You can read more about Bridget, the goddess and the saint, in Don’t Know Much About Mythology.

In a previous post I wrote about Coxey’s Army, an 1894 protest march, and its connection to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement. That got me to thinking about where Occupy Wall Street would fit into Dr. King’s worldview. One of the last sermons he delivered offers more than a clue.

On March  31, 1968, a few days before his death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington about the plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, an ambitious program to end poverty with jobs, improve housing and raise incomes for poor Americans of all races. Another march on Washington was  scheduled to begin in May 1968.

In this speech, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” King addressed the two evils he was working to overcome besides racial injustice: poverty, which knows no color in America, and war, then specifically the war in Vietnam. The text of the entire speech can be found online at Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.

Most people associate Dr. King exclusively with the civil rights struggle. But he understood that social justice could not happen without economic justice. And that war was not the answer.

Would Dr. King be on the streets with OWS?  I’ll leave that to others to say for certain. But on Monday, read one of his last sermons and you may get the answer.

You probably remember him for his tales of dogs in the Alaskan wilderness, including The Call of the Wild and White Fang. He wrote his most famous works after spending time in Alaska during the Gold Rush.

But London was much more than a writer of wilderness adventures. As a young man, he was briefly caught up in Kelly’s Army, part of a larger protest movement called “Coxey’s Army.” It was the “Occupy Wall Street” of the 1890s.

Following an economic depression in 1893 –the largest economic downturn in American history to that time– a group of unemployed Americans began a march on Washington. They were led by Jacob Coxey and were eventually called “Coxey’s Army.” In 1894, they began a protest march, hoping to force the federal government to do more to help out-of-work Americans with road building and other public works projects. It was one part of the growing populist and labor movements of the day and was met with predictable disdain by politicians. This is a report from the New York Times from March 1894.

Out West, the movement spawned “Kelly’s Army” and a young Jack London joined up. He later wrote about the experience in a piece called “Two Thousand Stiffs” published in his book The Road  (1907).

In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every company had its campfire, and around each fire something was doing. The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the encampment the glee club would be singing  . . . All these things ran neck and neck; it was a full-blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine, and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays. (Source: The Jack London Online Collection, Sonoma State University)

London later became a Socialist and was a passionate unionist and advocate of workers’ rights. They probably didn’t tell you that part when they assigned White Fang in junior high.

There is a great collection of London material, including writings, biographical essays, photographs and critical material at Sonoma State University’s Jean and Charles Schultz Information Center-Jack London Online Collection.

London died on November 22, 1916. This is his New York Times obituary. His home is now a California State Park.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

–Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776

You know that saying about the pen being mightier than the sword? As the American Revolution haltingly began, an anonymous writer helped prove it true.

The battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the easy victory at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, and the devastating casualties inflicted on the British army by the rebels at Bunker (Breed’s) Hill in June 1775 had all given hope to the patriot cause a full year before independence was declared.

But the final break—Independence—still seemed too extreme to some. It’s important to remember that the vast majority of Americans at the time were first and second generation. Their family ties and their sense of culture and national identity were essentially English. Many Americans had friends and family in England. And the commercial ties between the two were obviously also powerful.

The forces pushing toward independence needed momentum, and they got it in several ways. The first factor was another round of heavy-handed British miscalculations. First the king issued a proclamation cutting off the colonies from trade. Then, unable to conscript sufficient troops, the British command decided to supplement its regulars with mercenaries, soldiers from the German principalities sold into King George’s service by their princes. Most came from Hesse-Cassel, so the name Hessian became generic for all of these hired soldiers.

The Hessians accounted for as much as a third of the English forces fighting in the colonies. Their reputation as fierce fighters was linked to a frightening image—reinforced, no doubt, by the British command—as plundering rapists. (Ironically, many of them stayed on in America. Benjamin Franklin gave George Washington printed promises of free land to lure mercenaries away from English ranks.) When word of the coming of 12,000 Hessian troops reached America, it was a shock, and further narrowed chances for reconciliation. In response, a convention in Virginia instructed its delegates to Congress to declare the United Colonies free and independent.

The second factor was a literary one. On January 10, 1776, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Common Sense came off the presses of a patriot printer. Its author, Thomas Paine, had simply, eloquently, and admittedly with some melodramatic prose, stated the reasons for independence. He reduced the hereditary succession of kings to an absurdity, slashed down all arguments for reconciliation with England, argued the economic benefits of independence, and even presented a cost analysis for creating an American navy.

With the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine had  come to America from London and found work with a Philadelphia bookseller. In the colonies for only a few months, Paine wrote, at Franklin’s suggestion, a brief history of the upheaval against England.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the impact and importance of Common Sense. Paine’s polemic was read by everyone in Congress, including General Washington, who commented on its effects on his men. Equally important, it was read by people everywhere. The pamphlet quickly sold 150,000 copies, going through numerous printings until it had reached half a million. (Approximating the American population at the time, including slaves, at 3 million, a current equivalent pamphlet would have to sell more than 35 million copies!) Paine donated the proceeds to Washington’s army.

For the first time, mass public opinion had swung toward the cause of independence.

The Library of Congress offers these pages on Common Sense.

This post is adapted from Don’t Know Much About History which discusses the Revolution and Thomas Paine’s unhappy fate. In Paris during the French Revolution, Paine was imprisoned by revolutionary authorities. Upon his eventual release, he wrote an angry open letter to his old comrade George Washington, in which he skewered Washington for not having done enough to secure his release from the French prison. Paine later returned to America but when he died in 1809, no church in American would accept his body for burial as he was an atheist. The man who influenced history Paine was buried wit a handful of people in attendance at his farm in New Rochelle, New York. His remains were later removed to his native England for reburial but were later lost.

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

So why Twelve days? Just a lucky accident of the calendar?

Of course, twelve is a significant number, in biblical terms. Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve disciples. There are lots of other important twelves.

It all goes back to the solstice , which occurred on December 22 in 2011. On the “shortest day,” the Sun “stands still” (the literal meaning of “solstice”) at its lowest point in the northern sky and then begin its trek back towards the Northern world, bringing light and life with it as the days lengthen.

So while many of us call it the First Day of Winter, it is really the beginning of a “new year” and that’s how the ancients saw it. As I’ve discussed in other posts on Christmas myths, the Solstice was crucial in many cultures and is the source of a great many holiday traditions celebrating light, hope, renewal — and the reason for the season’s general merriment.

Again we have ancient pagan ritual to thank for this Christmas tradition. The Romans, who knew how to celebrate, eventually extended their weeklong solstice party –Saturnalia– into the new year, creating a 12-day period of merrymaking. The early Christians, being in Rome, did as the Romans did. In northern traditions, the Norse also celebrated their solstice festival, known as Yule, for twelve days.

One of the specific ways that Solstice celebrations from ancient times are still remembered is by the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Largely misunderstood, the Twelve Days of Christmas traditionally begin with Christmas Day and lead up to the Epiphany –January 6– which is also celebrated as “Three Kings Day.” It is believed to be the day on which the Magi visited the Christ Child, or the day of Jesus’s baptism in other traditions. To many Christians, Epiphany (some also call it “Little Christmas”) is the more important and the appropriate date on which to exchange gifts –as the Magi did.

The ancient idea that the world was “turned upside down” until around the Solstice was the source of a Roman tradition of masters and slaves trading places. There was also a Celtic tradition of a period of chaos until the Solstice. This led to the Christian-era “Feast of Fools” presided over by the Lord of Misrule. This idea is immortalized in literature by Mr. Bill Shakespeare, who wrote a play called Twelfth Night. Set on “twelfth night,” or January 5 (the night before Epiphany), it is filled with role reversals –of both class and gender–and general disorder and merriment led by Sir Toby Belch, one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic characters.

The other cultural vestige of the twelve days is the Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas.
I have always found it a tedious carol. But a fairly modern “urban legend” making the Internet rounds is that the song was devised to teach a series of Catholic virtues and ideas –the catechism– to children, during England’s long wars between Protestants and Catholics. Each of the days, this theory holds, represents a fundamental Church idea: the partridge in a pear tree is Jesus; “four colly birds” (not “calling birds”) are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; the five golden rings are the first five books of the Bible, or Torah, and so on. This notion is widely disputed by scholars and an in-depth dismissal can be found here:
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/music/12days.asp

And the final part of this tradition says leave the decorations up until Twelfth Night.

And as always,  this enormous and dazzling display of lights makes me pose an old question: There weren’t any evergreen trees in Bethlehem. Why do people decorate Christmas trees in honor of the birth of Jesus?

Once again, we have the pagans to thank, as I’ve been describing in this series about Christmas and its mythic roots. In writing about the Roman Saturnalia in my post about December 25th, I mentioned Attis, an agricultural god worshiped in Rome, whose celebration date was December 25th and his symbol — a pine tree.

From pre-Christian times, evergreen boughs and other evergreen vegetation represented life in the midst of the dead of winter. While it was true in both ancient Greece and Rome where houses were decorated with evergreens as symbols of life, it was especially true in the Nordic and Germanic countries. The evergreen or fir tree was significant to the Norse, who burned a Yule log, and celebrated trees as sacred.

In medieval times, after Christianity arrived in the Norse and German world, that idea took hold in a German tradition called the miracle or Paradise Play, in which an evergreen was brought inside and represented the tree in the Garden of Eden and was decorated with apples— eventually hanging shiny red balls on the tree went together. The German Tannenbaum is really the source of the familiar Christmas tree. By the way “Tannenbaum” is translated as “Christmas tree” but its literal meaning is “fir tree.”

As for the lights, legend has it that Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was in the woods on a winter evening and looked up to see the stars shining through the trees and was inspired to put lights in the Christmas tree. Of course, he used candles which is not a good idea.

So who brought the Christmas tree to America?
The first Christmas trees in America were used in the early 1800’s by German settlers in Pennsylvania. Although the German soldiers, or Hessians, who were in Trenton, New Jersey back during the Revolution may have been sleeping around their Tannenbaum when George Washington crossed the Delaware to attack them on Christmas morning. King George III of England was German and had Christmas trees in England but it was not a widely popular Christmas tradition in America until the mid-19th century, as the great influx of immigrants to America began to bring the many Christmas traditions that had been suppressed by the Puritans of Massachusetts.

So whether you call it a Christmas tree or a “holiday tree,” when you admire that great big evergreen, it’s just one more way we all bring out our inner Viking!

And about that Rockefeller Center tree– The first of these now iconic trees was set up by construction workers who were building Rockefeller Center during the Great Depression. Then, as now and as it was for the Norse, it was a symbol of hope!

Don't Know Much About the Bible

Don’t Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

And here’s the real first Christmas question: Why all the fuss over December 25?

For starters, the Gospels never mention a precise date or even a season for the birth of Jesus. How then did we settle on December 25?
If a bright light just went off in your head, you’re getting warm. It’s all about the Sun.

In ancient times, a popular Roman festival celebrated Saturnalia, a Thanksgiving-like holiday marking the winter solstice and honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Saturnalia began on December 17th and while it only lasted two days at first, it was eventually extended into a weeklong period that lost its agricultural significance and simply became a time of general merriment. Even slaves were given temporary freedom to do as they pleased, while the Romans feasted, visited one another, lit candles and gave gifts. Later it was changed to honor the official Roman Sun god known as Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) and the solstice fell on December 25.

Two other important pagan gods popular in ancient Rome were also celebrated around this date. The Roman were big on adopting the gods of the people they conquered. Mithra, a Persian god of light who was first popular among Roman soldiers, acquired a large cult in ancient Rome. The birth of Attis, another agricultural god from Asia Minor, was also celebrated on December 25. Attis dies but is brought back to life by his lover, a goddess whose temple later became the site of an important basilica honoring the Virgin Mary. By the way, the symbol of Attis was a pine tree.

Candles. Gift giving. Pine trees. Dying gods brought back to life. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

All the similarities between Saturnalia and these other Roman holidays and the celebration of Christmas are no coincidence. In the fourth century, Pope Julius 1 assigned December 25 as the day to celebrate the Mass of Christ’s birth –Christ’s mass. This was a clever marketing ploy that conveniently sidestepped the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday while converting the population. Most of our Christmas traditions reflect the merger of pagan rituals, beliefs, and traditions with Christianity. The early church fathers knew that they couldn’t convert people without allowing them to keep some of their ancient festivals and rituals so they would allow them if they could be connected to Christianity. (Catholic authorities disagree and say that December date was arrived at by adding nine months to March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the day of Jesus’ miraculous conception. But where did that date come from?)

The importance of the winter solstice, then, is crucial to understanding not only the date of Christmas but many of the other “myths” of this season.

While we are talking about dates, the precise year of the birth of Jesus is also a mystery. The dating system we use is based on a system devised by a monk around 1500 years ago and is seriously flawed. The historical King Herod who ordered the massacre of the innocents died in 4 BC (or BCE, Before the Common Era). The “census” ordered by Emperor Augustine is not recorded in Roman history, but a local census did take place in the Roman province of Judea in 6 AD (or CE, the Common Era). Is that all perfectly clear now?

You can read more about the mythic roots of Christmas and the gospel accounts of Jesus in Don’t Know Much About Mythology and Don’t Know Much About the Bible.

1. What does Santa Claus have to do with Saint Nicholas?

December 6 is the feast of Saint Nicholas. It makes a perfect day to consider one of the first of the “myths” of Christmas. Where does Santa Claus comes from? And what does he have to do with a 4th-century Christian miracle worker from Turkey?
In Christian tradition and legend, Saint Nicholas was an early hero of the church, the archbishop of Myra in what is now Turkey. Legend has it that he once threw gold coins through the window of three poor girls so they would have dowries and get married. Without dowries, their father feared that they would be forced into prostitution. This was just one of many legendary acts of charity attributed to Nicholas, which included putting coins in childrens shoes. Since his feast day — the date of his death on the church calendar– falls in early December, his generosity was eventually connected to the Christmas season, Advent and the idea of the “three kings,” or wise men, who brought gifts to the baby Jesus.
So how did this rather thin, ascetic Turkish bishop –the way he is traditionally depicted in sacred art—morph into a large, bearded man with a red suit and a large sled full of toys pulled by eight flying reindeer?
Many of the Santa Claus traditions can be traced back to the Norse god Odin. The Norse celebrated the winter solstice with a long festival. In their legend, Odin brought the sun god back to the world on the solstice. He rode across the night sky on a horse named named Stepnir –an eight-legged horse. Norse children would put out hay and straw for the horse in their shoes. In the Christian era, the legend of Odin became a Father Christmas figure and was merged with the religious legend of Saint Nicholas. The eight-legged horse became eight tiny reindeer.
The Dutch brought Saint Nicholas to America as SinterKlaas and the name was later anglicized as Santa Claus. In Europe, children still put out their shoes on different nights, but here, the tradition was changed to stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Whether he is called Father Christmas, Pere Noel or Saint Nick, or Odin, for that matter, there is something more important to know:
“Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Read the text of newsman Frank P. Church’s letter to a small girl in New York that inspired that famous line here (via the Newseum):
http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

And follow this blog over the next few weeks for more about Christmas past. And you can read more about Christmas and its mythic roots in Don’t Know Much About Mythology

When winter comes to New England, it is easy to bring to mind the name of Robert Frost. There is no more iconic winter New England poem that the one that begins,

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

And one of my favorite spots in Vermont is the Frost gravesite in the cemetery of the First Church in Old Bennington -just down the street from the Bennington Monument.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost’s poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost’s language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors.

But while poems like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death. Robert Frost –New England’s poet of snowy woods, stone wall and apple trees.

I hope this “touch of Frost” will inspire you to read some of his work.

Here’s a link to Robert Frost’s page at Poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

It includes an account of Frost and JFK
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540

The first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inaugural, Frost told the new President:

“Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age. Don’t be afraid of power.”

 

Hear Robert Frost for yourself at Poets Out Loud:
http://robertfrostoutloud.com

This link is to Middlebury College’s online Frost exhibit
http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html

This is the website of Frost House and Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

This material is adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

THIS SERIES OF SKYPE SESSIONS HAS BEEN FULLY BOOKED. PLEASE WATCH FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF FUTURE SKYPE PROGRAMS HERE ON THE WEBSITE, OR YOU CAN FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK. THANKS!

BEAM ME IN TO DISCUSS THE AMERICAN ELECTION PROCESS

The Presidential Campaign of 2012 is underway.  Americans will go to the polls on Tuesday November 6, 2012.

The marathon of caucuses, primaries, conventions and delegate counts will soon begin in earnest and preoccupy the nation for most of the year.

That makes 2012 a good time to get a handle on America’s crazy quilt of election history and rules. Beginning in January 2012, I will visit classrooms via Skype to discuss America’s election history and the 2012 campaign.

In a session lasting approximately 30 minutes, I would like to use Skype to “Beam in” to your classrooms to engage your students on the basics of the Presidency and the American election process.  I will speak briefly, then take questions from students in a wide-ranging conversation about a system that doesn’t always seem to make sense.

Here are some of the topics I have in mind–

-Why a President? When they were inventing the American system of government back in 1787, how did those men decide what the office of the President should be?

-Who elected George Washington and what’s different today?  How has the process of electing the President changed since George Washington won the office first back in 1789?

-Is the Electoral College a Party School? The Constitution doesn’t specifically mention the “Electoral College.” What is it? Do I need good SAT scores to get in? Most important, why do we still have it?

-Do we need a President? Are the problems of the country too big for one Chief Executive to handle? Maybe we should split the job up. Benjamin Franklin thought we should have three men to do the job. Was he right?

If you would like to organize a free Skype session, please go to the website Contact page and send me an email request. Please be sure to include the name and location of your school, how many students are in your class, and the grade level. The schedule and dates of the sessions will be set at a mutually convenient time. (Please note: A limited number of Skype visits will be scheduled based on my availability.)

I would also encourage you to consider turning this into a “FAMILY EVENT” by inviting parents and other family members into the classroom to make this an exciting discussion about the role of voting and citizenship in our democracy.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Very best,

Kenneth C. Davis

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

With Thanksgiving around the corner, cutouts of Pilgrims in black clothes and clunky shoes are sprouting all over the place. You may know that the Pilgrims sailed aboard the Mayflower and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. But did you know their first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three whole days? What else do you know about these early settlers of America? Don’t be a turkey. Try this True-False quiz.

True or False? (Answers below)
1. Pilgrims always wore stiff black clothes and shoes with silver buckles.
2. The Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom.
3. Everyone on the Mayflower was a Pilgrim.
4. The Pilgrims were saved from starvation by a native American friend named Squanto.
5. The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America.

Read more about the Mayflower and its passengers with your children in Don’t Know Much About the Pilgrims.

And read about America’s real “first Pilgrims” in America’s Hidden History

Tthe site of Plimouth Plantation is definitely worth a visit.

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

Answers
1. False. Pilgrims wore blue, green, purple and brownish clothing for everyday. Those who had good black clothes saved them for the Sabbath. No Pilgrims had buckles– artists made that up later!
2. True. The Pilgrims were a group of radical Puritans who had broken away from the Church of England. After 11 years of “exile” in Holland, they decided to come to America.
3. False. Only about half of the 102 people on the Mayflower were what William Bradford later called “Pilgrims.” The others, called “Strangers” just wanted to come to the New World.
4. True. Squanto, or Tisquantum, helped teach the Pilgrims to hunt, farm and fish. He learned English after being taken as a slave aboard an English ship.
5. False. The Indians had been having similar harvest feasts for years. So did the English settlers in Virginia and Spanish settlers in the southwest before the Pilgrims even got to America. And the Mayflower Pilgrims weren’t even America’s “first Pilgrims.” That honor goes to French Huguenots who settled in Florida more than 50 years before the Mayflower sailed.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

That was the moment at which World War I largely came to end in 1918. One of the most tragically senseless and destructive periods in all history came to a close in Western Europe with the Armistice –or end of hostilities between Germany and the Allied nations — that began at that moment. Some 20 million people had died in the fighting that raged for more than four years since August 1914. The complete end of the war came with the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

The date of November 11th became a national holiday of remembrance in many of the victorious allied nations –a day to commemorate the loss of so many lives in the war. And in the United States, President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day on November 11, 1919. A few years later, in 1926, Congress passed a resolution calling on the President to observe each November 11th as a day of remembrance:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Of course, the hopes that “the war to end all wars” would bring peace were short-lived. By 1939, Europe was again at war and what was once called “the Great War” would become World War I.  With the end of World War II, there was a movement in America to rename Armistice Day and create a holiday that recognized the veterans of all of America’s conflicts. President Eisenhower signed that law in 1954. (In 1971, Veterans Day began to be marked as a Monday holiday on the third Monday in November,  but in 1978, the holiday was returned to the traditional November 11th date).

