickinson fired and hit Jackson in the chest. The bullet missed Jackson’s heart by barely more than an inch. In spite of the serious wound, Jackson stood his ground, raised his pistol and fired a shot that struck his foe dead. Jackson would carry around the bullet in his chest as well as another from a subsequent duel for the rest of his life.

He won the popular vote for president three times.

Jackson captured nearly 56% of the popular vote in winning the presidency in 1828, and he nearly matched that figure four years later in his reelection. “Old Hickory” also won the most popular votes, although not a majority, in his first presidential run in 1824. Since no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the 1824 election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which selected John Quincy Adams in what Jackson’s supporters claimed was a “corrupt bargain” with Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who was named secretary of state by Adams. In his annual messages to Congress, Jackson repeatedly lobbied for the abolition of the Electoral College.

He was the target of the first attempted presidential assassination.

As Jackson was leaving the U.S. Capitol on January 30, 1835, following a memorial service for a congressman, a deranged house painter named Richard Lawrence fired a pistol at the president from just feet away. When Lawrence’s gun misfired, he pulled out a second weapon and squeezed the trigger. That pistol also misfired. An enraged Jackson charged Lawrence with his cane as the shooter was subdued. A subsequent investigation found the pistols to be in perfect working order. The odds of both guns misfiring were found to be 125,000 to 1.

Unbeknownst to Jackson, he married his wife before she had been legally divorced from her first husband.

After moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1780s, Jackson fell in love with the unhappily married Rachel Donelson Robards. After she separated from her husband and believing that she was granted a legal divorce, Robards wed Jackson. In fact, however, the divorce had not yet been finalized, and her first husband accused her of adultery. Jackson legally remarried Robards in 1794, but the episode resurfaced in the nasty 1828 presidential campaign when Jackson’s political opponents spread the gossip about his wife’s alleged adultery. After Rachel Jackson died just weeks after her husband’s election, the grieving president-elect believed the anguish caused by the slander hastened her demise.

He was the only president to have been a former prisoner of war.

During the Revolutionary War, the 13-year-old Jackson joined the Continental Army as a courier. In April 1781, he was taken prisoner along with his brother Robert. When a British officer ordered Jackson to polish his boots, the future president refused. The infuriated Redcoat drew his sword and slashed Jackson’s left hand to the bone and gashed his head, which left a permanent scar. The British released the brothers after two weeks of ill treatment in captivity, and within days Robert died from an illness contracted during his confinement.

He adopted two Native American boys.

Although he led campaigns against the Creeks and Seminoles during his military career and signed the Indian Removal Act as president, Jackson also adopted a pair of Native American infants during the Creek War in 1813 and 1814. Orphaned himself at age 14, Jackson sent back to Rachel an infant orphan named Theodore, who died early in 1814, and a child named Lyncoya, who was found in his dead mother’s arms on a battlefield. “He is a savage that fortune has thrown in my hands,” Jackson wrote to his wife about the boy. Lyncoya died of tuberculosis in 1828, months before Jackson’s election.

He was a notorious gambler.

Jackson had a taste for wagering—on dice, on cards and even on cockfights. As a teenager, he gambled away all of his grandfather’s inheritance on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. Jackson’s passion in life was racing and wagering on horses.

Jackson’s portrait appears on the $20 bill although he detested paper money.

Chastened by a financial hit he once took from devalued paper notes, Jackson was opposed to the issuance of paper money by state and national banks. He only trusted gold and silver as currency and shut down the Second Bank of the United States in part because of its ability to manipulate paper money. It’s ironic that Jackson not only appears on the $20 bill, but his portrait in the past has also appeared on $5, $10, $50 and $10,000 denominations in addition to the Confederate $1,000 bill.

REFERENCE: history.com/news

Brief History of Feminism

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 16:43:00 +0000

A Brief History: The Three Waves of Feminism

SEPTEMBER 22, 2015 BY CAROLINE DOREY-STEIN

While the roots of feminism are buried in ancient Greece, most recognize the movement by the three waves of feminism. The third being the movement in which we are currently residing.

The first wave (1830’s – early 1900’s): Women’s fight for equal contract and property rights

Often taken for granted, women in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, realized that they must first gain political power (including the right to vote) to bring about change was how to fuel the fire. Their political agenda expanded to issues concerning sexual, reproductive and economic matters. The seed was planted that women have the potential to contribute just as much if not more than men.

The second wave (1960’s-1980’s): Broadening the debate

Coming off the heels of World War II, the second wave of feminism focused on the workplace, sexuality, family and reproductive rights. During a time when the United States was already trying to restructure itself, it was perceived that women had met their equality goals with the exception of the failure of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (which has still yet to be passed).

Misconceptions…

This time is often dismissed as offensive, outdated and obsessed with middle class white women’s problems. Conversely, many women during the second wave were initially part of the Black Civil Rights Movement, Anti Vietnam Movement, Chicano Rights Movement, Asian-American Civil Rights Movement, Gay and Lesbian Movement and many other groups fighting for equality. Many of the women supporters of the aforementioned groups felt their voices were not being heard and felt that in order to gain respect in co-ed organizations they first needed to address gender equality concerns.

Women cared so much about these civil issues that they wanted to strengthen their voices by first fighting for gender equality to ensure they would be heard.

The third wave (1990’s – present): The “micropolitics” of gender equality

Today and unlike the former movements, the term ‘feminist’ is received less critically by the female population due to the varying feminist outlooks. There are the ego-cultural feminists, the radicals, the liberal/reforms, the electoral, academic, ecofeminists… the list goes on.

The main issues we face today were prefaced by the work done by the previous waves of women. We are still working to vanquish the disparities in male and female pay and the reproductive rights of women. We are working to end violence against women in our nation as well as others.

We are still fighting for acceptance and a true understanding of the term ‘feminism,’ it should be noted that we have made tremendous progress since the first wave. It is a term that has been unfairly associated first, with ladies in hoop skirts and ringlet curls, then followed by butch, man-hating women. Due to the range of feminist issues today, it is much harder to put a label on what a feminist looks like.

Quite frankly, it all comes down to the dictionary’s very simple yet profound definition: “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.” If that’s what a feminist is – who wouldn’t want to be called that?

Feminism: Why Not ‘Egalitarianism’ or ‘Humanism’?

Caroline Dorey-Stein

SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 BY CAROLINE DOREY-STEIN

During my studies of women’s leadership and equality, I have become increasingly frustrated with the hesitance some co-workers, friends and family respond with when I discuss feminism. The most common rebuttal is “why is it called feminism if it’s the equality of both men and women?” or, my personal favorite, “why not ‘Egalitarianism’ or ‘Humanism’ instead?”

I’ve even been told “Caroline, I don’t think you’re a feminist.”

I wanted to address this question because if I hear it frequently, chances are so do others and we should all be equipped to answer.