Today, Veterans Day honors the duty, sacrifice and service of America’s nearly 25 million veterans of all wars. We should remember and celebrate those men and women. But lost in that worthy goal is the forgotten meaning of this day in history –the meaning which Congress gave to Armistice Day in 1926:

to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations …

inviting the people of the United States to observe the day … with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

The Veterans Administration website offers more resources on teaching about Veterans Day.

You can read more about World War I history as well as all of America’s conflicts in Don’t Know Much About History

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

When I was a kid in the early 1960s, the autumn social calendar was highlighted by the Halloween party in our church. In these simpler day, the kids all bobbed for apples and paraded through a spooky “haunted house” in homemade costumes –Daniel Boone replete with coonskin caps for the boys; tiaras and fairy princess wands for the girls. It was safe, secure and innocent.
The irony is that our church was a Congregational church — founded by the Puritans of New England. The same people who brought you the Salem Witch Trials.
Here’s a link to a history of those Witch Trials in 1692.

Rooted in pagan traditions more than 2000 years old, Halloween grew out of a Celtic Druid celebration that marked summer’s end. Called Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sow-een), it combined the Celts’ harvest and New Year festivals, held in late October and early November by people in what is now Ireland, Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. This ancient Druid rite was tied to the seasonal cycles of life and death — as the last crops were harvested, the final apples picked and livestock brought in for winter stables or slaughter. Contrary to what some modern critics believe, Samhain was not the name of a malevolent Celtic deity but meant, “end of summer.”

The Celts also saw Samhain as a fearful time, when the barrier between the worlds of living and dead broke, and spirits walked the earth, causing mischief. Going door to door, children collected wood for a sacred bonfire that provided light against the growing darkness, and villagers gathered to burn crops in honor of their agricultural gods. During this fiery festival, the Celts wore masks, often made of animal heads and skins, hoping to frighten off wandering spirits. As the celebration ended, families carried home embers from the communal fire to re-light their hearth fires.

Getting the picture? Costumes, “trick or treat” and Jack-o-lanterns all got started more than two thousand years ago at an Irish bonfire.
Christianity took a dim view of these “heathen” rites. Attempting to replace the Druid festival of the dead with a church-approved holiday, the seventh-century Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saints’ Day to honor saints and martyrs. Then in 1000 AD, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to remember the departed and pray for their souls. Together, the three celebrations –All Saints’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls Day– were called Hallowmas, and the night before came to be called All-hallows Evening, eventually shortened to “Halloween.”
And when millions of Irish and other Europeans emigrated to America, they carried along their traditions. The age-old practice of carrying home embers in a hollowed-out turnip still burns strong. In an Irish folk tale, a man named Stingy Jack once escaped the devil with one of these turnip lanterns. When the Irish came to America, Jack’s turnip was exchanged for the more easily carved pumpkin and Stingy Jack’s name lives on in “Jack-o-lantern.”

Halloween, in other words, is deeply rooted in myths –ancient stories that explain the seasons and the mysteries of life and death.

You can read more about ancient myths in the modern world in Don’t Know Much About Mythology

“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two/Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
We all remember that. But after that basic date, things get a little fuzzy. Here’s what they didn’t tell you–
Most educated people knew that the world was not flat.
Columbus never set foot in what would become America.
Christopher Columbus made four voyages to the so-called New World. And his discoveries opened an astonishing era of exploration and exploitation. His arrival marked the beginning of the end for tens of millions of Native Americans spread across two continents.
Once a hero. Now a villain.
You can read more about Christopher Columbus, his voyages and their impact on American history in Don’t Know Much About History and Don’t Know Much About Geography.

The story of “Isabella’s Pigs,” and the role of Queen Isabella in the making of the New World, is depicted in America’s Hidden History

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

The Top Ten list for 2010 is out. And there are some familiar names on it-  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Nickel and Dimed  by Barbara Ehrenreich. But these aren’t a critics Top Ten Recommendations. They are among the list of books most challenged by people who object to the presence of these books in school and public libraries.

Yes, it is time to think about the “Book Wars” again.

Each year, the American Library Association and other groups mark Banned Books Week during the last week in September. In 2011,  it begins today, September 24, and continues through October 1. (This video was made two years ago, but the issues remain the same.)

In a time when some American parents don’t want their children to hear the President of the United States give a speech on education values, or a planned Koran-burning wins with wide popular approval, the importance of this reminder of the right to free expression and the value of THINKING is more urgent than ever.

Where are they pulling books out of libraries? See a map of local “challenges” to books from 2007-2009.

Here are some important links to three groups involved in combating censorship: the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Teaching Tolerance:

American Library Association Banned Books Week site

The National Coalition Against Censorship

Teaching Tolerance (A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center)

To recap these events:

Working from May 25, when a quorum was established, until September 17, 1787, when the convention voted to endorse the final form of the Constitution, the delegates gathered in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House were actually obligated only to revise or amend the Articles of Confederation. Under those Articles, however, the government was plagued by weaknesses, such as its inability to raise revenues to pay its foreign debts or maintain an army. From the outset, most the convention’s organizers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton chief among them, knew that splints and bandages wouldn’t do the trick for the broken Articles.

The government was broke –literally and figuratively– and they were going to fix it by inventing an entirely new one. James Madison had been studying more than 200 books on constitutions and republican history sent to him by Thomas Jefferson in preparation for the convention. The moving force behind the convention, Madison came prepared with the outline of a new Constitution.

A reluctant George Washington, whose name was placed at the head of list of Virginia’s delegates without his knowledge, was unquestionably spurred by the events in Massachusetts (Shay’s Rebellion, a violent protest by Massachusetts farmers). Elected president of the convention, he wrote from Philadelphia in June to his close wartime confidant and ally, the Marquis de Lafayette:

I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a government of respectability under which life, liberty, and property will be secured to us, or are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarchy and Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue.

On September 17, Washington signed the parchment copy first, as President of the convention. He was followed by the remaining delegates from the twelve states that sent delegates in geographical order, from north to south, beginning with New Hampshire. (Rhode Island was the only state that did not send a delegation.) When the last of the signatures was added –that of Abraham Baldwin of Georgia– Benjamin Franklin gazed at Washington’s chair, on which was painted a bright yellow sun. He then spoke, as James Madison recorded it:

I have, said he, often in the course of a session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell if it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

In another perhaps more apocryphal tale, Franklin left the building and was confronted by a lady who asked, “Well Doctor, do we have a monarchy or a republic?” The witty sage of Philadelphia replied,

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

This post is excerpted from America’s Hidden History, which offers fuller account of the Convention and the events that led to it.  You can also read more about the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

For more about the Constitution, visit these sites:
The National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia:

James Madison’s Montpelier:

Charters of Freedom at the National Archives

According to the website of the shrine that marks this momentous date in history:

 ”Mass was said to hallow the land and draw down the blessing of heaven before the first step was taken to rear a human habitation.”

The Spanish colonists were led by Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Aviles. But just what were Menéndez and his 800-strong group doing in Florida?

In brief, it was a search-and-destroy mission and St. Augustine was established to mount a murderous offensive against the small, struggling French colony at Fort Caroline, near modern-day Jacksonville.

Menéndez had been dispatched by Spain’s King Philip II to wipe out the French colony, established about a year earlier. These French settlers had come to America, as the Mayflower Pilgrims would more than 50 years later, in search of a religious refuge. Huguenots, or French Protestants, they had been given permission by France’s King Charles to establish a colony in America.

Admiral Menéndez was sent to Florida with clear orders–wipe out the “heretic” French colony. After killing most of the inhabitants of Fort Caroline, Menéndez captured and put to the sword several hundred French sailors who had been shipwrecked in a hurricane and came ashore just south of St. Augustine before straggling north towards the Spanish outpost.

The spot where Menéndez did his “pious” work with such ruthless efficiency was known as Matanzas, Spanish for “slaughters.”

The site of these killings, Fort Matanzas, is now an off-the-beaten path national monument just south of St. Augustine:

I told the story of Fort Caroline, St. Augustine, and the fate of America’s true first pilgrims in “The French Connection,” an Op-ed in the New York Times

You can also read a more complete story of the bloody history of America’s true “first pilgrims” in a chapter called “Isabella’s Pigs” in America’s Hidden History.

“To most Americans, the first Monday in September means a three-day weekend and the last hurrah of summer, a final outing at the shore before school begins, a family picnic.

But Labor Day was born in a time when work was no picnic. As America was moving from farms to factories in the Industrial Age, there was a long, violent, often-deadly struggle for fundamental workers’ rights, a struggle that in many ways was America’s “other civil war.”

Read more about the history of Labor Day at CNN.com

Who were the suffragists?

Women in America always endured plenty of suffering. What they lacked was “suffrage” (from the Latin suffragium for “vote”). Many American women as far back as Abigail Adams—who admonished her husband John to “Remember the Ladies” when he went off to declare independence—had pressed for voting rights, but just as consistently had been shut out. Women were fighting against the resistance of church, Constitution, an all-male power structure that held fast to the reins, and many of their own –who believed in a woman’s divinely ordained, second-place, “submissive” role.

But at the 19th-century progressed, more women were pressed to work, and they showed the first signs of collective strength. For instance, in the 1860 Lynn, Massachusetts, shoe worker strike, many of the 10,000 workers who marched in protest were women.

Women were also a strong force in the abolitionist movement. But even in a so-called freedom movement, women were accorded second-rate status. To many male abolitionists, the “moral” imperative to free black men and give them the vote carried much greater weight than the somewhat blasphemous notion of equality of the sexes. In fact, it was the exclusion of women from an abolitionist gathering that sparked the first formal organization for women’s rights.

The birth of the women’s movement in America can be dated to July 19, 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) called for a women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York, after they had been told to sit in the balcony at a London antislavery meeting.

By the turn of the 20th century, some women began concentrating on winning the vote state by state, a strategy that succeeded in Idaho and Colorado, where grassroots organizations won the vote for women. After 1910, a few more western states relented, and the movement gained new momentum.

At about the same time, American suffragists took a new direction, borrowed from their British counterparts. The British “suffragettes” (as opposed to the commonly used American term “suffragist”) had been using far more radical means to win the vote. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragettes chained themselves to buildings, invaded Parliament, blew up mailboxes, and burned buildings. Imprisoned for these actions, the women called themselves “political prisoners” and went on hunger strikes that were met with force-feedings. The cruelty of this official response was significant in attracting public sympathy for the suffragette cause.

Alice Paul (1885–1977)  a Quaker-raised woman who studied in England and had joined the Pankhurst-led demonstrations in London, helped bring these tactics back to America. At the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, who opposed the vote for women, Paul organized a demonstration of 10,000 people, most of them women. Her strategy was to hold the party in power—the Democrats in this case—responsible for denying women the vote. By this time, several million women could vote in various states, and Republicans saw, as they had in winning the black vote in Grant’s time, that there might be a political advantage in accepting universal suffrage.
After Wilson’s 1916 reelection, in which women in some states had voted against him two to one, the protest was taken to Wilson’s doorstep as women began to picket around the clock outside the White House. Later imprisoned, Paul and others imitated the British tactic of hunger strikes. Again, sympathies turned in favor of the women. After their convictions were overturned, the militant suffragists returned to their White House protests.

In 1918, Paul’s political tactics paid off as a Republican Congress was elected. Among them was Montana’s Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973), the first woman elected to Congress. Rankin’s first act was to introduce a constitutional suffrage amendment on the House floor. The amendment was approved by a one-vote margin. It took the Senate another eighteen months to pass it, and in June 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment was submitted to the states for ratification. Now fearful of the women’s vote in the approaching presidential election, Wilson shifted to support of the measure.

One year later, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee delivered the last needed vote, and on August 26, the Secretary of State certified the ratification. The Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. It stated simply –

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

It took more than 130 years, but “We the People” finally included the half of the country that had been kept out the longest.

There is more about the 19th Amendment at the National Archives website.

This material is adapted from Don’t Know Much About History–

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

The end of summer, a three-day weekend, burgers on the grill, and a back-to-school shopping spree, right? And the most important question, “Can I still wear white?”

But very few people associate Labor Day with a turbulent time in American History. That’s what Labor Day is really about. The holiday was born during the violent union-busting days of the late 19th century, when sweat shop conditions killed children, when there was no minimum wage and when going on vacation meant you were out of work.

If you like holidays, benefits and a five-day, 40-hour work week, you need to know about Labor Day.

When Labor Day was signed into law by Grover Cleveland in 1894, it was a bone tossed to the labor movement. And it was deliberately placed in September to ensure that it would not recall the memory of the deadly rioting at Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May 1886. Europe’s workers, and later the Communist Party, adopted May Day as a worker’s holiday to commemorate the deadly Haymarket Sqaure Riot which came about during a strike against thee McCormack Reaper Company.

Although Labor Day did become federal law in 1894, most of labor’s successes –the minimum wage, overtime, the end of child labor – did not come about until the Depression-era reforms of the New Deal.

Labor Day was created to celebrate the “strength and spirit of the American worker.” But this holiday should remind us that — like so many things we take for granted — those victories for working people came at great cost, in blood, sweat and tears.

For more on the history of Haymarket Square, here is a link to the Chicago Historical Society’s web project.

“American Experience,” the PBS documentary series, produced a Homestead Strike piece as part of its film about Andrew Carnegie.

You can read more about the history of the trade union movement in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

But that moment also opens Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s fabulous 1981 novel and one of the great books of our times –a tale of a boy born at the moment of partition, mixing a Dickensian life with magical realism, set against the story of modern India.

When I was starting out as a freelancer 30 years ago, I  was a book reviewer for the trade journal Publishers Weekly. Most of the reviews ran about seven sentences long and bits of them sometimes turned up as blurbs in book ads. But then I reviewed Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. My unsigned review was printed in full on the back jacket of the first American edition. I always felt a secret glory in that anonymous connection to one of the great books of the 20th century.
In naming the novel one of the “Best 100 Books,’ Time describes Rushdie’s masterpiece:

Two [children} are switched at birth, the illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the offspring of wealthy Muslims. Rushdie follows them through 30 years of partition, violence and Indira Gandhi’s iron-fisted rule

Of course, Salman Rushdie went on to make international headlines for another of his books.
Lots of books are considered controversial, but few lead to death threats. When Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses hit bookstores in 1989, the author was forced to go into hiding—for nine years. Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, deemed the book an insult to Islam and declared a fatwa, or religious edict, calling Muslims to execute Rushdie (b. 1947). Only in 1998 did the Iranian Foreign Minister finally drop the official death threat against Rushdie.

What else do you know about this modern master of magical realism? Here are a couple of questions drawn from Don’t Know Much About Literature

1. What happens on midnight of August 15 1947 in Midnight’s Children?

2. While he was in hiding, what children’s book did Rushdie write for his son Zafar?

3. What honor did Rushdie achieve in 2008?

Here is the Time magazine list of Best 100 Novels

Note: This is a revised version of a post originally written published on August 15, 2009.

Answers

1. 1,001 children are born with supernatural powers.
2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990).

3. In 2008, Midnight’s Children was selected as winner of the “Best of the Booker” awards. Readers around the world voted the 1981 novel as the best of the prestigious prize winners.

Of course, it has already happened in America, more than once. Most famously, perhaps, it happened nearly half a century ago on a hot summer night in the Los Angeles neighborhood known as Watts.

While the times and many circumstances are very different between England now and America then, the American experience with urban rioting –now seemingly forgotten– is worth remembering because many of the root causes seem to be the same.

It started with a “DWB”– “driving while black.” On August 11, 1965, an all-too-frequent stop of a young black man exploded into one of the worst urban riots in American history.

Where: Watts was a rundown district of shabby houses built near the highway approaching Los Angeles International Airport. Ninety-eight percent black, Watts was stewing in a California heat wave. In the stewpot were all the ingredients of black anger. Poverty. Overcrowding. High unemployment. Crime everywhere. Drugs widely available. The nearly all-white police force was seen as an occupation army.

When: On August 11, a policeman pulled over a young black man to check him for drunken driving. When the young man was arrested, a crowd gathered. Within a few hours the crowd had grown to a mob, and the frustration was no longer simmering in the August heat. It exploded.

What By nightfall of the next day, small, roving bands of young people throwing rocks and bottles had grown to a mob of thousands. Rocks and bottles were replaced by Molotov cocktails as the riot erupted into a full-blown street rebellion with widespread looting. Among the most popular looted items were weapons, and when police and firefighters responded to the violence and fires, they were met with a hail of bullets and gasoline bombs. When Dick Gregory, the well-known African American comedian and civil rights activist, tried to calm the crowds, he was shot in the leg.

The battle raged on for days as thousands of national guardsmen poured in to restore order. There was open fighting in the streets as guardsmen set up machine-gun emplacements. By the sixth day of rioting, Watts was rubble and ashes. The toll from six days of mayhem was thirty-four killed, including rioters and guardsmen; more than 1,000 injured; 4,000 arrested; and total property damage of more than $35 million.

Why: The aftermath of Watts was more than just a body count and insurance estimates. Watts signaled a sea change in the civil-rights movement. When Martin Luther King toured the neighborhood, he was heckled. Saddened by the death and destruction, he admonished a local man, who responded,

“We won because we made the whole world pay attention to us.”

Here is the original New York Times report on the “Negro Riots”

The Watts summer of 1965 was the first in a string of long, hot summers that left the cities of the North and Midwest smoldering. The worst came in 1967, particularly when Newark and Detroit were engulfed in rioting. In the wake of these rebellions, presidential commissions were appointed, studies made, and findings released. They all agreed that the problem was economic at its roots. As Martin Luther King had put it, “I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers, and now I’ve got to do something to help them get the money to buy them.”

One of these studies, conducted by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, was known as the Kerner Commission. In 1968, it warned that America was

“moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

Here is a link to excerpts from the Kerner Commission Report:
How much has really changed?

On the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report in 2008, Bill Moyers of PBS produced a show on the Commission and what has –or hasn’t — changed in four decades.

You can read more about Watts and the civil rights era in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

On August 9, 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.

Born in Concord, Mass. on July 12, 1817, he was the son of a pencil-maker. Thoreau attended Harvard and later was befriended by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who eventually gave him a job as a gardener and tutor, while encouraging Thoreau’s writing.  Thoreau published several books and essays, including his classic “Civil Disobedience” in opposition to the War against Mexico.

Then, in July 1845, he moved to the cabin at Walden Pond, where he lived for the next two years, two months and two days.

The Walden site of Thoreau’s cabin.

Compressing those two years into a single year, he wrote Walden, his now-revered account.

It is not an “easy” book. It is not a simplistic “back to Nature” book. Even though Thoreau’s work has often been reduced to bumper sticker aphorisms –“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”–the book is far more complex. Part memoir, part practical guide, it is really more about a sense of self-discovery –a spiritual search. Writing in a time of growing industrialism and mechanism, he did urge, “Simplify, simplify.”

In an Introduction to a 2004 edition of Walden, the late novelist John Updike wrote:

A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible. Of the American classics densely arisen in the middle of the 19th century – Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), to which we might add Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1854) as a nation-stirring bestseller and Emerson’s essays as an indispensable preparation of the ground – Walden has contributed most to America’s present sense of itself.

An ardent abolitionist, Thoreau gave a speech, “A Plea for Captain Brown” (later published as an essay), in honor of John Brown, whose 1859  raid on a federal arsenal was intended to provoke a massive slave insurrection and deepened the nation’s divisions. Thoreau was uncompromising in his defense of Brown, despite his own image as the spokesman for nonviolent civil disobedience.

He contracted tuberculosis and suffered from it sporadically. Thoreau died in May 1862 at age 44.

An excellent collection of resources on Walden, Thoreau and his other writings can be found at the Thoreau Society website.

Thoreau and his era of the mid-19th century leading up to the Civil War are discussed in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

But in these times of great recession, bailouts, high unemployment and nonstop partisan infighting, the fundamental sense of trust the nation once possessed seems irreparably damaged. The deep divisions in Washington, evident most recently in the wrangling over the debt ceiling, drove this home. Opinion polls in the wake of the debate confirmed the worst news for the Beltway Crowd: Confidence in Congress has plunged to an all-time low.

Read the complete post at CNN.com

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

Since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Vietnam War might as well be the Punic Wars to some people, here is a quick refresher.

America was already twenty years into its Vietnam commitment when Lyndon Johnson and Kennedy’s “best and brightest” holdovers sought an incident to pull American firepower into the war with at least a glimmer of legitimacy. It came in August 1964 with two brief encounters in the Gulf of Tonkin, the waters off the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2, 1964 two American destroyers engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, resulting in one of the torpedo boat’s sinking. American claims that the North Vietnamese fired first were later disputed. On August 4, 1964, the American destroyers reported a second engagement with North Vietnamese boats. There was never any confirmation that either ship had actually been attacked. (Weeks after this the late Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died in 2009, expressed to Johnson doubts that the attack had occurred.) But these faulty reports would be exploited as a convenient excuse for the massive escalation of America’s involvement in Vietnam.

In the civil war that was raging between North and South since the French withdrawal from Indochina and the partition of Vietnam in 1954, the United States had committed money, material, advice, and, by the end of 1963, some 15,000 military advisers in support of the anti-Communist Saigon government. The American CIA was also in the thick of things, having helped foster the coup that toppled prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and then acting surprised when Diem was executed by the army officers who overthrew him.

Among the other “advice” the United States provided to its South Vietnamese allies was to teach them commando tactics. In 1964, CIA trained guerrillas from the South began to attack the North for months in covert acts of sabotage. Code named Plan 34-A, these commando raids failed to undermine North Vietnam’s military strength, so the mode of attack was shifted to hit-and-run operations by small torpedo boats. To support these assaults, the U.S. Navy posted warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, loaded with electronic eavesdropping equipment enabling them to monitor North Vietnamese military operations and provide intelligence to the South Vietnamese commandos.

According to Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History,

“Even Johnson privately expressed doubts only a few days after the second attack supposedly took place, confiding to an aide, ‘Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.’”

Without waiting for a review of the situation, he ordered an air strike against North Vietnam in “retaliation” for the “attacks” on the U.S. ships. One bitter result of these air raids was the capture of downed pilot Everett Alvarez, Jr., the first American POW of the Vietnam War. He would remain in Hanoi prisons for eight years.

President Johnson followed up the air strike by calling for passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This proposal gave the President the authority to “take all necessary measures” to repel attacks against U.S. forces and to “prevent further aggression.”

On August 7, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the House unanimously after only forty minutes of debate. In the Senate, there were only two voices in opposition.

Congress, which alone possesses the constitutional authority to declare war, had handed that power over to a man who was not a bit reluctant to use it. One of the senators who voted against the Tonkin Resolution, Oregon’s Wayne Morse, later said,

“I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution.” After the vote, Walt Rostow, an adviser to Lyndon Johnson, remarked, “We don’t know what happened, but it had the desired result.”

The recent debate over Presidential powers to commit troops without Congressional approval, as in the NATO action against Libya, is a reminder of the ways in which Presidents have taken the nation to war. It is also a reminder that those monumental decisions are sometimes  base on lies or shadowy misinformation. In the case of Tonkin, the “official version” was elevated to an attack on Americans.

You can read more about the Tonkin incident and the Vietnam War in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition, from which this post is adapted.

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

Here is an older post with some suggested readings about the Vietnam War era.

These links are related to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and recently declassified National Security Administration documents:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/index.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm

www.twitter.com/kennethcdavis

When Don’t Know Much About History was first published in 1990, it was simply meant to serve as a fresh new take on American history. Busting myths, with a dose of humor and real stories about real people, the book was conceived as an antidote to the dull, dreary textbooks we suffered through in high school or college.

A year later, on July 4, 1991, I learned that the book was on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, where it remained for a run of thirty-five consecutive weeks  – perhaps proving that Americans don’t hate history, they just hate the dull version they got back in high school. There wasn’t much advertising, splashy publicity or a “famous author.” But teachers, students, booksellers, librarians, radio hosts and readers across the country embraced this offbeat, irreverent and quirky approach to history that asks simple questions like, “What is the Mayflower Compact?” as well as odd questions like, “Why is there a Statue of Benedict Arnold’s Boot?”

The book went on to sell more than a million copies, and spawned a series of Don’t Know Much About books. In 2002, Don’t Know Much About History was revised and greatly expanded. Now, after a remarkable decade in American history, there is a newly updated edition –DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: ANNIVERSARY EDITION– that picks up where that earlier revision left off and brings American history through a churning period of war, calamity, and dramatic upheaval that culminated with the historic 2008 election of Barack Obama and his first year and a half in office.

So what’s different about this new version? Like the original book and the previous revision, this 20th Anniversary Edition is organized along chronological lines, moving from America’s “discovery” by Europeans to more recent events, including the first Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, the enormous repercussions of September 11, 2001,and the election of the nation’s first African-American president.

The book’s final chapter has been significantly expanded to include a review of the extraordinary events that have taken place since 2001, a period that has produced some of the most remarkable changes in America’s history.

Much of this new history reflects on the response of the United States to the calamity of 9/11 and how that day has transformed American life and society, from the way we get through airports to fundamental American attitudes about the right to privacy versus a sense of greater security. The new material begins with an overview of 9/11 and what has been learned about that “day of infamy” after nearly a decade. This revision goes on to recap the response of the Bush administration to 9/11, with particular emphasis on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, this added material includes discussions of these events and controversies:

• The emergence of same-sex marriage as a highly divisive, emotional national issue
• The failure of government at every level in responding to Hurricane Katrina, America’s worst natural disaster
• The meltdown of the global economy and the “Great Recession” and the historic involvement of the government in rescuing companies, such as General Motors and Citibank, deemed “too big to fail”
• The surprisingly meteoric rise and election of Barack Obama and the first years of his administration

Besides adding material to cover events that have occurred since this book originally appeared in 1990, I have amplified some of the existing material. This sort of “historical revision” is a necessity because we learn things about the past all the time, often based on new scholarship, scientific advances, and ongoing discoveries that reshape our view of history. For instance, new light has been cast on familiar stories, such as the continuing archaeological dig that is revealing new information about the original fort at Jamestown, Virginia—first discovered in 1996—or the DNA evidence that strongly suggests that Thomas Jefferson had fathered the children of slave Sally Hemings— a nineteenth-century political rumor now treated as near certainty, even at Monticello, Jefferson’s home in Virginia.

This revision also reflects the fact that court decisions can greatly alter American life. A bevy of judicial decisions around the nation during the past eight years has forced a major debate on same-sex marriage as well as the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward homosexuals serving in the military. And in June 2008, the majority on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court struck down a Washington, D.C., ban on handguns in a historic reinterpretation of the Second Amendment and “the right to bear arms” that may impact gun-control laws in most American states.

Finally, history needs to be revised because even “old dog” historians learn new tricks. For instance, in researching and writing two of my recent books, America’s Hidden History and A Nation Rising, I uncovered some surprising “hidden history” in such stories as the fate of the true first Pilgrims—French Huguenots who settled in Florida fifty years before the Mayflower sailed and were wiped out by the Spanish in 1565. Or the story of Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant “Bible Riots” of 1844, another episode missing from most American schoolbooks. This revision now reflects these significant but overlooked events.

When I last revised this book in 2002, I concluded by writing:

And yet, how much had really changed? Congress still fights over obscure bills. Children still go missing. The stock market’s gyrations transfix the nation. But something fundamental seems to have changed. Historians may look back at America in late 2002 as the Era of Broken Trust. In a very short space of time, Americans had lost faith in government agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. The church, in particular the Roman Catholic Church, was devastated by a string of revelations about predatory priests. Corporate bankruptcies and revelations of corruption involving Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, and WorldCom, among others, shattered America’s faith in the financial security of the nation.

As we know, that paragraph has become, if anything, even more salient in 2011. The “Era of Broken Trust” I described at the beginning of the twenty-first century has only worsened as the events of the past decade have further eroded many Americans’ belief and confidence in the nation’s most basic institutions.

Perhaps the best summary of what this period in our history may mean is captured in something President George Bush told Good Morning America on September 1, 2005, during the Katrina catastrophe:

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Of course, that was not true, as ample evidence has shown. There had been plenty of cautions about the levees from the public officials, engineers, and academics who had warned of the dangers confronting New Orleans as its protective barrier islands were eliminated by development and the levees ringing a city below sea level were deemed insufficient in the face of a major storm. Similarly, many danger signs had been posted about a raft of other protective “levees” that have also been breached—the risks to the financial system, or the concerns about offshore drilling, and the dire warnings about going into Iraq without justification and without proper troop levels.

The Don’t Know Much About series has always been about asking questions and getting honest, accurate answers. If there is any overarching lesson to be learned from history—especially from this recent history—is that we all have to ask a lot more questions, especially when it comes to making sure the levees will hold.

So thanks to you for twenty years of reading and asking questions.

THE NEWLY REVISED HARDCOVER EDITION (HARPERCOLLINS)

THE ORIGINAL AVON PAPERBACK EDITION (1991)

The passage of the New York legislation also means that President Obama has now come under new pressure to join the forces trying to win equal marriage rights throughout America.  This story, “Obama’s Position on Gay Marriage Faces New Test” (New York Times, June 29, 2011), discusses that pressure. It also refers to a Supreme Court decision known as Loving — the case that ended laws prohibiting interracial marriage in America in 1967. I have written about the Loving case in the past, but thought it worth recalling what the case was about and what that decision meant. Here is a revised post –first written two years ago– about Loving:

As historical anniversaries go, April 10, 1967 may not seem like a date we all should remember. But that was the day that the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Loving v. Virginia.  On June 12, 1967, the Court issued its ruling in the case, striking down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage (“miscegenation”) in America.

Yes, a little over 40 years ago, Barack Obama’s parents could not have married legally in the home state of Washington, Jefferson and Madison. Richard Loving, a white man, married Mildred, a woman of African-American and Native American descent, in Washington, D.C. When they later traveled to Virginia, he was arrested and the Lovings were forced to leave Virginia. They brought suit which eventually found its way to the Supreme Court

The Court ruled that that anti-miscegenation laws, such as those in Virginia, violated the “Due Process Clause” (“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” )  and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …”). In the unanimous majority opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

The Loving case deserves discussion in light of the recent decisions to allow same sex marriage in Iowa (a court ruling) and Vermont (a legislative act) and now New York. I have no doubt that this unresolved question is the greatest civil rights question facing America today. I am not a Constitutional lawyer, but I am certain that this landmark case will be invoked as the battle over same sex marriage continues.

I also have no doubt that the country will –perhaps ever so slowly—catch up with Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont, along with New Hampshire, the District of Columbia and New York in permitting same sex marriage.

Change in American history is often slow. And it usually comes from the bottom up –not the top down. Whether it was abolition, civil rights, or even independence itself, when it comes to most of the great social upheavals of our past, the politicians and “leaders” have generally had to be dragged kicking and screaming in the direction of change. It may be glacially slow, but it will happen, in part because there is a generational change that will someday make the existing same sex marriage prohibitions on the books seem as antiquated –and despicable—as the now-unconstitutional bans on interracial marriage.

Before her death in 2008, Mildred Loving, the woman of African-American and Native American descent who brought the suit against Virginia, issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the decision. She wrote:

“Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

I can’t say it any better than that.

There is a more complete discussion of the history of the Lovings, their case and its connection to the same sex marriage debate in the new, revised edition of Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

Thomas Jefferson
•Known as a talented writer, Jefferson hated having his work edited. He sat and fumed while the Continental Congress debated his draft version of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was especially peeved when the delegates deleted his reference to slavery, “the execrable commerce.”
•Jefferson instructed his slaves to hide the silver at Monticello, during the American Revolution, when the British came after him, led by turncoat Benedict Arnold.
•Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, July 4, 1826.

There is a wealth of information about Jefferson at Monticello.

John Adams
•Adams knew that Thomas Jefferson was a good writer and wanted him to be added to the group that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Adams, a wily politician, knew he needed a Virginian on the Committee drafting the Declaration. Adams  later said Jefferson was ten times a better writer than he was himself.  Eventually Adams became Jefferson’s political enemy, although they would reconcile in their old age.
•Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams, to “Remember the ladies,” meaning consider giving women rights in the new country being considered. Abigail wrote this to her husband while he was in Philadelphia working towards Independence, and Adams jokingly dismissed that idea, saying “he knew better.”
•Adams believed America would celebrate July 2d as its great independence day –that was the day on which the Congress passed a resolution in favor of independence.
•Like Jefferson, John Adams died on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration.

Read more about John, Abigail and their  son John Quincy Adams at Adams National Historic Park.

John Hancock

•Hancock was one of America’s richest men in 1776. Although the son of a poor minister, he had inherited a fortune from his uncle, a shipper and merchant.
•Known for his outsized signature on the Declaration, Hancock was one of two men who signed the finished draft version of the Declaration on July 4th 1776. Most of the others signed the parchment version later.
•Hancock was the first to sign—on an empty page—and forced the others to sign around the edges. He supposedly said it was so that king wouldn’t need his spectacles, but Hancock was a man who thought highly of himself. That is one reason he was disappointed when George Washington was nominated to command the Continental Army. Hancock hoped to get the post, despite little military experience.
•Hancock was one of the few American Patriots who had a bounty placed on his head by King George III. Hancock was the man the British troops were looking for in Lexington in April 1775.

Read more about Lexington and Concord.

Benjamin Franklin
•Franklin had little formal education but went from printer’s apprentice to wealthy and world-renowned writer and publisher –and inventor.
•Franklin was the most famous American in the world at the time of the signing of the Declaration due to his success publishing Poor Richard’s Almanac and his later scientific and practical inventions, including the stove that bears his name, bifocals and the lightning rod.
•Some American clergymen thought that Franklin’s lightning rod was “sinful” because it controlled something that they considered divine. But the lightning rod prevented many homes and buildings from being destroyed by fires set by lightning strikes.
•Though he later founded an anti-slavery society, Franklin kept slaves as household servants and took advertising for slave sales in his newspapers
•After Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence and said “Gentlemen we must all hang together,” meaning they should be unanimous and all sign, Franklin supposedly said, “Yes, or we shall assuredly all hang separately.”
•Franklin was so stricken with gout in his old age that he had to be carried to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 on a divan chair by inmates of a nearby jail.
•When Franklin died in April 1790, an estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral. Big crowd. But was about two-thirds of Philadelphia’s entire population back then.

The Benjamin Franklin Memorial at the Franklin Institute has more on this fascinating characters.

Charles Carroll
•One of the lesser known Founders, Carroll was unique as the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence; he came from Maryland. Many Americans of this era distrusted and disliked Catholics and there were even laws that kept them from holding property and voting in some states.
•Carroll was also the last surviving signer, dying in 1832 at the ripe old age of 95.
•From a wealthy plantation family, Carroll had studied abroad and was a French-speaker. With his cousin, John Carroll, a Catholic priest, and Benjamin Franklin, he went to Canada on a mission to convince Catholic French Canadians to join the American union. Their mission failed.
•Carroll later helped found the B&O railroad (of “ MONOPOLY” board game fame).

Homewood, a Carroll family home, is maintained as a museum by the Johns Hopkins University.

James Wilson
•Another “forgotten Founder,” Wilson is probably the most important signer of the Declaration many of us have never heard of. An attorney from Scotland, he not only signed the Declaration but was instrumental in drafting the Constitution.
•Wilson was attacked by a working class mob during the Revolution because he and fellow signer Robert Morris were suspected of hoarding supplies, such as wheat, to drive up prices. The incident, known as the “Fort Wilson Riot,” shows there were powerful class differences in Revolutionary America.
•Wilson was one of the first Justices appointed to the Supreme Court, but is the only justice ever to be jailed. He lost money in land speculation, and was held briefly in debtor’s prison and later fled from an arrest warrant. He died in shame.

A marker shows the location of the “Fort Wilson Riots”

John Witherspoon
•Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration and an influential clergyman and educator, was a renowned scholar who came to America from Scotland to run the College of New Jersey –later Princeton.  His prize students included James Madison and Aaron Burr.

•In addition to teaching a future President and Vice-President, Witherspoon’s Princeton students include many Senators and Congressmen, cabinet officers, Supreme Court justices and state governors.

Francis Hopkinson
•Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration from New Jersey, wrote some of the first songs published in America.
•Hopkinson took credit for the design of the United States flag. The evidence is his request for payment of a case of wine.

George Washington
•Of course, Washington didn’t sign the Declaration because he was busy commanding the Continental Army, a post he had been given in June 1775.
•Washington was a rugged, plainspoken frontiersman who is quoted as telling General Henry Knox to “Shift that fat ass, Harry, but slowly or you will swamp the damn boat,” before crossing the Delaware. (Knox’s account) Forget those hokey prayer vigils at Valley Forge!!
•Washington had the Declaration of Independence read to the troops then occupying New York City on July 9, 1776.
•Washington probably had mixed feelings about July 4th because on that date in 1754, as a young man in command of the Virginia colonial militia, he had been forced to surrender to a French army and sign a document that essentially was a confession of murdering a French diplomat. It was the first and only time he surrendered in his military career.
•False teeth? Yes, Washington only had a single tooth of his own left at his death. Wooden teeth? No. His dentures were made from ivory, bone and even human teeth.
•And the cherry tree tale? Also a legend created after his death. Washington’s father died when the boy was eleven and George Washington rarely mentioned his father.

Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation

Juneteenth falls on June 19 each year. It is a holiday whose history was hidden for much of the last century. But as the nation now observes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s onset, it is a holiday worth recognizing.”

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine

With those words, James Joyce (February 2, 1882-January 13, 1941) opened Ulysses, chosen in 1999 as the greatest novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library. The novel follows Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus on their wanderings through Dublin on a single day –June 16 1904.

That makes today “Bloomsday” and complete readings of the book take place all over the world. The date was significant to Joyce because it was the day on which James Joyce first had an outing with his future wife,  Nora Barnacle, model for the character Molly Bloom.

First serialized in a literary magazine between 1918 and 1920, the novel was published in its entirety in February 1922 in Paris. Considered obscene, the book was kept out of the United States, leading to a court battle in which Ulysses was cleared for U.S. publication in a landmark obscenity ruling in 1933.

When I was about 14, I was given a copy of The Dubliners, Joyce’s collection of short stories about the city –and people– he loved and hated. I must admit I struggled with it at first. But that collection, and Joyce’s autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, are two books I count among the most influential in my life.

Think you know your Joyce? Try this quiz adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature, my first collaboration with my daughter, Jenny Davis.

Don’t Know Much About James Joyce

“When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold.”  It may be hard to believe that the man who wrote that sentence (from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916) also wrote Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), two of the most infamously “difficult” works in the English language.  James Joyce (d. 1941) was born in Dublin in 1882, where his middle-class, Catholic community would inspire fiction like Dubliners (1912), the short story collection that he called “a chapter of the moral history of my country.” From the concise realism of Dubliners, Joyce’s fiction moved towards experimental uses of language and stream-of-consciousness narration.  Joyce’s dense wordplay reaches a peak in Finnegans Wake, a work intended to be read aloud.  If you’re up for “a rhubarbarous maundarin yellagreen funkleblue windigut diodying” James Joyce quiz, read on!

1.    What Christian term did James Joyce borrow to describe a “sudden spiritual moment” when “the soul of the commonest object” leaps out?
2.    What is the name of Joyce’s main character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and the posthumously published fragment, Stephen Hero?
3.    What genre of writing made up Joyce’s first published work, Chamber Music (1907)?
4.    What famed psychiatrist wrote Joyce, “Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem, that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters”?
5.    In the Irish ballad that inspired the title of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, what brings Finnegan, the dead Irishman of the title, back to life?

In 2004, NPR did this story about the 100th anniversary of “Bloomsday.”

Here is a link to the James Joyce Centre in Dublin

Answers
1.    Epiphany
2.    Stephen Dedalus, inspired by the labyrinth builder of Greek myth.
3.    Poetry.  In fact, Joyce’s collection of poems drew the attention of Imagists Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
4.    Carl Jung. Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, was treated by Jung.
5.    The smell of whiskey.