Before I begin my explanation of why it is ‘feminism’ and not another word signifying equality, I want to stress something. I do not just go up to people and blab about how great feminism is! I am not preachy with a few exceptions in my writings and sometimes when I talk with fellow feminists (that’s preaching to the choir, however). Typically feminist arguments surface when someone just simply asks me about my work. When I explain I’m studying women’s leadership and gender equality and it makes them somehow uncomfortable, this is when the retorts to the term arise.

The movement was given the name ‘feminism’ because it focuses on the gender inequality issues that impact women. Just like any other civil rights category, feminism is a term used to show that one supports women’s equality and wants to address the serious amount of gender discrepancies they face daily. It does not take away from other civil rights matters.

Feminism is not called Humanism or Egalitarianism because Feminism, Humanism and Egalitarianism are three distinct theories.

Humanism is a branch of philosophy and ethics that advocates for equality, tolerance and secularism. It recognizes that human beings do not “require” religion in order to develop moral systems or behave morally. More simply, Humanism is the theory that humans are allowed to use logic to decide what is ethical instead of using a higher power to define for them.

Egalitarianism is a form of political philosophy that advocates all human beings are fundamentally equal and therefore equally entitled to resources. Yet, it has some distinct limits in applied practice. Egalitarianism has been an inactive socio-political movement for quite a while now.

Equality was originally conceptualized as a means to give everyone the same things, and although concepts and theories of equality are meant to be fair, rarely if ever are they in practice in reality.

This is not to infer that these two practices did not help shape Feminism. Humanism and Egalitarianism are important intellectual movements whose philosophies inform Feminism as well as global human rights legislation. But Feminism is the only movement actively advocating for gender equality.

The movement operates on the tenant that gender is not an acceptable basis for discrimination, oppression and/or eradication. It’s called Feminism because the gender being denied personhood and subjected to oppression is female. Feminism was given its name because it began as a socio-political movement to achieve gender equality for females and through its own rhetoric has become a movement to achieve equality for all persons regardless of gender.

20 Freaky Historical Facts: So very Halloweenish!

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 02 Oct 2016 15:00:00 +0000

1.) Some chapels buried thousands of bodies in their floorboards. Instead of a separate cemetery, bodies used to be buried in churchyards, which in the olden days was profitable for churches. Since there was a finite amount of space in the yard, some churches buried corpses under their floors - one London chapel had 12,000 bodies in it.

2.) The Spanish Donkey was one of the worst tortures ever. During the Spanish Inquisition, this device would be used for torture and eventual death. The person would be placed on a triangular log and weights attached to their feet. They would be pulled downward by the weights as the sharp edge of the log slowly sliced them in half.

3.) 17th century rich people ate human flesh. They thought that consuming flesh, drinking human blood, and even rubbing human fat on the outside of the skin could cure any number of diseases.

4.) Human skulls were used by ancient civilizations as cups. Many ancient cultures hollowed out the skulls of their slain enemies and made them into drinking cups, with the earliest ones dating to about 14,000 years ago in what is now England.

5.) The Victorians made "memorial jewelry" - out of parts of their dead loved ones. To remember their lost family and friends, some Victorians had jewelry made out of parts of their loved ones' bodies, including teeth, hair, and bone. This brooch was made with a pretty knot made of hair.

6.) If someone died abroad in the Middle Ages, they might have been boiled so that their bones could be shipped home. Before modern embalming, it was difficult (and smelly) to transport a body back home if someone died far away. In the Middle Ages, some people chose to have their corpse cut into pieces and boiled. That way, the rotting flesh could be buried in the place the person passed on, but their bones could be easily shipped back to their ancestral burial ground.

7.) It was popular in France for royal women to give birth in front of a crowd. Marie Antoinette had such a large audience that she was almost crushed by the throng of people who tried to fit into her room at Versailles when she was giving birth.

8.) Dentures used to be made of the teeth of fallen soldiers. The teeth would be removed from the bodies, then placed in artificial gums for use by living people.

9.) In England, suicide victims were buried at crossroads to keep them from haunting towns. People in medieval England thought that burying people who'd committed suicide - which was a very serious crime - at a crossroads would confuse the restless soul and prevent them from coming "home" in spirit form.

10.) A guy wrote a book about a ship called the Titan crashing into an iceberg - fourteen years BEFORE the Titanic sank. Morgan Robertson's 1898 book tells the story of a British ship called the Titan, which was deemed to be unsinkable, that hit an iceberg and sank, killing many of the passengers because there weren't enough lifeboats. In 1912, the Titanic sank in almost the same manner.

11.) General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered a full military funeral in 1838...for his leg. The Mexican leader lost his left leg when it was hit by a cannon, and had a funeral - with full military honors - for it when it was buried.

12.) Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory is considered the most prolific female serial killer in history. Four hundred years ago today, in August 1614, the notorious 54-year-old royal died under house arrest in Čachtice Castle in modern-day Slovakia, having been implicated in as many as 650 deaths — mostly peasant girls and servants. Elizabeth was prone to fits of rage and seizures, and it appears that mental illness — possibly the result of years of inbreeding — was common in her extended family. The torture and murder was done largely for Báthory’s pleasure, and some scholars believe she was a sexual sadist in addition to a psychopath. Báthory and her accomplices terrorized the surrounding countryside for years with impunity. And it was not until her bloodlust crept up the social ladder, and the daughters of nobles went missing, that her fellow royals started to pay attention to the dark rumors surrounding the countess. Just after Christmas in 1610, Báthory’s castle was raided by the local authorities, who were horrified to discover dead and dying maidens strewn across the courtyard and basement. The countess’s collaborators were imprisoned, put on trial, and themselves tortured and executed. Báthory herself was never tried or convicted — perhaps to spare her family the embarrassment — but she was placed under house arrest in a tower room within Čachtice Castle where she died less than four years later.

13.) Sultan Ibrahim I of the Ottoman Empire once drowned 280 of his concubines. The reason? One of them had slept with another man.

14.) The first major syphilis outbreak made people look like gross zombies. In 1494, Florence, Italy had a big syphilis outbreak, and before antibiotics, you just sort of had to...deal. With syphilis, that meant that parts of your face would literally be falling off, and you'd just have sores all over your body.

15.) When Mount Vesuvius went off, it actually exploded people's heads. The city of Herculaneum was hit not by magma or ash when Vesuvius went off, but by a superheated cloud of gas with temperatures up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. This meant that people's heads got really hot, really fast. Since the liquid in your head has nowhere to go because of your skull...their heads legit exploded.

16.) The first recorded serial killer in history was a woman. Nowadays, most of the major serial killers (that we know about, anyway) are men. But back in Roman times, there was a serial killer named Locusta who liked poisoning people. A lot. Fortunately for her, Emperor Nero sometimes needed people killed, so instead of punishing her for being a murderer, he pardoned her and asked her to help him out.

17.) One of Joan of Arc's most ardent supporters was a serial child killer. Joan of Arc was amazing, obviously, but she had help in the French Army, including Gilles de Rais, a knight. He fought bravely for France... and also killed anywhere between 80 and 800 children in horrifyingly brutal ways.