We seem to be no better off now than we were back in 1987 when the first major survey was called “What Our 17 Year Olds Know.” (It would have been more appropriately entitled “What they don’t know.”)

So the first simple question is:

Why Are we so Bad at History?

There has been an assumption that we all hate history, probably because all the surveys keep telling us that. But the simple fact is that people really don’t hate history. They just hate the dull, watered-down version they were forced to learn in school.  And that is Reason #1 that we don’t know much about History.

Reason #2 is an old problem that has gotten worse. We don’t spend enough time teaching history. That problem has worsened over the past few years, according to history teachers I speak with, because of No Child Left Behind. History teachers often tell me that they are pulled away from their regular curriculum to assist in standardized test preparation in math and reading because judging school performance and funding for schools has been reduced to how well children do on these tests. And yes, far too many teachers have come into the system without sufficient understanding of history and its importance.

Reason #3 is the media –both news and entertainment. There is still tremendous distortion of history in the daily news –some of it deliberate by people with agendas. Then there is the problem of Hollywood History. There are millions of children who think that Pocahontas was a buxom Disney character in a tight, deerskin skirt.

What Can We Do?

The solution to this epidemic of historical ignorance is fairly simple.

•If we think history is so important, spend more time actually teaching it.

•Throw out the textbooks. Okay, maybe not actually. But I don’t know any teachers or students who enjoy textbooks. History is first and foremost STORY. Tell great stories of real people doing real things. We are in a golden age of great historical writers who know how to tell stories. Use them in the classroom. I have seen kids in elementary school who show total curiosity and enthusiasm about history. By high school, that excitement is sucked out of them by rote learning and dishwater dull textbooks.

•Field trips. I know. You shudder at the thought of brown bags and bus rides. But going to the places where history happens makes all the difference in the world. My love of history came from camping trips to places like Gettysburg, Valley Forge and Fort Ticonderoga. And you don’t have to be near Boston, Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia to see history. It is everywhere.

•Stop lying. Museums and historic sites have to tell the truth, not a sanitized, cosmetically perfect version. In Florida, a recreated Spanish village tells visitors that the French were “banished” from Florida by the Spanish in 1565. That’s just not true. They were massacred in a religious bloodbath. Now that is an interesting story. Places like Monticello and Mount Vernon, on the other hand, have come light years from the stodgy museums they once were. They are exciting but more important honest. Both openly deal with the question of slavery in realistic and vivid terms. They don’t try and hide the truth that Jefferson and Washington were slaveholders.

•Use the media. There are some great movies about history, like Glory. Use them to teach. There are many more awful movies about history. We can use them too, by watching and saying “This is not the way it happened.” The real story of Pocahontas is a lot more interesting than the Disney cartoon version. Use that –don’t run away from it.

•Cross-pollinate. By this I mean what the academics like to call “interdisciplinary approach.” Teaching American colonial history? Make sure the English teacher is having the class read The Crucible. Then you can talk about the real Salem Witch Trials –who isn’t interested in witches?– as well as the McCarthy Era which inspired Arthur Miller to write the play.

These are just a few of the lessons I’ve learned about  getting people interested in History. So the secret to this success was simple: “If you build it, they will come.” Just tell people about history in a way that is lively, meaningful, fun, relevant and most important, human, and they will listen. Work with curiosity  instead of destroying it with myths, lies and tedium. Make it fun. But mostly make it real.

“BEAM ME IN, SCOTTY!”

Apologies to Captain Kirk and Star Trek.  I know it’s really, “Beam me UP, Scotty.”

For more than 20 years, I have been traveling the country to visit libraries, bookstores, museums, schools and librarian conferences to share my love  for history, geography and all the subjects I have covered in the Don’t Know Much About series of books for children and adults. It’s always great fun for me to talk about America’s past, telling real stories of real people,  exploring the “hidden history” I’ve uncovered, connecting history to the headlines –and sharing my love for writing and books.  Our teachers and librarians are dedicated professionals. And the readers I have met over those years have proven that Americans don’t hate history. They just hate the dull version they got in school. And this writer has learned a lot from them along the way.

Now, with the power of computers, I want to visit your library virtually. Will you invite me?

Before I tell you my plan, I want you know that libraries have a great personal value to me. When I was a boy growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, a trip to the library every few days was part of my life. I remember the day I got my “adult” library card which allowed me to climb the ornate marble stairs up to the second floor main stacks. For me, the library was a central part of my education — and my love of writing. Since then, I have always believed that libraries are an essential part of our democracy. It would be nice if every government office functioned as well as the library does!

Now, on to  my plan.

As we are marking the 150th anniversary of the  Civil War, which began on April 12, 1861, I will make a limited number of FREE library Skype visits to discuss Civil War history, the life of Abraham  Lincoln, and other aspects of this momentous tragedy in our past and  how it continues to haunt us. These visits are planned to last 30-40 minutes. They will include a brief introduction by me of my work and career and a discussion of some of the  major aspects of the Civil War, and time for audience questions –always my favorite part of the visit. While the Civil War is certainly the key subject, the discussion need not be limited to that piece of American History. As a newly revised and updated edition of my New York Times Bestseller Don’t Know Much About History is being published this month in an Anniversary Edition hardcover by HarperCollins, the floor will be wide open for all questions about American History, the headlines, or books and writing in general.

If you would like to organize a library event on your end and  “Beam me IN, Scotty,” via Skype, a video link to your library computers, please use the Contact page on my website.  We will get back to you in an effort to set up a convenient time and date.

I look forward to beaming into your library!

Best wishes,

Kenneth C. Davis



It was on March 23, 1775 that Patrick Henry offered his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech in colonial Virgina.

On Mach 23, 1942 –167 years later– the United States government began taking away the liberty of more than one hundred thousand people–the Japanese Americans viewed as a threat after Pearl Harbor. On that date, the U.S. Army began removing people of Japanese descent from Los Angeles.

Photo by Dorothea Lange of Japanese-American grocery store on the day after Pearl Harbor Source: Library of Congress

Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, there was a wave of fear and hysteria aimed at Japanese and people of Japanese descent living in America, including American citizens, mostly on the West Coast. In February 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which declared certain areas to be “exclusion zones” from which the military could remove anyone for security reasons. It provided the legal groundwork for the eventual relocation of approximately 120,000 people to a variety of detention centers around the country, the largest forced relocation in American history. Nearly two-thirds of them were American citizens. (Smaller numbers of Americans of German and Italian descent were also detained.)

Photo Source: National Archives

The attitude of many Americans at the time was expressed in a Los Angeles Times editorial of the period:

“A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched… So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American…” (Source: Impounded, p. 53)

There were several types of camps run by the government but the most notable, including Manzanar, were the “Relocation Centers” run by the War Relocation Authority. The camps were located in remote often desolate areas, some on lands purchased from Native American nations. Surrounded by barbed wire, they featured tar paper shacks with no toilets or cooking facilities.”Spartan” would be a kind description.

In 1943, the Army invited Japanese Americans to enlist, and during the war, 30,000 Japanese Americans volunteered to serve in the U.S. military. (Source: National Archives)

The exclusion order was rescinded in 1945 and internees were allowed to leave, although many had lost their homes, businesses and property during their confinement. However, the last camp did not close until 1946.

In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate the internment and, in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which provided for a reparation of $20,000 to surviving detainees.

One of those detainees was Albert Kurihara who told the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981:

“I hope this country will never forget what happened, and do what it can to make sure that future generations will never forget.” (from Impounded, Norton)

The National Parks Service offers a Teaching With Historic Places lesson plan based on the camps some of which are now part of the National Parks System including Minidoka in Idaho and the Manzanar camp in California.

Archival Research Gallery (National Archives) of Japanese-American Experience

Library of Congress Collection of Ansel Adams photographs of internment camp at Manzanar

Photographer Dorothea Lange also photographed the internment camps and her censored images were published in 2006 in the book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (WW Norton, 2006).

In May 1844, Philadelphia –the City of Brotherly Love– was torn apart by a series of bloody riots. Known as the “Bible Riots,” they grew out of the vicious anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that was so widespread in 19th century America. Families were burned out of their homes. Churches were destroyed. And more than two dozen people died in one of the worst urban riots in American History.

The story of the “Bible Riots” is another untold tale that I explore in my new book A NATION RISING available in paperback in June 2011

In 1951, the law of the land remained “separate but equal,” the policy dictated by the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. “Separate but equal” kept Linda Brown out of the nearby Topeka schoolhouse and dictated that many public facilities, from maternity wards to morgues, from water fountains to swimming pools, from prisons to polling places, were either segregated or for whites only.

Exactly how these “separate” facilities were “equal” remained a mystery to blacks: If everything was so equal, why didn’t white people want to use them? Nowhere was the disparity more complete and disgraceful than in the public schools, primarily but not exclusively in the heartland of the former Confederacy. Schools for whites were spanking new, well maintained, properly staffed, and amply supplied. Black schools were usually single-room shacks with no toilets, a single teacher, and a broken chalkboard.

If black parents wanted their children to be warm in the winter, they had to buy their own coal. But a handful of courageous southern blacks—mostly common people like teachers and ministers and their families—began the struggle that turned back these laws.

Urged on by Thurgood Marshall (1908–93), the burly, barb tongued attorney from Baltimore who led the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, small-town folks in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware balked at the injustice of “separate but equal” educational systems. The people who carried these fights were soon confronted by threats ranging from loss of their jobs to dried-up bank credit and ultimately to threats of violence and death.

In 1951, one of these men was the Reverend Oliver Brown, the father of Linda Brown, who tried to enroll his daughter in the all-white Topeka school. Since Brown came first in the alphabet among the suits brought against four different states, it was his name that was attached to the case that Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme Court in 1953.

There had been a change in the makeup of the Court itself. After the arguments in Brown v. Board of Education were first heard, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, a Truman appointee, died of a heart attack. In 1953, with reargument of the case on the horizon, President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren (1891–1974) chief justice of the United States.

Certainly nobody at the time suspected that Warren would go on to lead the Court for sixteen of its most turbulent years, during which the justices took the lead in transforming America’s approach to racial equality, criminal justice, and freedom of expression.

In the Brown case, Warren led the Court to a moment of needed unanimity. The decision was announced on May 17, 1954. As the New York Times banner headine proclaimed, “High Court Bans School Segregation”

“Separate but equal” was no longer the law of the land.

In Simple Justice, a monumental study of the case and the history of racism, cruelty, and discrimination that preceded it, Richard Kluger eloquently assessed the decision’s impact:

The opinion of the Court said that the United States stood for something more than material abundance, still moved to an inner spirit, however deeply it had been submerged by fear and envy and mindless hate. . . . The Court had restored to the American people a measure of the humanity that had been drained away in their climb to worldwide supremacy. The Court said, without using the words, that when you stepped on a black man, he hurt. The time had come to stop.

Of course, Brown did not cause the scales to fall from the eyes of white supremacists. The fury of the South was quick and sure. School systems around the country, South and North, had to be dragged kicking and screaming through the courts toward desegregation. The states fought the decision with endless appeals and other delaying tactics, the calling out of troops, and ultimately violence and a venomous outflow of racial hatred, targeted at schoolchildren who simply wanted to learn.

This material is adapted from  Don’t Know Much About® History which will be reissued on June 21, 2011 in a newly revised, updated and expanded 20th Anniversary Edition.

I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

–John Brown at his execution (November 2, 1859)

Viewed through history as a lunatic, psychotic, fanatic, visionary, and martyr, Brown came from a New England abolitionist family, several of whom were quite insane. A failure in most of his undertakings, he had gone to Kansas –then in the midst of a mini Civil War over slavery– in 1855 with five of his twenty-two children to fight for the antislavery cause, and gained notoriety for an attack that left five pro-slavery settlers hacked to pieces.

After that massacre at Pottawatomie,Kansas, Brown went into hiding, but he had cultivated wealthy New England friends who believed in his violent rhetoric. A group known as the Secret Six formed to fund Brown’s audacious plan to march south, arm the slaves who would flock to his crusade, and establish a black republic in the Appalachians to wage war against the slaveholding South. Brown may have been crazy, but he was not without a sense of humor. When President Buchanan put a price of $250 on his head, Brown responded with a bounty of $20.50 on Buchanan’s.

Among the people Brown confided in was Frederick Douglass; Brown saw Douglass as the man slaves would flock to, a “hive for the bees.” But the country’s most famous abolitionist attempted to dissuade Brown, not because he disagreed with violence but because he thought Brown’s chosen target was suicidal. Few volunteers answered Brown’s call to arms, although Harriet Tubman signed on with Brown’s little band. She fell sick, however, and was unable to join the raid.

On October 16, 1859, Brown, with three of his sons and fifteen followers, white and black, attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on the Potomac River not far from Washington, D.C. Taking several hostages, including one descendant of George Washington, Brown’s brigade occupied the arsenal. But no slaves came forward to join them. The local militia was able to bottle Brown up inside the building until federal marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart arrived and captured Brown and the eight men who had survived the assault.

Within six weeks Brown was indicted, tried, convicted, and hanged by the state of Virginia, with the full approval of President Buchanan. But during the period of his captivity and trial, this wild-eyed fanatic underwent a transformation of sorts, becoming a forceful and eloquent spokesman for the cause of abolition.

While disavowing violence and condemning Brown, many in the North came to the conclusion that he was a martyr in a just cause. Even peaceable abolitionists who eschewed violence, such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, overlooked Brown’s homicidal tendencies and glorified him. Thoreau likened Brown to Christ; Emerson wrote that Brown’s hanging would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”

The view in the South, of course, was far different. Fear of slave insurrection still ran deep. To southern minds, John Brown represented Yankee interference in their way of life taken to its extreme. Even conciliatory voices in the South turned furious in the face of the seeming beatification of Brown. When northerners began to glorify Brown while disavowing his tactics, it was one more blow forcing the wedge deeper and deeper between North and South.

This material is adapted from Don’t Know Much About History. More information about Brown and his role in the conflict that led to the Civil War can be found in Don’t Know Much About the Civil War.

Revised, updated and expanded edition scheduled for release in June 2011.

The paperback edition has been released with a new cover to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil war.

With the publication of A NATION RISING (Smithsonian/HarperCollins) on May 11th, bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis answers some questions about his career and new book.

JUST IN: Advance Praise for A NATION RISING:

Davis is a fine writer who uses a fast-moving narrative to tell these stories well.

–Jay Freeman, Booklist (May)

Advance Praise for A NATION RISING–

“With his special gift for revealing the significance of neglected historical characters, Kenneth Davis creates a multilayered, haunting narrative. Peeling back the veneer of self-serving nineteenth-century patriotism, Davis evokes the raw and violent spirit not just of an ‘expanding nation,’ but of an emerging and aggressive empire.”

-Ray Raphael, author of Founders

“Bestselling author Ken Davis invites teachers to join in an interactive discussion about teaching American History in more exciting ways. Davis, known for his down-to-earth, non-academic style, will present a brief introduction on what excites him in his study of American History, and what he’s learned in twenty years of talking to Americans about what they “need to know about American History.” Then he will open up the webinar to questions and comments from teachers.

“This is not a lecture, but a dialog,” says Davis, who hopes you will join the session and share your ideas and experiences about what works in the classroom.”

Born April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama –Nelle Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

If you only publish one book, may as well make it a good one. For Harper Lee it was To Kill A Mockingbird (1960),  the story of Scout Finch, a girl growing up in a small Southern town.  Scout and her brother Jem wake up to the intolerance and racial hatred around them when their father, Atticus, takes on the legal case of a black man accused of raping a white woman. To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and in the last few years, it has been far and away the most popular selection for “One Book, One Community” reading programs—for example, every Vermont resident was encouraged to read the novel in 2011. However, it is also among the most “challenged” books, according to the American Library Association. Do you know why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird?  Take this quick quiz on the beloved coming-of-age novel (adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature, a collection of literary quizzes.)

1.    In what fictional town is To Kill A Mockingbird set?

2.    In which real Alabama town were nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931?

3.    Which character in To Kill a Mockingbird did Lee base on her childhood friend Truman Capote?

4.    What is the name of Scout’s reclusive neighbor, whom she begins to understand better at the end of the novel?

5.    Who won an Oscar for his role as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film version of the novel?

Answers

1.    Maycomb, Alabama.

2.    Scottsboro.  The case of the “Scottsboro Boys” provided real-life inspiration for Lee’s novel.

3.    Dill Harris, Scout Finch’s friend and neighbor.  Lee was the prototype for one of Capote’s characters: Idabel Tompkins in Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948).

4.    Boo Radley.

5.    Gregory Peck.  Another of Peck’s great roles from literature was in the 1956 film Moby Dick; he played Captain Ahab.

And by the way, it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is “make music for us to enjoy.”

“Nevermore!” It might be difficult to end a poem on a more dramatic note than Edgar Allen Poe did in “The Raven.”  Can you name the poets who created these ending lines?  Bonus points for the name of the poem.

1.    Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

2.    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

3.    and so cold

4.    And eternity in an hour

5.    Petals on a wet, black bough.

6.    Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature, a collection of literary quizzes I wrote in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

Answers

1.    T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

2.    Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

3.    William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just To Say”

4.    William Blake, “To see a world in a grain of sand”

5.    Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

6.    Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

(If you’ve been following my Poem of the Day posts all month on my Facebook page or on Twitter, you should recognize several of these. All are worth reading. Or rereading!)

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,” wrote Robert Herrick, the 17^th Century English poet, to open a poem encouraging ladies to marry while they were young and beautiful (“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”).  This line of Herrick’s poem, which gained popularity as a song, is now an iconic admonition to enjoy our lives on Earth.  Now gather ye wits, and see how many of these famous first lines you can identify.

1.    Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

2.    I, too, dislike it, there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle

3.    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks

4.    By the rude bridge that arched the flood

5.    Come live with me and be my love

6.    God moves in a mysterious way,

7.    Hog Butcher for the World

8.    Little Lamb, who made thee?

9.    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

The answers are below. This quiz was adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature, written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

Answers

1.    Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

2.    Marianne Moore, “Poetry”

3.    Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”

4.    Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn”

5.    Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

6.    William Cowper, “Light Shining Out of Darkness”

7.    Carl Sandburg, “Chicago”

8.    William Blake, “The Lamb”

9.    Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”

During the past 50 years, Communism rose and fell in Europe, relations with Red China were transformed, and Middle Eastern tyrants were embraced, tolerated or toppled. But the Cuba of Fidel Castro has remained a stubborn thorn for every American President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Castro’s regime, which took over Cuba in a 1958 revolution, has survived coups, assassination plots, economic war and one attempted invasion.

What: For most of the 20th century, the Cuban economy –all the sugar, mining, cattle, and oil wealth– was in nearly total American control. American gangsters had a rich share of the casinos and hotels of Havana. The Spanish-American War had also given the United States the base it still controls at Guantanamo.  Then Castro and his rebels took over and turned the island into a Soviet-dominated Communist state. Almost since the time Castro came to power, the CIA began to plan his overthrow.

Who: In 1961, the CIA plotted to invade Cuba with a small army of anti-Castro refugees and exiles called La Brigada. Supported by CIA-planted insurgents in Cuba who would blow up bridges and knock out radio stations, the brigade would land on the beaches of Cuba and set off a popular revolt against Fidel Castro.

When: On April 17, 1961, some 1,400 Cubans, poorly trained, under-equipped, and uninformed of their destination, were set down on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.

By the end of the day on April 19, the invasion was over– a total disaster for the Cuban exile army. The toll was 114 Cuban invaders and many more defenders killed in the fighting; 1,189 other exiles were captured and held prisoner until they were later ransomed from Cuba by then- Attorney General Robert Kennedy for food and medical supplies. Four American fliers, members of the Alabama Air National Guard in CIA employ, also died as part of  the invasion, but the American government never acknowledged their existence or their connection to the operation.

Why: Poor planning, dated information about Cuba, and a complete lack of coordination doomed the ill-fated invasion force. Once the assault was underway, Castro poured thousands of troops into the area. Overwhelmed, the brigade fought bravely, but they lacked ammunition and, most important, the air support promised by the CIA. In Washington, Kennedy feared that any direct U.S. combat involvement might send the Russians into the non-Communist enclave of West Berlin, possibly setting off World War III.

The abject failure of the invasion was a total American humiliation. And it would bring Cold War America to its most dangerous flash point  when the Cuban Missile Crisis later unfolded in October 1962 as the emboldened Soviets, thinking Kennedy indecisive, tried to place missiles in Cuba.