18.) James Smithson, the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, is buried there. Employees have said they've seen Smithson's ghost wandering the halls of the famed Washington, D.C. museum, to the point where in 1973, the institute did a study of Smithson's casket and remains to make sure everything was a-OK.

19.) In 1892, two soldiers stationed at the fort that used to occupy Liberty Island tried to dig up some treasure they'd heard was buried nearby. When they got to the box, a demon appeared to them, most likely the spirit of Captain Kidd, a pirate who liked to bury his treasure there.Liberty Island used to be a haven for pirates... and might be haunted by one.

20.) The Romanians believed redheads with blue eyes were vampires. Redheads were believed to be a specific kind of vampire called strigoi, who were able to send their spirits out at night to meet other strigoi.

Breakdown of the Generations with the last 100 years

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 21:56:00 +0000

Generations table

The following table summarizes what you need to know about Western generations so you can track your own in time.

Generation	Births from	Births until	Coming of age
The G.I. Generation – Greatest Generation	1900	1924	1918 - 1929
The Silent Generation – Lucky Few	1925	1945	1943 - 1962
The Baby Boom Generation – Baby Boomers	1946	1965	1963 - 1972
Generation X – Latchkey Kids	1966	1979	1988 - 1994
Generation Y – Millennials	1980	1994	2098 - 2006
Generation Z – Gen Next	1995	2016	2007 - 2020

Most of these primary generations still have a role in today’s market place, but the recent research has shown that Millennials have overtaken Baby Boomers as largest generation in the US.

What generation am I?

The generation calculator tool provides you with descriptions for all the established generations starting with 1900 and right until present:

G.I. Generation (1900-1924)

442nd Nisei Regiment

■ Also known as the Greatest Generation, includes the veterans who fought in World War II.

■ Lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression and many other advances.

■ They are conservative savers, hard-working , with a high sense of moral obligation, patriotism and respect for authority.

■ Two overlapping groups consistent with the Depression Era (born between 1912-1921) and the World War II cohort (born between 1920-1924 to fight in 1939-1945).

Silent Generation (1925-1945)

Soc Hop

■ Born between the two World Wars, many of them who were too young to join the service in the World War II.

■ Also known as the “Post War Cohort” or the “Lucky Few”.

■ Lived through the post war economic boom but also through tensions and approaching wars.

■ Conservative, rational savers, hard-working, patriotic members that fight for security and stability.

Baby Boom Generation (1946-1965)

Civil Rights

■ Born after the World War II, their parents belonging to the G.I. Generation.

■ A 14 year increase in birth rate worldwide.

■ Focused on the civil rights movement and cultural development.

■ Lived through the Vietnam War, MLK, the Kennedy assassination, the Nixon resignation.

■ They came of age in the ‘60s with the hippie movement, Woodstock and college rages.

■ Boomers I or The Baby Boomers (1946-1954) and Boomers 2 or the Jones Generation (1955-1965).

■ Many of the Baby boomers embraced a more conservative behavior and eventually gave birth to Generations X and Y.

Generation X (1966-1979)

Popular American TV shows

■ Also known as the Gen X is the first generation to follow the Baby boomers.

■ This is also the first generation to be named and defined by marketers.

■ Many of its members are aware of their generational title.

■ Came of age in the '80s and '90s with the Reagan era, Challenger explosion, fall of Berlin Wall, Persian Gulf War, economic recession.

■ The all-knowing spoiled kids of the Baby Boomers yet with fewer ambitions and less driven to change the world.

■ The generation X kids are called the “latchkey” kids, exposed to daycare and family instability and this has probably shaped how they regard their family life and how the next generation, Y, is being educated. - The best educated with 29% obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher (6% higher than the previous generation).

Generation Y (1980-1994)

■ Also known as the Echo Boomers or Millennials.

■ The demographic cohort of individuals, primarily children of the Baby boomers.

■ This generation grew up with many world-changing events including the rise of mass communication, technological advance.

■ All knowing as the former Gen X they have what it takes but are also willing to do something about it.

■ This generation benefits from all science advances and better education and has the ambition and desire to change the world.

■ They have been exposed and seen so much that are now immune to traditional ways from marketing to sociology.

Generation Z (1995- )

■ The term generically used to describe the cohort of people born around 2000.

■ Also known as iGeneration, Gen Tech, Gen Wii, Net Gen, Gen Next, Post Gen.

■ This is a generation living in a society where everything is possible and the main communication channel is the internet.

■ A volatile environment of terror threats, possible nuclear or biological attacks.

■ Family stability and moral values put aside, heightened sense of self.

■ Education is now focusing on developing practical skills and enriching creativity..

This generation calculator is a tool designed to help you find quickly what generation you are and which are the characteristics of your up bringing.

The algorithm behind it is simple and takes account only of the year you were born in and the sociologic and marketing studies in the area.

Apart from the particularities of a specific demographic cohort someone is born under, there are other interesting facts that can be found considering the age and birthday.

RESOURCE: http://www.thecalculator.co

10 Jobs That No Longer Exist

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 18:31:00 +0000

10. TELEPHONE OPERATOR

Before the advent of computerized telephone dialing systems, making a phone call required a switchboard operator. Some of you may have even held this job at one point, so we won’t go into too much detail, but the switchboard operator would connect calls by inserting a phone plugs into corresponding, appropriate jacks.

From Seattle Municipal Archives via Wiki Commons

9. GANDY DANCER

Don’t let the name fool you; being a Gandy Dancer is a tough job! Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers. Before machines became capable of laying and maintaining railroad tracks, that work was done by hand. The term’s origins are unknown, but many think it comes from a “Gandy Shovel Company.”

From Edward Hungerford via Wiki Commons

8. PINSETTERS

Here’s one that we were surprised to learn about. Before Gottfried Schmidt invented the mechanical pinsetter in 1936, bowling alleys employed pinsetters. Yep, a pinsetter would set the bowling pins back up after they were knocked down, hence the name (the position was also known as a pinboy, since many pinsetters were teenage boys given the nature of the job).

From Lewis Wickes Hine via Wiki Commons

7. SODA JERKS

If there’s one position that’s near and dear to our hearts, it’s the soda jerk. These were the servers who would make the ice cream sodas and soda water at the drugstores up until the 1960s. Though a soda jerk was formally called a soda clerk, the name came from the motion the server would use to swing the soda handle back and forth while adding the soda water.

From Alan Fisher via Wiki Commons

6. RADIO ACTORS

While this position might technically still exist in the form of radio commercials, gone are the days of radio actors entertaining us on shows like The Lone Ranger or The Burns and Allen Show. Not only were the actors amazing, but the way they created sound effects was quite clever. See for yourself in this behind-the-scenes clip.

5. LAMPLIGHTER

Electricity sure did change a lot of things, including the way we lit our streets at night! Before light bulbs, the common means of illuminating the dark sky were by candle, oil or gas. These lights needed to be manually lit, hence the lamplighter. Most lamplighters used a giant pole to reach the light, and would come back in the early hours of the morning to extinguish it.