In the view of many historians, the Bay of Pigs debacle also helped create the mind-set that sucked America into the mire of Vietnam. Having failed so completely in their attempt to rid Cuba of Communism, Kennedy and his advisers sought to counter the spread of Communism in Asia. And another fiasco began.

The Kennedy Library offers a page on the Bay of Pigs along with contemporary documents.

This post was adapted from Don’t Know Much About History where you can read more about the impact of the Bay of Pigs on American policy and the Cold War era.

Even Jefferson’s birthday is confusing. History books say he was born on April 13,1743. But the grave marker at Monticello says he was born on April 2. That one is easier to answer than some of the larger contradictions in Jefferson’s life. Jefferson was born while the old Julian calendar was still in use in Protestant England and its American colonies. So the April 2 date is called “Old Style” (O.S.). When Great Britain and America finally came around and adopted the Gregorian (named for Pope Gregory) Calendar in 1758, Jefferson’s birth date was changed to April 13.

Thomas Jefferson's Grave Marker at Monticello (Photo: Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

Birth date aside, Thomas Jefferson is such a fascinating and confounding personality because he more than anyone embodies the “Great Contradiction” in American history. How could a nation dedicated to ideals of  freedom and liberty continue a system that enslaved human beings in the cruelest of ways?

That contradiction is nowhere more evident than in Jefferson’s original draft of Declaration of Independence.

A few years ago, at the New York Public Library, I had the thrilling experience of seeing Jefferson’s handwritten copy of his original draft of the Declaration of Independence.  We may take the words for granted now. But Jefferson gave full voice to the idea that we all possess “inalienable rights.” That we are “created equal.”  That we have basic rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That governments exist to advance those human rights, and only with the “consent of the governed.”

This document was written on both sides of two pieces of paper. In his careful, flowing script, Jefferson included all of his original wording to show what the Congress in Philadelphia had changed, underscoring words and phrases that had been deleted. Those alterations, Jefferson, thought were “mutilations.” Distressed by the editing, he made these “fair copies” of his original some time after July 4th. (The document held by the New York Public Library is one of only two known surviving copies.)

The most startling of these changes is a paragraph about what Jefferson calls “this execrable commerce” — slavery.  Jefferson charged –rather ridiculously, of course– that King George III was responsible for the slave trade and was preventing American efforts to restrain that trade. The section was deleted completely. But it is striking to see Jefferson’s bold, block lettering when he describes:

an open market where MEN should be bought & sold

He clearly wanted to underscore his belief that slaves were MEN. The contradiction is stunning, troubling, and difficult to resolve. Jefferson knew slavery was wrong. He believed, like fellow slaveholder George Washington, that it would end. But both men were inextricably tied to the slave society and economy, even though they believed that the “peculiar institution” would gradually die out.  On that point, both men were grievously wrong and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s opening on April 12 is a grim reminder of that.

Of course, part of the cynicism in Jefferson’s case is due to the rumored relationship between Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings. Even Monticello now acknowledges that relationship probably existed, a contention first raised publicly in 1802 by muckraking newspaperman James Callender, a former Jefferson ally who was disgruntled when Jefferson did not offer him a post in the government. In recent years, Monticello has also gone a long way in addressing the question of slave life at the plantation.

Jefferson, who died on July 4, 1826 –the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration– and his deep contradictions are the perfect reminder that politicians are people –even the marble gods like Washington and Jefferson. Their all-too human flaws are proof of that as well as the fact that history books once tried to hide these flaws by pointing to the past with pride and patriotism.

Those flaws are explored in several of my books, including Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War and most recently A Nation Rising, in which I write about Jefferson’s bitter relationship with his first Vice President, Aaron Burr, a man Thomas Jefferson tried to destroy using every political tool at his disposal as President.

I have always felt that seeing a man like Jefferson as human and not a demigod does not diminish his accomplishments as a leader, philosopher, champion of religious freedom and rationality and builder of a great university. If anything, those accomplishments become all the more remarkable.

“April,” as T.S. Eliot told us, “is the cruellest month.”

It is also National Poetry Month. That idea was inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. So to test your poetic wits, a quick Pop Quiz on some famous first poetic lines… Then go read the whole poems.

“Let us go then, you and I.”  With this opening line, T.S. Eliot invites his reader into the mind of his uninspired, indecisive narrator in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” A poem’s first line can set a scene, as Walt Whitman’s “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed” does.  Or it might intrigue the reader, as when Emily Dickinson writes, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died” (Poem 465).

Who opened their poems with the famous lines below?  See how many poets you can identify.

1.    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

2.    anyone lived in a pretty how town

3.    Take up the White Man’s burden–

4.    ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

5.    In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn

6.    It so happens I am sick of being a man.

7.    I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

This quiz is adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature

Answers

1.    Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43.”

2.    e.e. cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”

3.    Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden.”  This 1899 poem encouraged Americans to colonize the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies.

4.    Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky” from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

5.    Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Kahn.”

6.    Pablo Neruda, “Walking Around” (trans. Robert Bly).

7.    Allen Ginsberg, “Howl.”

On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed into law the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, otherwise known as The Marshall Plan, widely considered the most important foreign policy success of the postwar period.

In the current climate of the GOP’s “Just Say No” deficit-cutting stance and widespread opposition to foreign aid of any kind, would this legislation get through Congress today? It is an ominous thought.

Despite critics of the “Nanny Government,” there are things that only Big Government can do. Saving war-torn continents is one of them.

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave Harvard’s commencement address, introducing and justifying the European Recovery Program, which became known as the Marshall Plan. Marshall had been the Chief of Staff of the Army during World War II and Winston Churchill hailed him as the “true organizer of victory.”.  This plan, part of the Cold War program of “containment” championed by George F. Kennan, is credited with restoring the economies of post World War II western Europe.

At Harvard, Marshall said:

The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.
…Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.

Conceived by Undersecretary of State Will Clayton and first proposed by Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971), the Marshall Plan pumped more than $12 billion into selected war torn European countries during the next four years. (The countries participating were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.) It provided the economic side of Truman’s policy of containment by removing the economic dislocation that might have fostered Communism in Western Europe. It also set up a Displaced Persons Plan under which some 300,000 Europeans, many of them Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, were granted American citizenship. By most accounts, the Marshall Plan was the most successful undertaking of the United States in the post-war era and is often cited as the most compelling argument in favor of foreign aid.
To some contemporary critics on the left, the Marshall Plan was not simply pure American altruism —the goodhearted generosity of America’s best intentions. To them it was simply an extension of a capitalist plan for American economic domination, a calculated Cold War ploy to rebuild European capitalism. Or, to put it simply, if there was no Europe to sell to, who would buy all those products the American industrial machine was turning out?
By any measure, the Marshall Plan must be considered an enormously successful undertaking that helped return a devastated Europe to health. allowing free market democracies to flourish while Eastern Europe, hunkered down under repressive Soviet controlled regimes, stagnated socially and economically.

Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. For more about Marshall, here is a link to the nonprofit Marshall Foundation:

Read more about World War II and the Cold War in Don’t Know Much About® History

John Tyler was born this day, March 29, in 1790, at Greenway, a James River plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, between Richmond and Williamsburg. The son of a wealthy planter and judge, he was raised among Virginia’s elite, attending William and Mary College. He graduated at age 17 and then studied law, earning admission to the bar in 1809.

Tyler served in Congress in both the House and Senate, as well as the Virginia legislature, and in 1840 was named the running mate of William Henry Harrison, a fellow Virginian known as the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe –fought against a confederation of Native American nations led by Tecumseh in 1811.

“Tippecanoe and Tyler too” defeated the incumbent Martin Van Buren, and Harrison took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, delivering the longest inaugural speech in history. He then took ill and died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, becoming the first President to die in office.

That made Tyler the first Vice-President to succeed to the office on the death of a President. The chief controversy of his early administration was over his legal status. Was Tyler actually the President or merely the “acting President?” He regarded himself as President and even returned mail unopened that was addressed to “The Acting President.” But many derided him as His Accidency.

Another distinction was Tyler’s marriage, following the death of his first wife Letitia Christian  in 1842, to Julia Gardiner. The daughter of a wealthy New York politician, she had created a minor scandal in polite society by appearing in an advertisement at age 19. When they married in New York City in 1844, she was 24; Tyler was 54 and the 30-year age difference raised eyebrows and caused a rift with some of Tyler’s grown children. However, this wedding earned Tyler the distinction of being the first President to be married while in office.

Sherwood Forest Virginia Home of President John Tyler (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

His single term ended and he failed to be renominated. Tyler gave way to the the candidacy of James K. Polk rather than run as third-party candidate. Tyler retired to this plantation  home, Sherwood Forest, which is a National Historic landmark in Virginia.

His final distinction was his election to the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy and his failed attempt to broker a peace deal before the Civil War broke out. But in November 1861, Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, becoming the first former President to be elected to serve in another government –the Confederacy.

Tyler died on January 18, 1862 before taking his seat in the Confederate Congress. Although he had planned to be buried at his Sherwood Forest home, he is buried in Richmond.

For many years after the Civil War, his resting place was officially ignored. In 1915, 50 years after the Civil War ended, the Congress voted to erect a memorial stone over his grave.

What was the difference between the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions?

One week after Lincoln’s inaugural address, on March 11, the Confederacy adopted a constitution. Given the long-held arguments that the crisis was over such issues as federal power and states’ rights, and not slavery, it might be assumed that the new Confederate nation adopted some very different form of government, perhaps more like the Articles of Confederation, under which the states operated before the Constitution was adopted.

In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was based almost verbatim on the U.S. Constitution. There were, however, several significant but relatively minor differences, as well as one big difference:

• The preamble added the words, “each State acting in its sovereign and independent character,” and instead of forming “a more perfect Union,” it was forming “a permanent federal government.” It also added an invocation to “Almighty God” absent from the original.

• It permitted a tariff for revenue but not for protection of domestic industries, though the distinction between the two was unclear.

• It altered the executive branch by creating a presidency with a single six-year term, instead of (then) unlimited four-year terms. However, the presidency was strengthened with a line item veto with which certain parts of a budget can be removed by the president. (Many U.S. presidents of both parties have argued for the line item veto as a means to control congressional spending. A line item veto was finally passed in 1996 and used first by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional.

• The major differences between the two constitutions regarded slavery. First, the Confederate version didn’t bother with neat euphemisms (“persons held in service”) but simply and honestly called it slavery. While it upheld the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad, the Confederate constitution removed any restrictions on slavery. Slavery was going to be protected and extended into any new territory the Confederacy might acquire.

•There were also changes in citizenship requirements that were designed to prevent abolition-minded people from moving into the Confederate states and influencing slavery laws.

In other words, while “states’ rights” is a powerful abstraction, and the back-and-forth between federal power and the power of the states has been a theme throughout American history, there were few explicit changes to the federal powers under the Constitution. There  was really only one right that the southern states cared about. Examining the speeches by southern leaders and the Confederate constitution itself underscores the fact that the only right in question was the right to continue slavery without restriction, both where it already existed and in the new territories being opened up in the West.

(adapted from Don’t Know Much About History. For more about the Civil War, read Don’t Know Much About the Civil War.

The complete text of the Confederate Constitution can be found in the documents at the Avalon Project, Yale Law School.

An excellent source to follow the progress of the Civil War can be found at Vermont Public Radio’s Civil War Book of Days.

But this year, as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches, the maple sugar season has a different meaning. Some 70 years before the war began on April 12, 1861, people had looked to maple sugar  –both as a political and economic weapon against slavery. The idea was simple –replace cane sugar, produced by slave labor, with maple sugar and it would be a blow to the slave system.

One of the first to advocate the idea was Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration and an early voice of abolition in America.  With the Quakers of Philadelphia, Rush proposed using maple sugar as a means of hastening the end of slavery by replacing one of the key products manufactured by slave labor.  (Rush also opposed the death penalty, was a proponent of public education, and advocated for the humane treatment of the mentally ill.)

In 1788 Rush had published an essay on the “Advantages of the Culture of the Sugar Maple Tree” in a Philadelphia monthly. In 1789 he had founded, with a group of Philadelphia Quakers, the Society for Promoting the Manufacture of Sugar from the Sugar Maple Tree. He had even staged a scientific tea party to prove the potency of maple sugar. The guests – Alexander Hamilton, Quaker merchant Henry Drinker, and “several Ladies” – sipped cups of hyson tea, sweetened with equal amounts of cane and maple sugar. All agreed the sugar from the maple was as sweet as cane sugar. (Source: The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)

Their aim was simple, as Rush’s 1788 essay put it: “to lessen or destroy the consumption of West Indian sugar, and thus indirectly to destroy negro slavery.”

Dr. Rush found an enthusiastic disciple in Thomas Jefferson, who explored the concept of an American maple sugar industry during a journey to Vermont and even attempted–unsuccessfully it would turn out– to import sugar maple trees to Monticello.

Jefferson and other conscientious consumers could now … “put sugar in (their) coffee without being saddened by the thought of all the toil, sweat, tears, suffering and crimes that have hitherto been necessary to procure this product.” (Source: The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)

Jefferson, Dr. Rush and other Abolitionists were ultimately disappointed as the maple sugar idea failed to gain a foothold and speculation in maple forests actually created a “maple bubble” which burst before this “sugar substitute” could prove itself an economic weapon against slavery.

But well into the 19th century, Abolitionists continued to  pursue the cause of maple sugar. The American artist Eastman Johnson attempted to make maple syrup a political statement through a collection of works showing the sugaring process was not only a part of New England’s social fabric, but a way to strike a blow for freedom.

This failed effort to make what we buy and eat a political act may have been a quixotic disappointment. But the thought of putting maple syrup and sugar to use in a noble cause only makes them taste a little sweeter. And the fundamental idea that taking care in what what we purchase and consume can make a difference is still a valuable principle.

“That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?”

It is more than a little ironic to me that today, as we mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration on March 4, 1861 – and the events leading to the first shots in the Civil War on April 12, 1861—that “destroying the Union” has a very different context. In Wisconsin and other parts of the country, there is an assault on unionized workers –private and public. That attack on one group of Americans by another is, in fact, another kind of civil war.

When Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address, before a crowd said to number 30,000, on what was a balmy fifty-degree March day, in front of the unfinished Capitol Building, the nation was on the brink of the deadliest and most dangerous chapter in our history.

It is hard to imagine the weight of responsibility on Lincoln’s shoulders as he rose to speak. Never was the nation more divided. The division extended well past North and South.

In his speech, Lincoln was measured, even conciliatory. No glove was thrown down, no threats issued. He sought to reassure the slaveholding states that he had no plan to abolish slavery. That was never the issue for him –although he was morally and philosophically opposed to slavery, Lincoln recognized that it was the law of the land. He and most other Republicans sought merely to limit its extension.

Lincoln was at first lawyerly, arguing for the permanence of the Constitution and the inherent political flaws and dangers of secession. But he also spoke compellingly and from the heart about the history of the Union, going back before 1776.  And in the end, he sought to connect Americans together, to find common ground –even as the  issues drove them further apart.

In rereading and reflecting on Lincoln’s first inaugural –one of the greatest speeches in American history— I can only wonder in the present division: What would Lincoln say if he was in Wisconsin?

Maybe it would be as simple and as eloquent as this:

“We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

************

In this clip, the late political columnist and one-time presidential speechwriter William Safire discusses Lincoln’s First Inaugural and the composition of that memorable closing passage in particular.

Eighty years ago, on March 3, 1931 President Herbert Hoover signed into law the bill that made “The Star-Spangled Banner” the National Anthem

It has been officially butchered at baseball and football games ever since. Just ask Christina Aguilera who had some trouble with the part about those annoying ramparts at the most recent Super Bowl.

But the history of the song that has confounded singers for so long goes back much farther. To trace that history, I took a field trip to the song’s birthplace, Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was September 13, 1814. America was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in Baltimore’s harbor. In the morning, he could see that the Stars and Stripes still flew over Fort McHenry. Inspired, he wrote the lyrics that we all know –well some of you know some of them.

But here’s what they didn’t tell you:

Yes, Washington, D.C. was burned in 1814, including the President’s Home which would later get a fresh coat of paint and be called the “White House.” But Washington was torched in retaliation for the burning of York –now Toronto—in Canada earlier in the war.

Yes, Key wrote words. But the music comes from an old English drinking song. Good thing it wasn’t 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.
Here’s a link to the original lyrics of the Drinking song via Poem of the Week
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw234.html

The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1916 when President Wilson declared it by Executive Order. But that didn’t really count. And finally, in 1931, it became the National Anthem by Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover, on March 3.

Now, here are a couple of footnotes to the Francis Scott Key story—his son, Philip Barton Key, was a District attorney in Washington. DC. He was shot and killed by Congressman Daniel Sickles. Sickles was acquitted with the first use of the defense of temporary insanity in 1859. And went on to serve as a Civil War general –and not a very good one.

And speaking of the Civil War, Key’s grandson was later imprisoned in Fort McHenry along with Baltimore’s Mayor and other pro-Confederate sympathizers.

Here are some places to learn more about Fort McHenry, Key and the Flag that inspired the National Anthem.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/fomc/home.htm
The images and music in this video are courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.ed/starspangledbanner/

This version of the anthem in the video is performed on 19th century instruments:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/mp3/song.ssb.dsl.mp3

Sung by a swelling chorus of lovely ladies (and a few guys) of all colors, shapes and sizes, it was the anthem of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Airing in the 1970s, as American unions began to confront the inexorable drain of jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, the song ringingly implored us to look for the union label when shopping for clothes (“When you are buying a coat, dress or blouse”). Seeing these earnest women, thinking of them at their sewing machines, made some of us race to the closet and check our clothes for that ILGWU imprimatur. (“It says we’re able to make it in the USA.”)

After all, these were ladies who could put in a hard day’s work and then come home and bake one hell of a pie.  They were the daughters of Rosie the Riveter. Owning the clothes they made just seemed, well, righteous.

With all the talk abut union-busting and collective bargaining in the controversy over public employee unions, those union ladies of the ILGWU came to mind when I was looking for some socks the other day—even though socks weren’t mentioned in the song.  Hunting for warmth in this winter of our discontent, I found it difficult to find a pair of socks that were made in America, just as we all know it is increasingly challenging to locate other American-made articles of clothing, household products, electronics or sports equipment. This, of course, is not news. It’s globalization baby!  (Blaming this problem entirely on the unions, as many Americans do, is a simplistic and convenient misrepresentation of a much more complex issue.)

I have never been one to paste a “Buy American—The Job You Save May Be Your Own” bumper sticker on my cars (which for the most part, I must add, have been foreign-made). But in the past few years, my wife and I have been making a conscious decision to “Buy Local.” That means shopping at the local hardware store, sporting goods store and especially the farmers market near our Vermont home, where we feel like we are not only getting fresher produce but also participating in a community. We like to buy things from our neighbors. Even better if they make or grow them.

I struck gold with my sock problem when I finally found some wonderful Merino socks that were not only made in America, but also made in Vermont! They weren’t cheap but they were on special—“Buy 3 Get 1 Free”—so I took four pair. And yes, I love my Darn Tough socks.

But here’s the point. Whether it is socks or solar panels, the task of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base is obviously one key to the problem of unemployment and low-wage jobs facing the country. It would be incredibly naïve to think that buying four pairs of locally produced socks will make a big difference. But small acts add up to movements. In the past few months, as my wife and I have become far more label-conscious, we’ve put down many an item that was foreign-made, either doing without or expanding the search.

Lately, with a little effort –and some gentle nudging to merchants to show me something made in America—I’ve found some small prizes: a nice pair of cycling shorts made in High Point, N.C.; a road bike built in Pennsylvania; sneakers still turned out in an American plant.

Admittedly, some concessions are necessary –unless you want to go the Gandhi route and wear homespun. But I don’t do loincloths very well.

Now, as a political statement, buying home- grown socks doesn’t quite rank with joining the March on Washington or going on a hunger strike for peace. It’s one small step. But maybe it is the first step that begins a long journey —and in comfortable socks!