From Klearchos Kapoutsis via Wiki Commons

4. MILKMEN

OK, so here’s another profession that might technically still exist, but not in the way we remember it! Growing up, there was nothing better than waking up to a bottle of fresh milk waiting on your doorstep. The milkman was always friendly, wearing that trademark uniform and ready to deliver the day’s fresh milk. Sure, there are still services that will deliver milk to your door, but it’s just not the same.

3. ICE CUTTER

Before the mechanical refrigerator, we had the icebox. In order to keep an icebox cool, you needed ice (who’da thunk it, right?). In the colder parts of the country, ice cutters would travel out onto the frozen bodies of water and cut out large blocks of ice to be used in the warmer months. While some ice cutting was seen as a chore for farmers, some operations were quite large, containing a crew of several dozens of men and harvesting up to 1500 tons of ice a day.

From the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wiki Commons

2. FOOD SAFETY TESTERS

Believe it or not, before the FDA existed, people were basically allowed to put whatever they wanted into food products. In order to determine if the food was safe, it had to be tested. In fact, we have a great story about one chemist’s work in testing food safety, and the formation of what became known as the Poison Squad (Click Here to read that fascinating story).

1. LOG DRIVER

In the early days of the logging industry, the cheapest and most efficient way to transport logs from the forest to the sawmill was via log driving. Log driving was the process of binding several logs together, sometimes attached to a raft, and floating them down a river or a body of water to their intended destination. A log driver was the pilot of this makeshift log boat; and these boats could get quite big.

From: Facebook / Saildream

Newton Knight: Free State of Jones

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:19:00 +0000

Newton Knight

Newton Knight (November 1837 – February 16, 1922) was an American farmer, soldier and southern Unionist, best known as the leader of the Knight Company, a band of Confederate army deserters that turned against the Confederacy during the Civil War. Local legends state that Knight and his men attempted to form the "Free State of Jones" in the area around Jones County, Mississippi, at the height of the war, though the exact nature of the Knight Company's opposition to the Confederate government is disputed. After the war, Knight aided Mississippi's Reconstruction government.

Knight has long been a controversial figure. Historians and descendants disagree over his motives and actions, with some arguing he was a noble and pious individual who refused to fight for a cause in which he did not believe, while others have portrayed him as a manipulative outlaw. This controversy was fueled in part by Knight's postwar marriage to a freed slave, which effectively established a small mixed-race community in southeastern Mississippi. The marriage would have been considered illegal as Mississippi banned interracial marriages except from 1870 to 1880 during the Reconstruction era.

The 1942 James H. Street novel, Tap Roots, was inspired by Knight's actions in the Civil War. The novel was the basis for the 1948 film of that name, which was directed by George Marshall.

Newton was a grandson of John "Jackie" Knight (1773–1861), one of Jones County's largest slaveholders. Newton's father, Albert (1799–1862), however, did not own any slaves, and was the only child of Jackie Knight who did not inherit any slaves. Newton, likewise, did not own any slaves. Some say he was morally opposed to the institution due to his Primitive Baptist beliefs. As a staunch Primitive Baptist, Newton also forswore alcohol, unlike his father and grandfather. He was probably taught to read and write by his mother.

Knight, like many Jones Countians, was opposed to secession. The county elected John H. Powell, the "cooperation" (anti-secession) candidate, to represent them at Mississippi's secession convention in January 1861. Powell voted against secession on the first ballot, but under pressure, switched his vote on the second ballot, joining the majority in voting to secede from the Union. In an interview many years later, Knight suggested many Jones Countians, unaware of how few options he had, felt betrayed by Powell.

Knight enlisted in the Confederate Army in July, 1861. He was given a furlough in January 1862, however, to return home and tend to his ailing father. In May 1862, Knight, along with a number of friends and neighbors, enlisted in Company F of the 7th Battalion, as they preferred to serve together in the same company, rather than with strangers.

Throughout the summer and fall of 1862, a number of factors prompted desertions by Jones Countians serving in the Confederate Army. One factor was the lack of food and supplies in the aftermath of theSiege of Corinth. Another involved reports of poor conditions back home, as small farms deteriorated from neglect. Knight was enraged when he received word that Confederate authorities had seized his family's horse. However, many believe Knight's principal reason for desertion was his outrage over the Confederate government's passing of the Twenty Negro Law. This act allowed wealthy plantation owners to avoid military service if they owned twenty slaves or more. An additional family member was exempted from service for each additional twenty slaves owned. Knight had also received word that his brother-in-law, Morgan, who had become the head of the family in Knight's absence, was abusing Knight's children. Morgan's identity has since been lost, but he is thought to be Morgan Lines, a day laborer and convicted murderer.

Knight was reported AWOL in October 1862. He later defended his desertion, arguing, "if they had a right to conscript me when I didn't want to fight the Union, I had a right to quit when I got ready." After returning home having deserted in the retreat following the defeat at Corinth, Knight, according to relatives, shot and killed Morgan.

In early 1863, Knight was arrested and jailed, and possibly tortured, by Confederate authorities for desertion. His homestead and farm were destroyed, leaving his family destitute.

As the ranks of deserters swelled in the aftermath of the Siege of Vicksburg, Confederate authorities began receiving reports that deserters in the Jones County area were looting and burning houses. A local quartermaster, Captain W. J. Bryant, reported that "the deserters have overrun and taken possession of the country, in many cases exiling the good and loyal citizens or shooting them in cold blood on their own door-sills." General Braxton Bragg dispatched Major Amos McLemore to Jones County to investigate and round up deserters and stragglers. On October 5, 1863, McLemore was shot and killed in the Ellisville home of Amos Deason, and Knight was believed to have pulled the trigger.^[3]

Leaf River

On October 13, 1863, the Knight Company, as it was called, a band of guerillas from Jones County and the adjacent counties of Jasper, Covington, Perry and Smith, was organized to protect the area from Confederate authorities. Knight was elected "captain" of the company, which included many of his relatives and neighbors. The company's main hideout, known as "Devils Den," was located along the Leaf River at the Jones-Covington county line. Local women and slaves provided food and other aid to the men. Women blew cattlehorns to signal the approach of Confederate authorities.

From late 1863 to early 1865, the Knight Company allegedly fought fourteen skirmishes with Confederate forces. One skirmish took place on December 23, 1863, at the home of Sally Parker, a Knight Company supporter, leaving one Confederate soldier dead and two badly wounded.

During this same period, Knight led a raid into Paulding, where he and his men captured five wagonloads of corn, which they distributed among the local population. The company harassed Confederate officials, with numerous tax collectors, conscript officers, and other officials being reported killed in early 1864. In March 1864, the Jones County court clerk notified the governor that guerillas had made tax collections in the county all but impossible. In 2016, a letter dated February 13, 1864 from a Union scout addressed to Maj. Gen. John M. Palmer of the Union Army was discovered by a historian working in the National Archives. It estimates the Knight Company's numbers to be as high as 600 and confirms their intention to join up with the Union Army. The exact number is still a matter of debate, in light of an interview Knight gave after the war stating, "There was about 125 of us, never any more."