So back to those singing ladies –and a final point on labor history and the current headlines. The International Ladies Garment Worker Union was born in 1900, in the midst of the often-violent period of early 20th century labor organizing when brutal working conditions and child labor were the norm in America’s mines and factories. One of the companies the union attempted to organize was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which employed many poor and mostly immigrant women. A walkout against the firm in 1909 helped strengthen the union’s rolls and led to a union victory in 1910. But the Triangle Shirtwaist Company –which would chain its doors shut to control its workers— earned infamy when a fire broke out on March 25, 1911 and 146 workers, most of them young women, were trapped in the flaming building and died, some leaping to their deaths. The tragedy helped galvanize the trade union movement and especially the ILGWU.

As the 100th anniversary of that dreadful event approaches, it is worth remembering that American prosperity was built on the sweat, tears and blood of working men and women. It is a piece of history that should be part of any discussion of the future of workers’ unions and their rights.

Cornell University’s Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation offers a web exhibit on the Triangle Factory Fire;

And last night, February 28, 2011, the American Experience on PBS aired a documentary film about the tragedy and the period.

I also discuss labor history in Don’t Know Much About History.

Okay. We all do it. It’s printed on calendars and in bank windows. We mistakenly call the third Monday in February Presidents Day, in part because of all those commercials in which George Washington uses his legendary ax and “Rail-splitter” Abe Lincoln swings his ax to chop down prices on everything from linens to SUVs.

But, really it is George Washington’s Birthday –federally speaking that is.
The official designation of the federal holiday observed on the third Monday of February was, and still is, Washington’s Birthday.

But Washington’s Birthday has become widely known as Presidents Day (or President’s Day, or even Presidents’  Day). The popular usage and confusion resulted from the merging of what had been two widely celebrated Presidential birthdays in February –Lincoln’s on February 12th, which was never a federal holiday– and Washington’s on February 22.

Created under the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968, which gave us three-day weekend Monday holidays, the federal holiday on the third Monday in February is technically still Washington’s Birthday. But here’s the rub: the holiday can never land on Washington’s true birthday because the latest date it can fall is February 21, as it does in 2011.

Washington's Tomb -- Mt. Vernon (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis 2010)

Just because it is officially Washington’s Birthday doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the other Presidents too. So here’s a quick Presidential Pop Quiz:

•Who was the first President born an American citizen?

Martin van Buren, the eighth, also known as “Old Kinderhook,” or “OK”. All of his predecessors were born British subjects during the colonial era.

•Who was the first President to commit troops to a foreign country?

From 1801 to 1805, Thomas Jefferson sent the navy and marines to “Barbary” in what is modern day Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to attack the pirates who were preying on American and European shipping.

•Washington was the first general to become President. But how many other generals became President?

Eleven. Besides Washington, five were career officers: Andrew Jackson (Creek War, War of 1812); William Henry Harrison (Battle of Tippecanoe); Zachary Taylor (Mexican War); Grant (Civil War); and Eisenhower (WW II).  Six others were not career soldiers but attained the rank by appointment: Franklin Pierce, (Mexican War); Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison (all of whom served in the Civil War).

Ironically, the two greatest war Presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, had little or no military experience. Lincoln was briefly in the Illinois militia, or national guard, during the Black Hawk War and later said he led a charge against an onion field and lost a lot of blood to mosquitoes.

During World War I, Roosevelt was Undersecretary of the Navy and had tried to enlist, but was asked to remain in his navy office. And many other Presidents had military experience but never attained the rank of general.

•Which President dodged the draft, legally?

During the Civil War, Grover Cleveland paid for a substitute when he was drafted. That was legal at the time under the 1863 Conscription Act.

•Which two Presidents died on the Fourth of July, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed?

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1826. James Monroe also died on July 4, 1831, and Calvin Coolidge was born in Vermont on Independence Day.

•Did President Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope?

That’s the myth. But no, Lincoln drafted what may be the most memorable speech in American history several times. At Gettysburg for the dedication of a cemetery to the thousands who had died in the 1863 battle, Lincoln was not the featured speaker. That honor went to a man who spoke for two hours. Lincoln’s address took about two and half minutes. But which one do we remember?

•Which President returned to the House of Representatives after his term?

John Quincy Adams

Many of these questions are drawn from Don’t Know Much About History or my children’s book Don’t Know Much About the Presidents

You can also  read more quick Presidential biographies at the White House official site.

That’s what a President who is re-elected and fully serves both terms in office gets. But as history tells us, more than a few presidents who desired a second term were not returned to office. And not every president seeks re-election.

As Presidents Day –actually Washington’s Birthday in official terms– approaches, and with the first whiff of a 2012 campaign in the air, it seems a good time to take a look at how history has shaken out. What keeps single-term Presidents from earning those added 1,461 days in office? And what can the past say about President Obama’s future?

Leaving out those eight men who died in office, either naturally or by assassination, and the five Presidents who only served out the term of a deceased –or in one case, resigned— predecessor and were not reelected in their own right, here’s the list of America’s twelve single-term Presidents (See the White House for quick bios of each):

2d John Adams (Not reelected)
6th John Quincy Adams (Not reelected)
8th Martin Van Buren (Not reelected)
11th James Knox Polk (Pledged to serve a single term and did not seek a second term)
14th Franklin Pierce (Denied nomination)
15th James Buchanan (Did not seek a second term)
19th Rutherford B. Hayes (Pledged to a single term)
23rd Benjamin Harrison (Not reelected)
27th William Howard Taft (Not reelected)
31st Herbert Hoover (Not reelected)
39th Jimmy Carter (Not reelected)
41st George H.W. Bush (Not reelected)

(Grover Cleveland deserves an asterisk here. The 22nd President was elected in 1884 and then defeated in a controversial election, despite winning the popular vote in 1888. But he won again in 1892 and returned to the White House in 1893 as the 24th President.)

Clearly, the first rule about being reelected President is to avoid having the name Adams. We can also set aside James Knox Polk and Rutherford B. Hayes as exceptions; both had pledged to serve only a single term. But apart from the name Adams and the Polk-Hayes oddities, there are a few common themes here:

•Tough act to follow: Several of the Presidents who failed in a bid for a second term were following an extremely popular President. John Adams (after Washington), Martin Van Buren (Andrew Jackson), William Howard Taft (Theodore Roosevelt), and George H.W. Bush (Ronald Reagan). Certainly each of these men had to contend with the expectations —and perhaps the “fatigue factor”— of following in the footsteps of four of the most popular Presidents in history. Taft’s case is also unusual –he had to run against his popular predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, and finished third, with Woodrow Wilson winning the 1912 election.

•Not the People’s Choice: John Quincy Adams won the 1824 election based on the vote in the House of Representatives. (His opponent, Andrew Jackson, the popular vote winner, called it the “corrupt bargain” and won four years later.)  Although Hayes had pledged not run, he also became President in one of the most controversial elections in history in 1876, when a special Commission awarded him some disputed electoral votes, denying the popular vote winner, Samuel Tilden. And Harrison also won a disputed election in 1888 against the aforementioned Cleveland in which election fraud is credited with giving Harrison the electors from Indiana.

•Ineffective (polite way of saying bad): Pierce and Buchanan, who both were contending with a nation heading almost inexorably towards Civil War, are often ranked among the worst American Presidents; neither was renominated by their party. Historians usually rank most of the other one-termers fairly low. Jimmy Carter was given fairly poor marks for his Presidency, and especially for his handling of the Iran hostage crisis. But his loss may have more to do with the next theme.
(C-Span surveyed historians for Presidential rankings in 2009 and Carter was ranked #25 of 42, right behind Taft.)

•It’s the economy stupid: Most elections are won and lost on the pocketbook issue. Opponents called Van Buren “Martin Van Ruin” as the nation endured a long economic downturn. Herbert Hoover presided over the Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. Jimmy Carter, saddled with unemployment, inflation, and high interest rates (remember 12%?), and George Bush were also hurt by severe recessions on their watch.

Among the Presidents who took office on the death (or resignation) of the President, there are five who did not win a term of their own and they also receive generally low historical ratings:
10th John Tyler (Denied nomination)
13th Millard Fillmore (Denied nomination)
17th Andrew Johnson (Denied nomination)
21st Chester A. Arthur       (Denied nomination)
38th Gerald Ford (Lost bid for second term)

What does any of this augur for Barack Obama?

Obama is probably safe on the first three counts: his predecessor was not ranked among the “greats”; he was popularly elected; and, whether or not you like his policies, his first two years can’t be called “ineffective.”

But if history has anything to say about Obama’s future, the last point –the economy, stupid– will again be the determining factor.

During his first term, Ronald Reagan was saddled with a deep recession and a higher unemployment rate (10.8% in November 1982) than we have now.  Reagan, like Obama, suffered a sharp setback in the midterm elections of 1982. But over the next two years, the economy began to turn and Reagan went on to a landslide victory to secure his second term in 1984.

The history of Presidential reelection fortunes? Maybe It’s all about the “benjamins” after all.

Read more about the Presidents and elections in Don’t Know Much About History

When I was a kid, we got two holidays: one for Lincoln’s Birthday and another for Washington’s. Now, we have to make do with a three day weekend in February for Presidents Day.
Think you know about the Father of Our Country?
This video contains a few things that might surprise you.

Want to learn a little more?
Here is the website for the National Park Service’s Birthplace of Washington site:
http://www.nps.gov/gewa/index.htm

And here is the National Park Service website for Fort Necessity, scene of Washington’s surrender and “confession.”
http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm

(Corrected: An earlier version of this post used the date February 4, 1865.)

One week after Lincoln’s first inaugural address, on March 11, the Confederacy adopted a constitution. Given the long-held arguments that the crisis was over such issues as federal power and states’ rights, and not slavery, it might be assumed that the new Confederate nation adopted some very different form of government, perhaps more like the Articles of Confederation, under which the states operated before the Constitution was adopted.

In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was based almost verbatim on the U.S. Constitution. There were, however, several significant but relatively minor differences, as well as one big difference:

• The preamble added the words, “each State acting in its sovereign and independent character,” and instead of forming “a more perfect Union,” it was forming “a permanent federal government.” It also added an invocation to “Almighty God” absent from the original.

• It permitted a tariff for revenue but not for protection of domestic industries, though the distinction between the two was unclear.

• It altered the executive branch by creating a presidency with a single six-year term, instead of the (then) unlimited four-year terms. However, the presidency was strengthened with a line item veto with which certain parts of a budget can be removed by the president. (Many U.S. presidents of both parties have argued for the line item veto as a means to control congressional spending. A line item veto was finally passed in 1996 and used first by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional.)

• The major difference between the two constitutions regarded slavery. First, the Confederate version didn’t bother with neat euphemisms (“persons held in service”) but simply and honestly called it slavery. While it upheld the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad, the Confederate constitution removed any restrictions on slavery. Slavery was going to be protected and extended into any new territory the Confederacy might acquire.

In other words, while “states’ rights” is a powerful abstraction, and the back-and-forth between federal power and the power of the states has been a theme throughout American history, there was really only one right that the southern states cared about. Examining the speeches by southern leaders and the Confederate constitution itself underscores the fact that the only right in question was the right to continue slavery without restriction, both where it already existed and in the new territories being opened up in the West.

Adapted from Don’t Know Much About History

My complete history of the Civil War can be found in  Don’t Know Much About the Civil War

Hard to believe, but the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland had a reputation for being dull and uninspiring at his day job: Mathematics Lecturer at Oxford University. But when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born on January 27, 1832, mathematician, took on the pen name “Lewis Carroll,” he dreamed up fantastical stories that charmed children and adults alike.  Preferring the company of little girls throughout his adult life—a fact that has perplexed and concerned his critics—Dodgson wrote playful nonsense to delight young readers.  Among his best-loved works are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (1871).  Are you growing “curiouser and curiouser” about the Wonderland Carroll created? Then follow Alice down the rabbit hole and take this quick quiz adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature.

1.    Was Alice based on a real person?

2.    Who says the famous line, “Off with her head!”?

3.    Which Wonderland character can vanish as he pleases, leaving his grin to disappear last?

4.    Which poem, included in Through the Looking Glass, introduced invented words like brillig, slithy, wabe, and mimsy?

5.    In Through the Looking Glass, what nonsensical poem do Tweedledum and Tweedledee sing?

6.    What Woodstock-era rock song used characters and symbols from Carroll’s Alice books to describe the psychedelic effects of drugs like LSD?

The non-profit Lewis Carroll Society offers online links to FAQs, research and events.

Answers

1.    Though the stories were clearly works of imagination, their heroine was inspired by Alice Liddell, the daughter of one of Dodgson’s Oxford colleagues.

2.    The Queen of Hearts—a playing card come to life in Alice’s Adventures.

3.    The Cheshire Cat.

4.    “Jabberwocky.”  Humpty Dumpty explains these foreign words to Alice.

5.    “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

6.    White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.  The line “Go ask Alice” later became the title of an 1971 book, allegedly the diary of an anonymous teenage drug addict.

We want it (the library) to be a place for relaxation and fun for the kids.

Bringing to light one more depressing example in a long, sad line of stories about censorship may simply make your eyes glaze over. But this Connecticut library story comes right on the heels of the Smithsonian’s decision to pull a video, “A Fire in My Belly,” from a recent show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. because it included 11 seconds of footage of ants crawling on a crucifix.

Add these two incidents to the renewed threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasting by an emboldened Republican majority in the House, the attempted cancellation of an August Wilson play for its use of the word “nigger,” and the related controversy over an expurgated version –subject of a previous blog– of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Censorship is riding high. It is once again as American as apple pie, assassinations and anti-immigrant vitriol.

Perhaps this trend should come as no surprise. The last election seemed to suggest a swing to the right. Economic hard times also tend to produce a backlash against what is “unpopular” or “different.” Public funding of “controversial art” has always been a bete noire for many Republicans, evangelical Christians and some Catholics. But in a time when the political discourse includes a church group that protests at soldiers’ funerals and placing cross-hairs on political ads, the calls for censorship aren’t limited to the right side of the political spectrum.

All of these developments demand a restatement and explanation of the First Amendment. So here it is, courtesy of the American Library Association:

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

Of course, there is a long litany of weighty quotes from writers and jurists about the importance of free expression in an open, democratic society. One would hope that it need not be provided to Congress or the Town Council of Enfield, Ct.

But it is this simple — a group of radicals, who wanted to overthrow the society and government that ruled them, once wrote and said some very dangerous things. Today, we keep them in the National Archives. The Founders and Framers understood with complete clarity that it is the least popular ideas and expression that need the most protection.

He is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.

Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered.

On Monday January 17, 2011, Dr. King’s life will be marked by a federal holiday (3d Monday in January) celebrating his life and achievements. It is now a day that many try and set aside as a Day of Service in honor of Dr. King’s memory. The “Dream Speech” will be televised and talked about.

But Martin Luther King’s Dream seems very far away after Tucson. (It is perhaps worth noting that Arizona was a state in which the newly-elected Governor Evan Mecham revoked the state’s King holiday in 1987 and it was only reinstated after a national outcry and the NFL pulled the Super Bowl from its Arizona site in 1993.)

According to a recent poll, as reported on National Public Radio, ”

Despite having their first black president, Americans are no more certain than before that the country is closer to the racial equality preached by Martin Luther King Jr.

The killings in Tucson and the ugly wash of words that have unfortunately followed in their wake seem to have left little room for thoughts of Martin Luther King –also gunned down by an assassin. But his fundamental ideas are always worth remembering, particularly in the face of this deadly violence.

These words come from his Nobel lecture:

Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.

A work that aspires, however, humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

The great novelist Joseph Conrad wrote those words in a literary manifesto called “A Preface to the Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’ ”

Oops, I mean “Slave of the Narcissus.” Or should it be “The Children of the Sea,” the title used by Conrad’s first American publisher in 1897? Or perhaps I should call it the nearly unspeakable “N-word of the Narcissus,” the title chosen by WordBridge, publisher of a 2009 bowdlerized version of Conrad’s novel?

This question arises over the decision to publish a “sanitized” version of the great American classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in an edition which purges the use of the word “nigger” (as well as “injun”). The edition, forthcoming from NewSouth Books, replaces more than 200 uses of the word “nigger” with “slave”  in Mark Twain’s original text and substitutes “Indian” for “injun.”.

This, I believe, is the real N-word: Nonsense.

NewSouth Books asserts that these epithets are “hurtful” and prevent some teachers from assigning the book.

It’s true –some readers, along with educators and parents, have been offended by the use of a word that makes people uncomfortable — with good reason.

News flash: Art is supposed to make us uncomfortable.

The controversy behind the decision to –in my opinion– deface  a signature piece of American culture has been well-covered in the media and addressed by many, including New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani as well as the Times editorial page.

As someone who cares deeply about American History and Literature, I would like to add my voice to all those who find this expurgated version of Huck Finn an act of cultural destruction in the guise of political correctness. While it falls far short of the Taliban blowing up ancient Buddhas, it is a lot worse than draping the bare breasts of two female “Liberty” statues at the Justice Dept. during John Ashcroft’s days as Attorney General.

We are not talking about painting lawn jockeys white, but altering the intent and meaning of one of America’s cultural touchstones. And in so doing, missing Mark Twain’s central point. It’s a bit like complaining that Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is cruel to Irish babies.

This should be what I and others like to call a “teachable moment.”

Teachers should assign Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, read it together with their students, and talk about what the book means. And most important, what Mark Twain meant. Acknowledge that this word is hateful and hurtful. But get students to Think For Themselves. That, after all, is a teacher’s most important job.

And maybe, while they are at it, teachers might get them to read Randall Kennedy’s excellent book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. (Pantheon, 2002). In it, Kennedy writes of Huck Finn:

Twain is not willfully buttressing racism here; he is seeking ruthlessly to unveil and ridicule it. By putting nigger in white characters’ mouths, the author is not branding blacks, but rather branding the whites. . . . Huckleberry Finn is the best fictive example  of Twain’s triumph over his upbringing. In it, he creates a loving relationship between Huck and Jim, the runaway slave, all the while sardonically impugning the pretensions of white racial superiority.

Joseph Conrad, whose work was also sanitized for an American audience, also wrote in that memorable essay (a must read for writers, by the way):

And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. . .  If I succeed, you shall find there according to your desserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm-all you demand-and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”

Providing that glimpse of truth is what Huck, Jim and Mark Twain were able to do. The justification is found not only in every line, but in every word. Even the “hurtful” ones.

In 1941, on the 150th anniversary of the ratification, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that December 15th would be Bill of Rights Day.

Now it may not be circled red on your calendar, but few events in American history are more important –or the source of more controversy — than the ratification of the Bill of Rights. These Ten Amendments (not Commandments!) are at the heart of the most precious rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including the First Amendment’s guarantees of speech, religion, the press, peaceable assembly and the right to petition. They are also at the heart of some of our most pressing controversies, including the right to bear arms, the rights of the accused under the American system of justice, and the power of the states versus the federal government.

Here is the Preamble to the Bill of Rights:

Congress of the United States
begun and held at the City of New-York, on
Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

The full text and history of the Bill of Rights can be found the site of the National Archives.

In Philadelphia, they celebrate Bill of Rights Day at the Constitution Center and you can find some good resources there.

I hope you’ll take some time to read these precious Amendments today. It doesn’t take long and it is well worth the effort.

Happy Bill of Rights Day!

(The Truman Library offers a comprehensive overview of the 1948 Desegregation decision).

Here is how Truman opened his Executive Order in July 1948:

WHEREAS it is essential that there be maintained in the armed services of the United States the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country’s defense:

NOW THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, by the Constitution and the statutes of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.

Truman’s decision took years to be fully implemented. It was resisted inside the Pentagon and in Congress. But it was politically daring. The country overwhelmingly approved of a segregated military. Yet Truman’s bold, brave decision –which did not require Congressional action– was a giant step in the civil rights movement.

With one Executive Order, he brought belief and optimism to black Americans and those who sought racial justice, both inside and outside the armed forces. It would be years before the courts and Congress caught up to Truman’s principled stand. This was Presidential leadership in action. This was “Hope” and this was “Change.” Sudden. Dramatic. Uncompromising.

In response to the Senate defeat of the measure repealing “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell,” President Obama mustered a statement saying he was “extremely disappointed.”

So are a great many people who voted for him.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
. . . The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.
. . . No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Messsage to Congress (December 8, 1941)

At 7 A.M., Hawaiian time, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, two U.S. Army privates saw something unusual on their radar screens. More than 50 planes seemed to be appearing out of the northeast. When they called in the information, they were told it was probably just part of an expected delivery of new B-17s coming from the mainland United States. They were Japanese warplanes.