General Polk

By the spring of 1864, the Confederate government in the county had been effectively overthrown. Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk wrote Jefferson Davis on March 21, 1864, describing the conditions in Jones County. Polk stated that the band of deserters were “in open rebellion, defiant at the outset, proclaiming themselves ‘Southern Yankees,’ and resolved to resist by force of arms all efforts to capture them.” On March 29, 1864, Confederate Captain Wirt Thomson wrote James Seddon, Confederate Secretary of War, claiming the Knight Company had captured Ellisville and raised the U.S. flag over the courthouse in Jones County. He further reported, “The country is entirely at their mercy.” General William Tecumseh Sherman received a letter from a local group declaring its independence from the Confederacy. In July 1864, the Natchez Courier reported that Jones County had seceded from the Confederacy.

General Polk initially responded to the actions of the Knight Company by sending a contingent under Colonel Henry Maury into the area in February 1864. Maury reported he had cleared the area, but noted the deserters had threatened to obtain "Yankee aid" and return. Shortly afterward, Polk dispatched a veteran contingent of soldiers led by Colonel Robert Lowry, a future governor who would later describe Knight as an "ignorant and uneducated man." Using bloodhounds to track down guerillas in the swamps, Lowry rounded up and executed ten members of the Knight Company, including Newton's cousins, Benjamin Franklin Knight and Sil Coleman. Newton Knight, however, evaded capture. He later stated his company had unsuccessfully attempted to break through Confederate lines to join the Union Army.

At the end of the war, the Union Army tasked Knight with distributing food to struggling families in the Jones County area. He also led a raid that liberated several children who were still being held in slavery in a nearby county. Like many Southern Unionists, he supported the Republican Party, namely the Reconstruction administration of Governor Adelbert Ames. As conflict mounted between white neo-Confederate resistance (the Ku Klux Klan) and the Republican Reconstruction government, Ames appointed Knight Colonel of the First Infantry Regiment of Jasper County, an otherwise all black regiment defending against Klan activity. After southern Democrats regained control of the state government, he withdrew from politics.

In 1870, Knight petitioned the federal government for compensation for several members of the Knight Company, including the ten who had been executed by Lowry in 1864. He provided sworn statements from several individuals attesting to his loyalty to the Union, including a local judge and a state senate candidate. But the federal Court of Claims ruled that "the evidence fails to support the allegation of the petition that the Jones County Scouts were organized for military service in behalf of United States or that they were in sentiment and feeling throughout the war loyal to the Government of the United States."

Rachel Knight

By the mid-1870s, Knight had separated from his wife, Serena, and married Rachel, a woman formerly enslaved by his grandfather. During the same period, Knight's son, Mat, married Rachel's daughter, Fannie, and Knight's daughter, Molly, married Rachel's son, Jeff. Newton and Rachel Knight had several children before her death in 1889. Newton Knight died on February 16, 1922 at the age of 84. In spite of a Mississippi law that barred the interment of whites and blacks in the same cemetery, he was buried next to Rachel on a hill overlooking their farm. Newton's engraved epitaph stated "He lived for others."

Newton and his grandson abt. 1910's

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Knight

15 Badass Historical Women To Name Your Daughters After

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:01:00 +0000

1. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

en.wikipedia.org

Listen carefully to your pregnant belly: Can you hear the romantic sighs of a celebrated poet? Then name your daughter Juana or Inés for the 17th-century poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who lived in Mexico City and wrote many kinds of poetry, including somewhat raunchy love poems.

As a child, Juana taught herself a wide range of subjects using her grandfather’s library, and continued her rigorous programme of self-education into adulthood. She eventually joined a convent in order to be left alone with her studies and her ~scandalous~ poetry. She came to be “one of the world’s most daring erotic writers” of her time and ruffled a few feathers in the Catholic church for that reason.

Just think of the feathers your baby Juana Inés will ruffle.

2. The Mirabal sisters

tumblr.com

Does your baby possess uncommon courage? Does your baby fill your uterus with equal parts bravery and righteousness? Then name your daughter for Patria,Minerva, or María Teresa Mirabal – Dominican sisters who boldly opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the 1950s.

The three sisters, along with their husbands, participated in constant underground political actions against Trujillo’s regime, and came to be regarded as symbols of resistance and feminist icons known as the “Butterflies”. Even multiple stints in prison weren’t enough to stop their activism. When Trujillo’s government assassinated the sisters in 1960, it sparked a massive public outrage, which was among the catalysts leading to Trujillo’s own assassination just six months later.

Nowadays the Mirabal sisters are commemorated every 25 November by the United Nations, which declared an International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in their honour.

3. Raden Ajeng Kartini

en.wikipedia.org

Do you suspect your future daughter to be a famous writer and activist? Of course you do. So name her Raden or Kartini for Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879-1904), who advocated for women’s emancipation and education, and wrote about the need for the improvement of public health and the protection of traditional arts on the island of Java. She also wrote passionately against Dutch colonial rule of Indonesia.

Today she is known in Indonesia as the country’s “first feminist”, and 21 April is celebrated as Kartini Day. So, try to give birth to your baby on 21 April.

(An update from our Indonesian readers: “Raden” is actually an honourific title like “Duchess” or “Sir”. Her given name was “Kartini” – the “Raden” just means she’s ~fancy~.)

4. Hildegard von Bingen

commons.wikimedia.org

Name your daughter Hildegard for Hildegard von Bingen. (Or Hilda, if you must. Or even Sybil, as she was also known as “Sybil of the Rhine”.) Old Hildy, you see, was an adviser to kings and popes and more. She was a composer and a writer and a mystic and a poet and about 100 other things. She also wrote important scientific and medical treatises because why the fuck not?

Is your future daughter a mystic and a polymath? Then let’s hear it for Baby Hilds.

5. Ida B. Wells-Barnett

R. Gates/Hulton Archive / Getty Images

You couldn’t pick a better name for a baby girl than Ida, if your baby girl is the kind of baby girl who fights tirelessly for justice, i.e. an absolute baby badass.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a brilliant American journalist, suffragist, and anti-lynching campaigner who lived from 1862-1931. When three of her friends were lynched in 1892, she investigated the murders in her newspaper, The Free Speech. In response to her work, the newspaper offices were destroyed by a mob. She moved to Chicago where she continued to write on the law and history of lynching, worked with multiple organisations for the advancement of African-American women, and marched in Washington, DC, in 1913 for universal suffrage.

Along with fellow suffragist Jane Addams, she “successfully blocked the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago”. Later, she was a co-founder of the NAACP, and in 1930, she ran for a position on the Illinois State Legislature. Just think what YOUR Ida will do.