At 0758 the Pearl Harbor command radioed its first message to the world. AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. An hour later, a second wave of 167 more Japanese aircraft arrived. The two raids, which had lasted only minutes, destroyed or damaged nineteen ships, eight of them eight battleships, and 292 aircraft, including 117 bombers. And 2,403 Americans, military and civilian, had been killed, with another 1,178 wounded.

Few questions have tantalized historians and students of the period more than this: Did FDR or members of his administration and military command know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and did they deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives in order to draw America into the most deadly, destructive war in history?

Some say FDR was preoccupied with the war in Europe and didn’t want war with Japan. Others hold that FDR viewed Japan—allied to the German-Italian Axis—as his ticket into the European war. The ultimate conclusion to this view is that FDR knew of the imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and not only failed to prevent it, but welcomed it as the turning point that would end obstruction of his war plans.

There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that “zero hour,” as the Japanese ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled for December 7. According to John Toland’s account of Pearl Harbor, Infamy, Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington.

Here is where human frailty and overconfidence, and even American racism, take over. Most American military planners expected a Japanese attack to come in the Philippines, America’s major base in the Pacific; the American naval fortifications at Pearl Harbor were believed to be invulnerable to attack, as well as too far away for the Japanese.

While the conspiracy theorists persist, a convincing case for Roosevelt trying to avoid war with Japan has been made by many prominent historians. Among them, eminent British military historian John Keegan dismisses the conspiracy notion.

“These charges defy logic,” Keegan wrote in The Second World War. “Churchill certainly did not want war against Japan, which Britain was pitifully equipped to fight, but only American assistance in the fight against Hitler. . . .”

The U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command has an extensive collection of online documents and resources related to the Pearl Harbor attack:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm
This is the National Park Service link to World War II Pacific sites;
http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm

Find more on Pearl Harbor and World War II in Don’t Know Much About History

If you are coming to see the Big Tree in Rockefeller Center by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, you’ll be greeted by two starkly opposing views of the Christmas Season. As the Daily News reported on December 2, an atheist group placed a billboard featuring the Star of Bethlehem, “Three Kings” and the Holy Family at the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel saying “You know it’s a myth.” A Catholic group responded with a billboard of its own saying “You know it’s real,” with a picture of Jesus and Mary.

It might seem like a replay of the classic “Less Filling-Tastes Great” light beer ads. But the dueling billboards highlight the divide over Christmas as an increasingly secular American holiday. More to the point, the atheist billboard raises the question of whether the Nativity, Christmas Day, and all the attendant traditions –from lighted trees to mistletoe, wreaths and Yule logs– have any historical basis.

So here’s the real first Christmas question: Why all the fuss over December 25?

For starters, the Gospels never mention a precise date or even a season for the birth of Jesus. How then did we settle on December 25?
If a bright light just went off in your head, you’re getting warm. It’s all about the Sun.

In ancient times, a popular Roman festival celebrated Saturnalia, a Thanksgiving-like holiday marking the winter solstice and honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Saturnalia began on December 17th and while it only lasted two days at first, it was eventually extended into a weeklong period that lost its agricultural significance and simply became a time of general merriment. Even slaves were given temporary freedom to do as they pleased, while the Romans feasted, visited one another, lit candles and gave gifts. Later it was changed to honor the official Roman Sun god known as Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) and the solstice fell on December 25.

Two other important pagan gods popular in ancient Rome were also celebrated around this date. The Roman were big on adopting the gods of the people they conquered. Mithra, a Persian god of light who was first popular among Roman soldiers, acquired a large cult in ancient Rome. The birth of Attis, another agricultural god from Asia Minor, was also celebrated on December 25. Attis dies but is brought back to life by his lover, a goddess whose temple later became the site of an important basilica honoring the Virgin Mary. By the way, the symbol of Attis was a pine tree.

Candles. Gift giving. Pine trees. Dying gods brought back to life. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

All the similarities between Saturnalia and these other Roman holidays and the celebration of Christmas are no coincidence. In the fourth century, Pope Julius 1 assigned December 25 as the day to celebrate the Mass of Christ’s birth –Christ’s mass. This was a clever marketing ploy that conveniently sidestepped the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday while converting the population. Most of our Christmas traditions reflect the merger of pagan rituals, beliefs, and traditions with Christianity. The early church fathers knew that they couldn’t convert people without allowing them to keep some of their ancient festivals and rituals so they would allow them if they could be connected to Christianity. (Catholic authorities disagree and say that December date was arrived at by adding nine months to March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the day of Jesus’ miraculous conception.

The importance of the winter solstice, then, is crucial to understanding not only the date of Christmas but many of the other “myths” of this season.

While we are talking about dates, the precise year of the birth of Jesus is also a mystery. The dating system we use is based on a system devised by a monk around 1500 years ago and is seriously flawed. The historical King Herod who ordered the massacre of the innocents died in 4 BC (or BCE, Before the Common Era). The “census” ordered by Emperor Augustine is not recorded in Roman history, but a local census did take place in the Roman province of Judea in 6 AD (or CE, the Common Era). Is that all perfectly clear now?

“Yes, Virginia,” almost everything that Christians around the world cherish about Christmas comes from a pre-Christian era, including the prototype for Santa Claus being found in the Norse myth of Odin riding across the winter sky on an eight-legged horse and leaving gifts for the children who left some hay out for his horse.

But is it all a myth? Does the pagan background to the Christmas traditions mean that Jesus is also a myth? That’s a very different question for another day.

You can read more about the mythic roots of Christmas and the gospel accounts of Jesus in Don’t Know Much About Mythology and Don’t Know Much About the Bible.

At the top of my short list of alternative national holidays, I would propose December 1st as Rosa Parks Day.

History is taught as the record of presidents, kings and generals. But sometimes it is the extraordinary story of an “ordinary” person that history must tell. On December 1, 1955, one woman’s act of defiance changed history. But it wouldn’t be fair to call Rosa Parks, who was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama and died October 24, 2005 at age 92, an “ordinary person.” What do you know about this courageous woman who helped spark the civil rights movement that transformed America? (Answers below)

1. Where and why was Rosa Parks arrested?
2. Before her arrest, was Rosa Parks involved in the civil rights movement?
3. How much education did Rosa Parks, the descendant of slaves, receive?
4. What action did her arrest trigger?
5. Who was elected president of the organization that ran the boycott?

There is a wealth of resources about Rosa Parks from the Library of Congress.

Answers
1. She refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. A city law required that whites and blacks sit in separate rows. The law also required blacks to leave their seats to make room for white passengers.
2. Yes. Rosa Parks had become one of the first women to join the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, serving as its secretary until 1956. Employed as a seamstress, she lost her job as a result of the boycott and later moved to Detroit.
3. She attended Alabama State Teachers College.
4. Her arrest triggered a boycott of the city’s segregated bus system that had been planned by local civil rights leaders who were awaiting the right moment. The arrest of Rosa Parks was that moment. For 382 days, thousands of blacks refused to ride Montgomery’s buses and the boycott ended when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated seating on the city’s buses unconstitutional.
5. A young and unknown Martin Luther King, Jr. –then a Baptist minister in Montgomery– was chosen as president, providing his first national stage.

Quiz adapted from Don’t Know Much About Anything

Read more about Rosa Parks in Don’t Know Much About History and my biography for young readers, Don’t Know Much About Rosa Parks

People ask me two questions all the time: Why don’t we know much about History?
And why is so much of America’s History Hidden?
To the first the answer is simple. It was boring.
And to the second, we lie.
Sometimes these lies are little white lies –like Washington and the Cherry Tree. But sometimes they are Big Lies.
Let me give you an example of a BIG LIE. I was in a wonderful historical village in Florida, doing some research. A Spanish mission, with a neighboring Indian village, it featured an enthusiastic, well-versed staff in period costume. It was exactly the kind of place I like to suggest to parents and teachers to take their kids to get them excited about history.
Then I went into their “educational center.” On the wall was a time chart of Florida’s history and under the date 1565, I saw this legend: “The French are banished from Florida.”

Not so fast… The French Protestants, or Huguenots who were America’s real first pilgrims, were not “banished.” They were massacred by the Spanish. And not because they were French but because they were Protestants–”heretics.” It happened in September and October 1565.

October is also the month in which those folks who brought you the Salem Witch Trials executed a couple of Quakers –who had been banned from Boston and the Bay Colony in October 1656. A year later, another Quaker named Mary Dyer was executed and a fourth was hung in 1661 –simply for the crime of being a Quaker.
They left that part out of the Thanksgiving Story, didn’t they? These are some of the “hidden history” moments that we don’t talk about when we discuss America as a so-called “Christian nation” and the Puritans coming for freedom of religion. That meant their religion not anyone else’s.
We hide our history when the truth is ugly. We like to paint a picture of that that makes history tidy and acceptable. But our history isn’t tidy or bloodless. And it certainly isn’t boring as these stories prove.

You can read more about the French Pilgrims and the Quakers in America’s Hidden History

Here is a link the national monument at Fort Matanzas, site of the Massacre:
http://www.nps.gov/foma/index.htm
This is a brief biography of Mary Dyer from the Massachusetts state website:
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=mg2terminal&L=6&L0=Home&L1=State+Government&L2=About+Massachusetts&L3=Interactive+State+House&L4=Inside+the+State+House&L5=Statues+in+Bronze&sid=massgov2&b=terminalcontent&f=interactive_statehouse_statue_dyer&csid=massgov2

The epithet “Socialist” seems to be one of the worst things a politician can be called these days. In the early 20th century, Eugene V. Debs staked a proud claim to it. And in 1920, running for President from a federal penitentiary, he won nearly one million votes as an American Socialist.

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana on November 5, 1855, Eugene V. Debs is a name left out of many schoolbooks. That’s too bad. If you are looking for a profile in American courage, you might want to know his name. He was a fearless defender of the rights of workers and the poor and a champion of free speech.

A high school dropout, Debs went to business school at night while he worked days. He became a labor organizer and eventually helped found some of the first labor organizations in America, including the International Workers of the World (or “Wobblies”).

In 1894, Debs initially opposed a strike against the Pullman Car Company, then one of America’s largest and most powerful companies. He later helped lead the strike. After President Grover Cleveland sent in troops to break the Pullman strike, killing thirteen workers, Debs was arrested for his failure to obey an injunction against the strike and was sent to federal prison. His case eventually went to the Supreme Court and Debs was represented by noted attorney Clarence Darrow, who had left his position as a railroad lawyer to defend Debs. The court upheld the right of the federal government to issue the injunction. While in jail, Debs read the works of Karl Marx and became a Socialist. He ran for President as the Socialist candidate five times –winning about 6% of the vote in 1912.

His final candidacy came in 1920, while he was once more in jail. During World War I, Debs became a passionate and vocal opponent of the war and urged resistance to the draft, earning the wrath of  President Woodrow Wilson. He was convicted of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison. The Supreme Court again ruled on his case, once more confirming his sentence. While in jail, Debs received more than 900,000 write-in votes for President (about 3 % of the popular vote).

Among his supporters was Helen Keller. She wrote a letter to Eugene V. Debs, whom she addressed as “Dear Comrade”  (March 11, 1919) while he was in prison. She wrote:

I write because I want you to now that I should be proud if the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and doing all in my power to oppose it. When I think of the millions who have suffered in all the wicked wars of the past, I am shaken with the anguish of a great impatience. I want to fling myself against all brute powers that destroy the life, and break the spirit of man.
. . .  We were driven onto war for liberty, democracy and humanity. Behold what is happening all over the world today! Oh where is the swift vengeance of Jehovah that it does not fall upon the hosts of those who are marshalling machine-guns against hungry-stricken peoples? It is the complacency of madness to call such acts “preserving law and order.” What oceans of blood and tears are shed in their name! I have come to loathe traditions and institutions that take away the rights of the poor and protect the wicked against judgment.

Following the election of 1920, President Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served on Christmas 1921. After making a visit to Harding at the White House, Debs returned to cheering crowds in Indiana. In poor health attributed to his imprisonment, Debs died five years later on October 20, 1926 at age 70.

A somewhat reluctant leader, he once said:

Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.    (From an address on Industrial Unionism delivered in New York City, Dec. 18,1905)

A good overview of Debs’ life and times can be found at the Eugene V. Debs Foundation

You can read more about Eugene V. Debs and the early labor movement in

Do you know the name William Weatherford? You should. He was a charismatic leader of his people who wanted freedom and to protect his land. Just like “Braveheart,” or William Wallace of Mel Gibson fame.

Only William Weatherford, also known as Red Eagle, wasn’t fighting a cruel King. He was at war with the United States government.

William Weatherford’s story is one of six pieces of Hidden History I recount in my new book, A NATION RISING

Here is a link to my page about A NATION RISING coming on May 11, 2010
http://www.dontknowmuch.com/about-the-series/a-nation-rising/

“An informative and enjoyable book,” says Booklist (May 2010)

Davis is a widely read author and a contributor to National Public Radio. He has made a career out of writing about the supposedly “hidden” truths that transcend the mythology about American history. Here, he offers a series of essays that covers the period from 1800 to 1850, which witnessed massive territorial expansion, controversy over slavery, and efforts to forge a national identity. Incidents covered include the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, the Seminole War in Florida, a slave uprising in Louisiana, and anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia. Professional historians may cringe at Davis’ claims of revealing hidden truths, given that virtually all of these topics are familiar to scholars. Still, Davis is a fine writer who uses a fast-moving narrative to tell these stories well. He knows his facts, and his assertions and speculations are generally credible. For general readers who wish to expand their knowledge of the period, this is an informative and enjoyable work.— Jay Freeman

Following up on my earlier lessons about the Bill of Rights, today’s focus is on two more of the fundamental rights of the accused found in the Seventh and Eighth Amendments. And that’s where “cruel and unusual” comes in. You don’t need to be a law student or a lawyer to know that phrase: it was invoked by the Supreme Court to regulate capital punishment. And it is clearly a subjective standard that is often revised and otherwise fine-tuned.

But first, this wouldn’t be a proper Civics Lesson without a Pop Quiz: Here are five more of the questions regarding things you need to know to become an American citizen.

1. What did the Declaration of Independence do? (in nine words or less)

2. What is the economic system of the United States? (Two officially acceptable answers, subject to debate.)

3. Name four states that border Mexico. (Citizen applicants only have to provide one. But I’m the mean teacher.)

4. Name three of the five U.S. territories. (Applicants need only know one.)

5. Who did the United States fight in World War II? (All three main opponents, please)

Now, for more of your basic rights…

Amendment Seven

Guarantees the right of trial by jury in federal civil cases.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

This amendment gives a right to a trial by jury for monetary damages in federal court. The Constitution does not require a jury in civil cases in state courts.

Amendment Eight

Protects from excessive bail or fines; cruel and unusual punishment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Another of the amendments that protect the rights of the accused, it allows the accused to post bail, a guarantee that he will return for trial, in order to be free from detention to prepare his defense. A judge can determine that factors such as the gravity of the offense and previous record weigh against bail.

More controversial is the “cruel and unusual punishment” line, which has been used to argue against the death penalty. In 1972, the Furman v Georgia decision essentially ended all capital punishment. In 1976, the decision Gregg v Georgia opened the way for executions. Under current Court rulings, the death penalty is not considered cruel and unusual, although the United States is one of the few industrialized nations that permits the death penalty.

One widely accepted argument has been that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, preventing further murders. Statistically speaking, there is no evidence to support that idea. In fact, some statistics suggest that the opposite is true. Over the last twenty years, the homicide rates in states with the death penalty has been 50 to 100 percent higher than the rate in states without it, a 2000 New York Times study found.  FBI crime statistics in 2009, according the the Death Penalty Information Center, show southern states with the highest rates of execution also have the highest homicide rates, while northern states with no death penalty have substantially  lower murder rates.  (Link below)

The fact is that homicide rates are often determined by many other factors, including demographics, unemployment, and poverty.

The execution of convicted terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001 came at a time when the country was reexamining its attitudes about the death penalty. The governor of Illinois, a conservative Republican who previously supported capital punishment, and the governor of Maryland, a Democrat, both announced a moratorium on executions when a significant number of death row convictions were overturned in their states. In some of these cases, new DNA evidence proved a convicted person’s innocence; other convictions had been found to be based on tainted evidence or misconduct by police investigators, technicians, or prosecutors.

In 2002, the Supreme Court issued two rulings that also reflected changing attitudes toward the death penalty. In the first case, the Court ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded qualified as cruel and unusual punishment. In another case, the Court held that juries rather than judges must determine if the death penalty is to be used.

The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, offers a history of the death penalty and other valuable information and resources on the issues relating to the death penalty.

Pop Quiz Answers:

1. Acceptable answer are: Announced our independence (from Great Britain); or declared our independence (from Great Britain); or said that the United is free (from Great Britain).

2. Capitalist economy or free market economy.

3. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas.

4. Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northen Mariana Islands, Guam.

5. Germany, Japan and Italy.

But first, the pop quiz portion of the class continues. These five questions are  drawn from the Naturalization Test given to applicants for U.S. Citizenship. Surely any native American citizen can get all of them right. Surely.

1. How many Amendments does the Constitution have?

2. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?

3.  Name three of the original thirteen states.

4. What territory did the United States buy in 1803? (And who sold it?)

5. Who was President during World War I?

In the previous post, I highlighted the Fourth Amendment. That is the first of four of the articles in the Bill of Rights that deal with the rights of the accused. The Framers were men who had lived under a monarch with nearly unlimited powers. It is no accident that four of the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights were clearly designed to protect the innocent and curb the power of the government in accusing and trying the people.

Amendment Five

Guarantees provisions for prosecution and due process of law. Double jeopardy restriction. Protects against self-incrimination. Safeguards due process. Private property not to be taken without compensation.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

“Pleading the Fifth” has acquired the connotation of “He must be hiding something” for many people. If you have nothing to hide, they reason, you would tell the truth. But the idea behind protection from self-incrimination is part of a tradition of reasoning that begins with the presumption of innocence and was designed to check the power of the government. Written by men who knew the unlimited power of a monarch or church to compel evidence, the Bill of Rights placed the interest of the individual above that of the state. Under this amendment, the Constitution requires the state to establish guilt by independent evidence, protecting everyone from a potentially abusive government.

Amendment Six

Guarantees the right to a speedy trial, witnesses, counsel.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This amendment also protects the individual’s rights in criminal proceedings. Having seen people taken to jail under a monarchy, never to be seen again, the authors of the Bill of Rights wrote specific protections against that possibility. Speedy trials, public trials instead of secret inquisitions, jury trials in the district where the crime is committed, the right to confront accusers, and the guarantee of legal representation are all bedrock rights in the American system of justice.

Answers

1. 27

2. Life. Liberty. The Pursuit of happiness.

3. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia.

4. Louisiana Territory (from France)

5. Woodrow Wilson

It’s called the Naturalization Test, given by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and applicants for citizenship must pass it.

Could most American-born citizens pass it? In my experience testing audiences with some of these questions, many people are on shaky  ground. That’s one reason I am offering this Civics Primer as Election Day approaches.

So here are a couple of  questions from the test, Can you keep your passport?  (Answers below. Don’t peek!) –

1. The Vice-President takes over if the President can’t serve. What official is next in line? (And what is that person’s name currently?)

2. What do we call the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution?

3. What are the three branches of government?

4. Name one of the three writers of the Federalist Papers (essays which supported ratifying the Constitution)?

5. Name one of the two longest rivers in America. (Gotcha. You didn’t think there was any Geography on this test, did you?)

My previous posts focused on the first two of the initial Ten Amendments to the Constitution. Here’s a quick refresher on Numbers Three and Four.

Amendment Three is the Rodney Dangerfield of Amendments– it gets no respect.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.

A reaction to the enforced housing of British troops in colonial America before independence was achieved, this amendment has never been the basis for a Supreme Court decision since its adoption. It does mean, however, that the Army can’t just move into your house if it decides it needs a barracks for some troops.  It also serves as an important reminder of what the major concerns were for the men who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights: they were concerned about protection of individual rights and property and feared, perhaps more than anything, the unlimited power of government.

Amendment Four has gotten much more attention.