6. Artemisia Gentileschi

commons.wikimedia.org / Creative Commons

artic.edu

Look closely at your ultrasound: Is your baby in possession of a fine artistic mind? Then name her Artemisia.

Artemisia Gentileschi was “one of the most famous and skilled painters of the Baroque era” who achieved great artistic acclaim at a time when women were not allowed to attend the artistic academies. Her father, also an artist, had encouraged her artistic training as a child. At age 18, Artemisia was raped by a colleague of her father’s, and went through a brutal trial in which she was tortured to “confirm” her story. Her rapist was convicted, but never served out his sentence.

After the trial, Artemisia painted one of her most famous works, Judith Slaying Holofernes, pictured above on the right, which some see as a “revenge” for her trial. So, name your daughter for this ridiculously gifted master of painting who achieved great renown against all odds. And anyway, Artemisia is a ridiculously beautiful name.

7. Nancy Wake

Keystone / Getty Images

commons.wikimedia.org(1945).jpg / Creative Commons

Nancy Wake was a spy, a journalist, and a hero of the French Resistance during World War II. Would you like your baby to be exceedingly glamorous? Then name herNancy.

Born in New Zealand, Nancy ended up settling in Paris, where she worked as a journalist and passed her time in the enjoyment of “a good drink” and handsome French men. When war broke out, she joined the Resistance and saved the lives of “hundreds of Allied soldiers and downed airmen between 1940 and 1943 by escorting them through occupied France to safety in Spain”, and later joined the British Special Operations Executive as a spy.

One time, Nancy got her parachute stuck in a tree. A nearby Frenchman said he wished all trees could bear such “beautiful fruit”, to which Nancy responded, “Don’t give me that French shit.”

Just think, these could be your baby girl’s first words.

8. Tomoe Gozen

commons.wikimedia.org

Tomoe Gozen, seen here destroying an oafish, unworthy enemy, was a legendary samurai warrior in 12th-century Japan. She’s described in The Tale of the Heiki like this:

“She was…a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents….She performed more deeds of valor than any of [her commander’s] other warriors.”

What more could you want for your baby than to achieve such mythical heights of badassery? Name her Tomoe.

9. Yaa Asantewaa

familypedia.wikia.com

youtube.com

Is your daughter liable to be a brave and tireless leader? Yes? Then name her for Yaa after Yaa Asantewaa, who was a leading figure in a war against British colonialists from 1900-1901 in what is today Ghana. The war had broken out when a colonial governor demanded he be given the Golden Stool, a sacred symbol to the Asante, apparently because he was a whiny asshole. Unfortunately for the governor, there was a certain Warrior Queen (who also happened to be a 60-year-old grandmother) who was not having it.

Nowadays Yaa Asantewaa is celebrated in Ghana and elsewhere as “an epitome of African womanhood and resistance to European colonialism”. A great name for a powerful baby, no?

10. Madam CJ Walker

en.wikipedia.org

commons.wikimedia.org

Do you want your baby girl to grow up to be fabulously wealthy? And also a trailblazing businesswoman and a great philanthropist? But, like, a fabulously wealthybusinesswoman and philanthropist? Then name her after Madam CJ Walker, born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 – America’s first self-made female millionaire, who made her fortune creating a line of haircare products for African-American women.

Yes, money can’t buy everything – but it can buy you a convertible like the one above. Just look at her driving her friends around town. Look at their fabulous hats.That could be your daughter – little baby Maddy, perhaps.

11. Rosa Luxemburg

en.wikipedia.org

Place a hand upon your pregnant belly, and feel for kicking. Are those the kicks of a future leftist revolutionary? Of a little girl who longs for the overthrow of capitalism? Whose dearest wish is a socialism that upholds its democratic ideals?

If yes, then name your daughter Rosa, for Rosa Luxemburg. She was a brilliant Polish-German Jewish revolutionary and political theorist who developed and advocated for “a humanitarian theory of Marxism, stressing democracy and revolutionary mass action to achieve international socialism”. Even when imprisoned, she managed to smuggle out her articles and pamphlets. She also worked “to persuade her women friends to take an independent role in politics, and to free themselves from the domination of their husbands”.

Name your baby Rosa, and watch her grow to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

12. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians

en.wikipedia.org

There are many good reasons to name your daughter for the Anglo-Saxon Warrior Queen Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, daughter of Alfred the Great – but here are the two most important reasons:

1. Your daughter will be named for a warrior queen who, after her husband died, took over to rule from 911 to 918 AD, during which time she fended off Vikings and proved herself a talented ruler respected throughout the land.

2. Your daughter will walk through life with the satisfaction of having not one, but twoof those fun little a and e combination letters in her name.

Name your daughter Æthelflæd (or maybe just…Ethel) and she will never surrender to any man – especially not a Viking.

13. Qutulun

en.wikipedia.org

OK guys, we need to talk about Qutulun.

Qutulun was a 13th-14th-century Mongol princess who “swore that she would only marry a man who could best her in a wrestling match” and “demanded a hundred horses from any contestant who failed”. Needless to say, she amassed a lot of horses in her lifetime. The painting above shows her with her skirts hitched up, wrestling a gentleman caller, horses watching their future owner kick some suitor ass.

Is your daughter a wrestler princess? Yes, of course she is. Name her Qutulun.

14. Nzinga Mbandi

Via mw.pro.br

Nzinga Mbandi, the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (modern day Angola), was a straight-up boss bitch. She took power when her brother Ngola Mbandi died in 1624, and gained international acclaim for her brilliance in diplomacy, military tactics, and giving zero fucks. Her skill in warfare, espionage, trade, alliance-building, and religious matters helped her hold off Portuguese colonialism for the duration of her life.

Nzinga, you literal queen.

15. Murasaki Shikibu

s1243.photobucket.com

Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting in Japan’s imperial court during the Heian period, and wrote what is believed to be the first novel in human history: The Tale of Genji.

Her father apparently praised her intelligence, but lamented that she was “born a woman”. In her diary, she records that she learned Chinese by listening through the door to the lessons her father gave her brother, because women were not meant to learn Chinese.

Resource: https://www.buzzfeed.com

Tōyō Miyatake

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 16:01:00 +0000

Tōyō Miyatake (宮武東洋, Miyatake Tōyō; 1895–1979) was a Japanese American photographer, best known for his photographs documenting the Japanese American people and the Japanese American internment at Manzanar during World War II. He was born in Kagawa, Shikoku in Japan in 1895. In 1909 he migrated to the United States to join his father. He settled in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, California.

With an interest in arts — most notably photography, which he studied under Harry K. Shigeta— Miyatake began associating with the local arts community. In 1923 he bought his photo studio. Miyatake encouraged fellow photographer Edward Weston to exhibit his work and Miyatake is credited as giving Weston his first gallery showing. At the time Miyatake met his future wife, his brother was courting her. He began spending time with Hiro under the guise that he was using her as a model. His brother was crushed; it is said that he "died of a broken heart" at an early age.

Before World War II, Miyatake's photography won awards as he photographed various personalities. During World War II Miyatake was interned at Manzanar relocation camp in the Owens Valley. He smuggled a camera lens into the camp and constructed a camera body from wood. The pictures he secretly took at the camp are among the relatively few that show the plight of the U.S. citizen inmates.

After the war, the family returned to Los Angeles, where their home had been entrusted to some of their white friends during the internment. Unlike many families who lost their homes, the Miyatakes were able to resume their life and provide shelter to a few less fortunate internees and their families. In post-war Little Tokyo, many residents were unable to afford Miyatake's services and some opted instead to barter goods to have him photograph weddings and portraits. With his wife Hiro running the front office, she once negotiated his services for a Steinway piano and another time, she negotiated for a litter of poodles.

He remained active in the studio throughout this period. In the early morning, Miyatake could be seen walking around Monterey Highlands Elementary School for exercise. The last image he captured on film was taken at this park. The film was discovered and processed after his death. Before his death in 1979, Miyatake and Ansel Adams produced a book, Two Views of Manzanar, a compilation of their photographs during the internment.

Miyatake's cremated remains are buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights; a portion of his remains are stored in the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo.

Resouce: https://en.wikipedia.org/

Photos by Miyatake:

Leap Year: A chance for women to pop the question?

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 01:30:00 +0000

Resource: IrishCentral

Ireland's folklore is full of wonderful, funny, strange, but sometimes out-dated traditions and in this year of 366 days, we are greeted with one of the most well-known. Yes, it is a leap year, and although you may have thought it was a myth, according to the old Irish tradition, this is the perfect chance for a woman to take matters into her own hands and get down on one knee on February 29. Looking back through ancient Irish history, it is said that the tradition began in 5th century Ireland when St. Brigid of Kildare bitterly complained to St. Patrick that women had to wait far too long for men to propose. The legend says that St. Patrick decreed the women could propose on this one day in February during the leap year. I'm sure the women were thrilled.

The tradition was then taken to Scotland by Irish monks. Back in 1288, the Scots passed a law that allowed a woman to propose marriage to the man of their dreams in a Leap Year with the law also stating that any man who declined the proposal on this day would have to pay a fine. The law was allegedly passed by an unmarried Queen Margaret (although records show she may only have been five years old at the time) and she put in place a rule that all those women proposing must wear a red petticoat while doing so. The fine to be paid if a man declined could range from a kiss to payment for a silk dress or a pair of gloves.

This tradition comes from another tale about St. Patrick and St. Brigid in which she drops straight to her knee at Patrick's decree, instantly proposing to him. Patrick declined her offer – he was probably too busy saving Ireland from snakes – but he gave her a kiss on the cheek and a silk gown to soften the blow. This, too, is dubious. Although many people believe that St. Patrick and St. Brigid met, and that she offered her vows to him, Brigid would historically have been only nine or ten years old when Patrick died in 461 AD. If you believe he died later, however, in 493 AD, it may have been possible, although it's still not altogether likely.

In some upper-class European societies, the custom of denial involved buying 12 pairs of gloves for the woman you were rejecting. To hide her shame at not having a ring to wear, of course! In some places, February 29 has been renamed Bachelors' Day because of the tradition. There is also precedent for the tradition in English law. February 29 was ignored and had no legal status. People believed that traditions would also have no status on that day as it was not a legal day and so it was possible to have women propose, altering an unfair custom that allowed only men to propose marriage.

Here in the United States, the tradition was also celebrated with some people referring to February 29 as Sadie Hawkins' Day. On this allotted day of the four-year cycle, women, allegedly, have the right the right to run after unmarried men to propose. Sadie Hawkins was a female character in the Al Capp comic strip "Li'l Abner" who inspired Sadie Hawkins Dances where girls would ask boys to attend. Poor St Oswald was also cast with the women as his feast day was placed on February 29. Celebrating it on the proper day when possible, his feast day is more commonly remembered on February 28.

The Dark Origins of 11 Classic Nursery Rhymes

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 02:45:00 +0000

By Jennifer M Wood

IMAGE CREDIT:

WIKIMEDIA COMMON

In the canon of great horror writing, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley tend to dominate the craft. But Mother Goose isn’t too far behind. Yes, that fictional grande dame of kiddie poems has got a bit of a dark streak, as evidenced by the unexpectedly sinister theories surrounding the origins of these 11 well-known nursery rhymes.

1. BAA, BAA, BLACK SHEEP (1731)

Though most scholars agree that “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” is about the Great Custom, a tax on wool that was introduced in 1275, its use of the color black and the word “master” led some to wonder whether there was a racial message at its center. Its political correctness was called into question yet again in the latter part of the 20th century, with some schools banning it from being repeated in classrooms, and others simply switching out the word “black” for something deemed less offensive. In 2011, news.com.au reported on the proliferation of “Baa, Baa Rainbow Sheep” as an alternative.

2. GOOSEY GOOSEY GANDER (1784)

It’s hard to imagine that any rhyme with the phrase “goosey goosey” in its title could be described as anything but feelgood. But it’s actually a tale of religious persecution, during the days when Catholic priests would hide themselves in order to say their Latin-based prayers, a major no-no at the time—not even in the privacy of one’s own home. In the original version, the narrator comes upon an old man “who wouldn’t say his prayers. So I took him by his left leg. And threw him down the stairs.” Ouch!

3. JACK AND JILL (1765)

Wikimedia Commons

Admit it, you fooled around with the lyrics to “Jack and Jill” a bit yourself when you were younger, turning what you thought was an innocent poem into something a little bit naughty. But its origins aren’t as clean-cut as you probably imagined. One of the most common theories surrounding the story’s origin is that it’s about France’s Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who were both found guilty of treason and subsequently beheaded. The only problem is that those events occurred nearly 30 years after “Jack and Jill” was first written. The more likely possibility is that it’s an account of King Charles I’s attempt to reform the tax on liquid measures. When Parliament rejected his suggestion, he instead made sure that the volume was reduced on half- and quarter-pints, known as jacks and gills, respectively.

4. LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN (1744)

Wikimedia Commons

In 2006, Fergie got saucy with some of this classic kid tune’s lyrics. But the original song wasn’t much better. Depending on whom you ask, “London Bridge is Falling Down” could be about a 1014 Viking attack, child sacrifice, or the normal deterioration of an old bridge. But the most popular theory seems to be that first one. More specifically: the alleged destruction of London Bridge at the hands of Olaf II of Norway some time in the early 1000s. (“Alleged” because some historians don’t believe that attack ever took place.) The song’s popularity around the world is often cited as further proof that it was the Vikings who created it, believing that they brought the tune to the many places they traveled. Oh, and that whole child sacrifice thing? That’s an idea that is also often debated (there’s no archaeological evidence to support it), but the theory goes that in order to keep London Bridge upright, its builders believed that it must be built on a foundation of human sacrifice, and that those same humans—mostly children—would help to watch over the bridge and maintain its sturdiness. Which we’re pretty sure isn’t a practice they teach you in architecture school.

5. MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY (1744)

Wikimedia Commons

“Contrary” is one way to describe a murderous psychopath. This popular English nursery rhyme, which reads like a solicitation for gardening advice, is actually a recounting of the homicidal nature of Queen Mary I of England, a.k.a. Bloody Mary. A fierce believer in Catholicism, her reign as queen—from 1553 to 1558—was marked by the execution of hundreds of Protestants. (Silver bells and cockle shells are torture devices, not garden accouterments.)

6. THREE BLIND MICE (1805)

“Three Blind Mice” is supposedly yet another ode to Bloody Mary’s reign, with the trio in question believed to be a group of Protestant bishops—Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer—who (unsuccessfully) conspired to overthrow the queen and were burned at the stake for their heresy. Critics suggest that the blindness in the title refers to their religious beliefs.

7. EENY, MEENY, MINY, MO

No, there’s nothing particularly inflammatory about the lines “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, Catch a tiger by his toe.” But there is when you consider that the word “tiger” is a relatively new development in this counting rhyme, as a replacement for the n-word. Even with the lyrical switch-out, any reference to the poem still has the ability to offend. In 2004, two passengers sued Southwest Airlines was for intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress, following an incident where a flight attendant used the rhyme in a humorous fashion during takeoff when she told passengers: "Eeny meeny miny mo, Please sit down it's time to go.” (The court sided with the airline.)

8. HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH (1840)

“Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” is often sung as part of a children’s game. According to historian R. S. Duncan, a former governor of England’s Wakefield Prison, the song originated with that 420-year-old institution’s female prisoners, who were exercised around a mulberry tree. Which is probably not the connotation your six-year-old self had in mind.

9. ROCK-A-BYE BABY (1765)

One interpretation of this famous lullaby is that it is about the son of King James II of England and Mary of Modena. It is widely believed that the boy was not their son at all, but a child who was brought into the birthing room and passed off as their own in order to ensure a Roman Catholic heir to the throne.

10. RING AROUND THE ROSIE (1881)

Considering that some of today’s classic nursery rhymes are more than two centuries old, there are often several theories surrounding their origins—and not a lot of sound proof about which argument is correct. But of all the alleged nursery rhyme backstories, “Ring Around the Rosie” is probably the most infamous. Though its lyrics and even its title have gone through some changes over the years, the most popular contention is that the sing-songy verse refers to the 1665 Great Plague of London.“The rosie” is the rash that covered the afflicted, the smell from which they attempted to cover up with “a pocket full of posies.” The plague killed nearly 15 percent of the country’s population, which makes the final verse—“Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down”—rather self-explanatory.

But Snopes labels this reading false, and quotes folklorist Philip Hiscock with a more likely suggestion: That the nursery rhyme probably has its origins "in the religious ban on dancing among many Protestants in the nineteenth century, in Britain as well as here in North America. Adolescents found a way around the dancing ban with what was called in the United States the 'play-party.' Play-parties consisted of ring games which differed from square dances only in their name and their lack of musical accompaniment. They were hugely popular, and younger children got into the act, too."

11. OLD MOTHER HUBBARD (1805)

Wikimedia Commons

To many, “Old Mother Hubbard” is not a mother at all—nor a woman. The poem is speculated to have been written as a mockery of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, whose refusal to grant an annulment to King Henry VIII, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, led to his political downfall.

10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Labor Day

noreply@blogger.com (KP Kollenborn) — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 17:15:00 +0000

No One Really Knows Who Invented It

As the legend goes, young carpenter Peter McGuire stood before the New York Central Labor Union in May 1882 proclaiming his plan to honor all workers with a parade through the city. But another union worker, the similarly named machinist Matthew Maguire, is also credited with proposing a day off for laborers. A New Jersey newspaper published an opinion article touting Maguire as the Father of Labor Day, but only after the day became a national holiday in 1894.

The Holiday Marks the End of Hot-Dog Season

According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, during "hot dog season," which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Americans consume roughly 7 billion hot dogs, or about 818 hot dogs every second. That total is thanks in large part to another holiday, Independence Day.

Union Membership Is at a 60-Year Low

Labor unions aren't what they used to be. In the 1950s, at the height of union participation in the U.S., more than a third of all American workers belonged to unions. Participation has waned for decades, which has weakened many unions across the country. Remember the Wisconsin public employees who fought Republican Governor Scott Walker earlier this year over collective-bargaining rights? Well, they lost most of those rights.

A Fire Ignited the Labor Movement

The infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 took the lives of 136 people in just 18 minutes. Though the factory owners were indicted on charges of manslaughter, they were later acquitted and actually profited from insurance claims. The tragic blaze — likely caused by a cigarette — did, however, raise awareness of poor working conditions at the factory and other warehouses like it, prompting the start of the labor movement and a call for safer work environments.

President Cleveland Didn't Like Unions

Although President Grover Cleveland signed the 1894 law that made Labor Day a federal holiday, he did so with political motives in mind. The President was concerned only with the fact that the strike had spread to other states, disrupting mail service and interstate commerce. Mindful of his future re-election campaign, made appeasement a top priority, so labor legislation was rushed through Congress and the bill passed just six days after the strike's end.

Oregon Was the First State to Declare Labor Day a Holiday

Oregon was the first state to pass a law declaring Labor Day a state holiday on Feb. 21, 1887, giving the state's workers a free pass to not come in that day. However, the Beaver State inexplicably placed the holiday on the first Saturday in June. Thankfully, when Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York each made Labor Day an official holiday in 1887, they chose to observe it on a weekday, giving workers the extra-long weekend we still enjoy to this day.

Labor Day's Origins Are Canadian

Following labor disputes in Toronto, the first worker parades occurred in 1872. Soon after, anti–labor union laws were repealed. A decade later, union activist Peter McGuire, whom some call the founder of our American Labor Day, spoke at a Canadian labor festival in 1882 and was so impressed that he proposed the idea of a workers' national holiday to a New York labor union later that same year.

Labor Day Was Almost May 1

In 1884, the American Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that by May 1, 1886, all employers institute an eight-hour workday. When that proclamation failed to come to fruition, workers moved to strike, sparking the brutal Haymarket Riot in Chicago. Years later in 1894, fearing the tainted history of that date would continually lead to radical movements commemorating the riots, President Grover Cleveland decided to follow the lead of several states and make the first Monday in September the official holiday for laborers.

The Rule 'No White After Labor Day' Has Historical Roots

Historians think this maxim stems from class divisions at the turn of the century when lightweight clothes were a symbol of the leisure classes. While there's a practical reason for the rule — white clothes dirty easily thus making them ill-suited for heavy autumn rains and winter slush — those who carried the rule through the decades had a less than practical reason for doing so. Indeed, as the years went by, traditionalists and nouveau riche alike continued to eschew winter whites throughout the 20th century in order to remain acceptable in high society.

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