Protects from unreasonable search and seizure. Calls for probable cause.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

At the heart of the debate over “criminals’ rights,” this amendment was intended to protect privacy and personal security as essential to liberty. This means that no one can be arrested without a warrant naming a specific individual with a specified crime. Arrests without warrants may be made in the case of a felony when the police arrest someone suspected of a crime. After such an arrest, a judge must determine if there is probable cause to hold that person. A police officer can also arrest someone who commits a minor infraction, or misdemeanor, in the presence of the arresting officer.

The amendment also permits only “reasonable” searches and covers evidence that is uncovered during a search that relates to a separate crime. All of these issues depend on the court hearing them. No warrant is necessary for police to look for something outside a building or private yard or property.

Answers:

1. The Speaker of the House of Representatives (currently Nancy Pelosi)

2. The Bill of Rights

3. Legislative (Article I of the Constitution); the Executive (Article II of the Constitution); Judicial (Article III of the Constitution)

4. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay

5. The Missouri or the Mississippi

The answer: 435.

Here’s  another question  that wasn’t included in that survey: How many Electors are there? Add 100 Senators to the number of Representatives and then three more votes for the District of Columbia (which has no Senators and a non-voting member of the House) and you get the answer: 538. Each state gets electors equal to their representation in Congress. To become President, you must win enough states and their Electors to reach the Magic Number of 270 (half of 538 plus one). By the way, the “Electoral College” is not mentioned in the Constitution –only “Electors.” And no, the Electoral College is definitely not a party school.

In the first post of this series, I summarized the First Amendment and its five essential guarantees –always a source of controversy. If anything, the Second Amendment has often proven just as contentious. But most of us don’t know what it actually says or means.

Americans have always liked their guns. And some Americans REALLY like their guns. Whether to hunt, protect their homes or defend themselves from a tyrannical government, many Americans believe that the government has no right to restrict their access to firearms. But those who want to minimize gun violence, Congress, and the Courts have thought otherwise. Which brings us to the Second Amendment. There is little doubt that the Founders and Framers, in a time when there was no standing army, expected men to  have a gun at the ready to defend the country. But does that 18th century logic still hold in a country with a standing army, state militias and local police forces? And does the high level of American gun violence (more than 31,000 firearms fatalities in 2006, according to the CDC) mean it is time to reassess an idea that made sense more than 200 years ago?

Amendment Two: Guarantees the limited right to keep and bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Among today’s most passionately argued of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was intended to provide for the effectiveness of the militia, which would presumably protect the citizen against Indians, foreign powers, or the power of the federal government, at a time when there was little or no standing army.  Militias also served another unique role in the slave holding states: one of their primary duties was to suppress slave revolts, of which there were hundreds throughout American History.

In a long string of decisions, the Supreme Court had consistently ruled that the Second Amendment does not bind the states, so that state and local governments are free to enact gun control laws if they desire. In the case of federal laws, since a 1939 case involving sawed-off shotguns, United States v. Miller, the courts have held that the Second Amendment only confers a collective right to keep and bear arms, which must have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Since then, Congress has placed many restrictions on the manufacture, sale, transfer, and possession of weapons, and these statutes have all been upheld as constitutional.

Not everyone agrees with that interpretation, even though it stood for more than sixty years. As constitutional scholar Leonard W. Levy writes,

The Second Amendment is as vague as it is ambiguous. Some think it upholds the collective right of state militias to bear arms, while others, probably more accurate in so far as original intent is concerned, argue that it protects the right of individuals to keep arms. (Original Intent and the Framers’ Constitution)

Until 2002, no administration had challenged the so-called “collective right” established by Miller in 1939. But in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the Justice Department would seek to challenge the collective view in favor of the individual rights view, a stance vigorously supported by the National Rifle Association. In footnotes in two filings with the Supreme Court in 2002, the government said that the Second Amendment protected the rights of individuals “to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse.”

More recently, in June 2008, the Supreme Court, led by George W. Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed in 2005 following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist), went beyond the Bush Administration’s arguments. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court struck down a 32-year-old Washington, D.C. ban on handguns as incompatible with the Second Amendment.

The majority opinion in the 5-4 decision ruled that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.  The Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

In a vigorous dissent expressing what had been the predominant view since the 1939 Miller ruling, Justice Stevens wrote that the Second Amendment:

was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

And that is where the Second Amendment stands today.

Here is a link to the District of Columbia v. Heller case, including the majority and dissenting opinions.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

A new online survey suggests many Americans can’t answer those Civics 101 questions. That is a point underscored in a New York Times Week in Review article yesterday that points out how many Americans don’t know what the First Amendment says. Two of them, sad to say, are Senate candidates in Delaware where Republican Christine O’Donell and her Democratic rival Chris Coons had trouble sorting out the fundamental rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

To me, this is not only sad but dangerous, especially with Election Day a week away. But this sorry state also constitutes a “teachable moment.”

So, in my ongoing effort to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, here begins a Civics Primer on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a few other basic things we all “need to know” about American History. This Civics Class will offer some of the fundamental facts about American History and government, including the fact that Electoral College is NOT a Party School.

I am going to start with the First Amendment as it is so prominently in the headlines. I will continue this series in the days and weeks ahead until ahead until we all get it right –or you can turn in your passport.

First, a little background about the Supreme Law of the Land — the Constitution and the changes that have been made to it.

The U.S. Constitution was drafted during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence had been written and adopted eleven years earlier. Under the new Constitution,  the first Congress, meeting in New York City on September 25, 1789, submitted twelve proposed changes to the Constitution—called articles or amendments—for ratification by the states. These amendments dealt with certain individual and states’ rights not specifically named in the Constitution. Ten of these articles, which were originally proposed as Amendments Three through Twelve, were declared ratified in 1791 and are now known as Amendments One through Ten, or the Bill of Rights.

Since 1791, another seventeen changes have been made to the Constitution, a process that begins when Congress proposes an amendment, which must clear both the House and the Senate by a two-thirds majority. The proposed amendment is sent to the states for ratification. Three quarters of the states are needed to ratify, and that is usually done by state legislatures.

Here is the First Amendment. And it should be clear to everyone why this one comes first–

Amendment One

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment guarantees five fundamental American freedoms:

-Religion: Prohibits the establishment of religions by government and guarantees freedom of religion. One of the only restraints on religion permitted is on a practice that may endanger the physical health of citizens; for instance, courts have allowed medical treatment of children against their parents’ religious beliefs.

(For more background on the road that led Madison to the First Amendment, see my  Smithsonian article on the history of religious intolerance in America.)

-Speech: Guarantees that government cannot limit speech with certain exceptions established over the years by the Courts, such as slanderous or obscene speech. Of course, private companies and employers can limit the speech of their employees, which is why National Public Radio can fire Juan Williams for breaching their code of conduct for reporters and commentators.

-Press: Guarantees freedom of the press from government interference, including college publications (but not public high school students). This freedom applies to books, magazines, and most television and radio programs (although the Federal Communications Commission is able to limit broadcasts under its licensing powers– hence a “wardrobe malfunction” is not protected “speech.)

-Assembly: Guarantees the right to assemble peaceably, which includes picketing, a right that that has been at the core of political, labor and civil rights disputes. In general, picketing is protected  when it is for a lawful purpose and is orderly.

-Petition: Guarantees the right to petition government, a protection best exemplified by the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence.

There you go. Five Easy pieces– Fundamental Freedoms you can count on one hand.

Next: The Second Amendment

And by the way:  the Answers are Joe Biden, one hundred Senators (two from each state) and nine Justices.

For a country that is seemingly wild about religion, we may not be a Godless Nation, but we sure are a Clueless Nation.

The latest survey of American knowledge (or ignorance!) — a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life– tested Americans on the basics of religion –Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths. According to the Pew survey as reported by the New York Times, most people scored around 50 percent –which is a failing grade. The most knowledgeable were atheists and agnostics.

Here is the New York Times story about the survey with a link to a sample of the quiz. (Full Disclosure: I scored 6 out of 6 on the sample.)  Religion Test

Link here to the Pew Forum

The results of this survey do not surprise me at all. For all of the talk of America being a “Christian Nation,” and being founded on “religious principles,” many Americans are as misinformed about religion as they are about history, basic science and geography. Many people tend to believe what they were told when they were children. That, is sadly, a very incomplete eduction.  Few of us seem to move past “thinking like a child,” and do as Saint Paul said,

“When I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13: 11)

When I wrote Don’t Know Much About the Bible, I said the “Good Book” fits Mark Twain’s definition of a “classic”

A book which people praise but never read.”

Most people continue to rely upon what they hear from preachers and politicians. Often is is misquoted or taken out of context, Or they remember what they distilled from the Hollywood version of the Bible. The internet has, in many ways, just made matters worse.

The very serious problem that the Pew survey underscores is that there a lot of people out there making stark judgments about matters like religion about which they are Clueless. And when it comes to Americans doing very bad things based on their beliefs, the results can be deadly. I traced the murderous intersection of religion and history and America’s so-called tradition of tolerance, in this recent Smithsonian article:

America’s True History of Religious Tolerance

By the way, Job is the biblical character for whom a very challenging chapter of the Bible is named. God took away everything he had — over a bet with Satan.

We’ve been hearing a lot about America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance lately. But for centuries, religion has been used as a weapon to discriminate and cudgel “non- believers” and “heathens,” many of whom came to America in search of religious freedom they never found. The battle over faith in the public square started long before the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

In the October, 2010 issue of Smithsonian magazine, I delve into the real history of America’s attitudes about religion and it is a far different picture from the tidy tableau and storybook version of tolerance that we tell our children. The Smithsonian magazine article, “God and Country,” traces the long and often murderous history of religious battles fought on American soil, going back to 1565, before the Pilgrims even arrived, when Spanish Catholics massacred French Protestants in Florida–a story not told in most of our textbooks.

Here is a link to the Smithsonian article.

It has been butchered at baseball games and Super Bowls. But today is the day our national anthem was written in 1814 and later set to an old drinking song.

It was September 13, 1814. America was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in Baltimore’s harbor. In the morning, he could see that the Stars and Stripes still flew over Fort McHenry. Inspired, he wrote the lyrics that we all know –well some of you know some of them.

But here’s what they didn’t tell you:

Yes, Washington, D.C. was burned in 1814, including the President’s Home which would later get a fresh coat of paint and be called the “White House.” But Washington was torched in retaliation for the burning of York –now Toronto—in Canada earlier in the war.

Yes, Key wrote words. But the music comes from an old English drinking song. Good thing it wasn’t 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.
Here’s a link to the original lyrics of the Drinking song via Poem of the Week
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw234.html
The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1916 when President Wilson declared it by Executive Order. But that didn’t really count. In 1931, it became the National Anthem by Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover.,

Now, here are a couple of footnotes to the Francis Scott Key story—his son, Philip Barton Key, was a District attorney in Washington. DC. He was shot and killed by Congressman Daniel Sickles. Sickles was acquitted with the first use of the defense of temporary insanity in 1859. And went on to serve as a Civil War general –and not a very good one.

And speaking of the Civil War, Key’s grandson was later imprisoned in Fort McHenry along wit Baltimore’s Mayor and other pro-Confederate sympathizers.

Here are some places to learn more about Fort McHenry, Key and the Flag that inspired the National Anthem.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/fomc/home.htm
The images and music in this video are courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.ed/starspangledbanner/

This version of the anthem is on 19th century instruments:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/mp3/song.ssb.dsl.mp3

WHEN: On September 9, 1739 –Early Sunday morning

WHERE: The Stono River, 20 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina

WHAT: The largest slave insurrection in colonial America, before the Revolution

WHO: About twenty blacks set off this day, took guns and powder from a store and killed its two owners. As they marched through the countryside, they gathered more recruits from plantations along the way. By the end of the day, more than one hundred slaves had joined the rebellion.

WHY: These rebels hoped to reach St. Augustine, Florida where they thought they would be free under Spanish rule. By the end of the day, they were caught by a small army of mounted planters who attacked the runaways and broke the Stono Rebellion. During this insurrection, approximately 20 whites and twice that number of blacks were killed.

Few things were more frightening in early America than the thought of armed slave rebellions. Contrary to the image of meek slaves and well-meaning slave owners, there were hundreds of slave uprisings in America, dating to the earliest colonial times. Just the fear of a slave insurrection threw New York City into a massive panic in 1743.

When the slaves of the future Republic of Haiti rebelled in the 1790s in a bloody war against white owners, the fears increased dramatically. Every insurrection was usually met with tougher laws and harsh punishments, including executions or beheadings, after which the heads of the rebels were set on pikes as warnings to other slaves.

You can read more about the history of slave insurrections in A NATION RISING

The Spanish in Florida encouraged American slaves to run away and even created a haven for them in Florida known as Fort Mose, now a historic landmark.
http://www.floridastateparks.org/fortmose/default.cfm
There are excellent resources on slavery at the Library of Congress:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first address as President to a joint session of Congress (November 27, 1963)

The 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was born on this date in 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas on the Pedernales River. Coincidentally, it is also the date on which LBJ accepted the 1964 Democratic nomination for President. (Senator Hubert H. Humphrey was his Vice Presidential nominee.)

In some respects, history and time have been kinder to Lyndon B. Johnson than his tortured Presidency –and certainly the critics of his day—would have possibly suggested. A power broker extraordinaire during his days in Congress, especially during his twelve years in the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson challenged John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 primaries, and then accepted Kennedy’s offer to become his Vice Presidential running mate.

Johnson was credited with helping Kennedy win Southern votes and ultimately the election. 

On November 22, 1963, history and America changed and Johnson became President, taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy, the dead President’s widow standing beside him. 

Driven by a rousing sense of social justice, born out of his youth and upbringing in hardscrabble Texas and Depression-era experiences, he had become one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most loyal New Dealers. First in a federal job, then in Congress and later as “Master of the Senate.”

As President, Johnson set the country on a quest for what he called the “Great Society,” looking for ways to end the great economic injustice and bitter racial disparity that existed in America in 1963. But his vision for a “Great Society” was counterbalanced, and ultimately overshadowed by his doomed course in pursuing the war in Vietnam.

With the country’s troubles at home and an  increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan, I have been thinking about Johnson’s tortured Presidency of late. He was so eager and committed to do the right thing in correcting the social ills he saw in America. But it all fell apart in the disaster of Vietnam. All of the parallels between the two conflicts –Vietnam and Afghanistan– are obvious.

In the midst of the war,  recent tapes reveal  Johnson confided–

I can’t win and I can’t get out.

Are we in the same place again?

Here is a link to the Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas –well worth a visit if you are nearby.

http://www.lbjlibrary.org/about-lbj/timeline.html

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=63

Here’s a quick history of the movement from Don’t Know Much About History
Who were the suffragists?
Women in America always endured plenty of suffering. What they lacked was “suffrage” (from the Latin suffragium for “vote”).
American women as far back as Abigail Adams—who admonished her husband John to “Remember the Ladies” when he went off to declare independence—had consistently pressed for voting rights, but just as consistently had been shut out. It was not for lack of trying. But women were fighting against the enormous odds of church, Constitution, an all-male power structure that held fast to its reins, and many of their own who believed in a woman’s divinely ordained, second-place role.

But in the nineteenth century, more women were pressed to work, and were also a strong force in the abolitionist movement, with Harriet Beecher Stowe attracting the most prominence. But to many male abolitionists, the “moral” imperative to free black men and give them the vote carried much greater weight than the somewhat blasphemous notion of equality of the sexes.

In fact, it was exclusion of women from an abolitionist gathering that sparked the first formal organization for women’s rights. The birth of the women’s movement in America dates to July 19, 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) called for a women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York, after they had been told to sit in the balcony at a London antislavery meeting.

With the Civil War’s end, abolition lost its steam as a moral issue and women pressed to be included under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, which extended the vote to black males. But again women had to wait as politicians told them that the freed slaves took priority, a stand with which some women of the day agreed, creating a split in the feminist movement over goals and tactics. Hardliners followed Stanton into the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA); moderates willing to wait for black male suffrage started the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), leaving a rift that lasted twenty years.

Amelia Bloomer (1818–94) didn’t invent the pantaloons that bore her name, but she popularized them in her newspaper, The Lily, a journal preaching temperance as well as equality.

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), called “the Napoleon of women’s rights,” came from the same Quaker-abolitionist-temperance background as Stanton, and the two women became friends and powerful allies, founding the NWSA together. A forceful and tireless organizer and lobbyist, she pushed for local reforms in her home state of New York while continuing to urge the vote for women at the national level.

In the early 20th century, American suffragists took a new direction, borrowed from their British counterparts. The British “suffragettes” had been using far more radical means to win the vote. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragettes chained themselves to buildings, invaded Parliament, blew up mailboxes, and burned buildings. Imprisoned for these actions, the women called themselves “political prisoners” and went on hunger strikes that were met with force-feedings. The cruelty of this official response was significant in attracting public sympathy for the suffragette cause.

These militant tactics were brought back to America by women who had marched with the British. Alice Paul (1885–1977) was another Quaker-raised woman who studied in England and had joined the Pankhurst-led demonstrations in London. At the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, who opposed the vote for women, Paul organized a demonstration of 10,000. Her strategy was to hold the party in power—the Democrats in this case—responsible for denying women the vote.

President Wilson’s views were also dictated by politics. He needed to hold on to the support of the Democratic South. That meant opposing women’s voting. Southern Democrats were successfully keeping black men from voting; they certainly didn’t want to worry about black women as well.

After Wilson’s 1916 reelection, in which women in some states had voted against him two to one, the protest was taken to Wilson’s doorstep as women began to picket around the clock outside the White House. Eventually imprisoned, Paul and others imitated the British tactic of hunger strikes.

In 1918, Paul’s political tactics paid off as a Republican Congress was elected. Among them was Montana’s Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973), the first woman elected to Congress. Rankin’s first act was to introduce a constitutional suffrage amendment on the House floor. The amendment was approved by a one-vote margin. It took the Senate another eighteen months to pass it, and in June 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment was submitted to the states for ratification. Now fearful of the women’s vote in the approaching presidential election, Wilson shifted to support of the measure. One year later, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee delivered the last needed vote, and the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. (Declared in effect on August 26) It stated simply that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

It took more than 130 years, but “We, the People” finally included the half of the country that had been kept out the longest.

As a child of the 50s and 60s, I think Alfred Hitchcock’s television series –more than his movies– had a tremendous impact on my sensibilities. Only later did I come to fully appreciate his movie masterpieces.

Here’s a quick quiz about the birthday boy born in Leytonstone, England and his remarkable, groundbreaking television series

First there was the music (“Funeral March of a Marionette” by Gounod). Then came the distinctive, portly caricature profile. And finally, the familiar, “Good evening,” spoken in Alfred Hitchcock’s singular style. Long before The X Files, a generation of television watchers was hooked on the strange mysteries found each week on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” which made its television debut in October, 1954. The masterful director of classic thrillers was already famed for such films as Rebecca, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Lady Vanishes. But he brought a macabre, irreverent sense of humor to the predictable menu of variety shows and comedies of 1950s television. Hitchcock produced and hosted the 30-minute series from 1955 to 1962 (expanded to “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” it ran until 1965). What else do you know about the genius behind Psycho and Rear Window who was born this day in 1899 and died on April 28, 1980?

1. What famous children’s book author wrote several stories produced by Hitchcock, including a memorable episode in which detectives are served leg of lamb, the weapon in the murder they are investigating?
2. What future star of television and films was featured as a unlucky gambler in an episode selected as one of Entertainment Weekly magazine’s “Best 100 Television Shows.”?
3. How many Academy Awards did Hitchcock win as Best Director?
4. Which 1934 Hitchcock film did he remake in 1956?
5. Which of Hitchcock’s films won the Oscar for Best Picture?

This quiz can be found in Don’t Know Much About Anything

Answers
1. Roald Dahl, famed for such children’s classics as James and the Giant Peach, Willy Wonka, and The Witches.
2. Steve McQueen. Many other famous actors, including Vincent Price, William Shatner, and Charles Bronson had roles on the show.
3. None. He did receive the Academy’s life achievement award in 1967.
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much.
5. Rebecca (1940), his first film made in America. Before that, his films were made in England.

Where: Watts was a rundown district of shabby houses built near the highway approaching Los Angeles International Airport. Ninety-eight percent black, Watts was stewing in a California heat wave. In the stewpot were all the ingredients of black anger. Poverty. Overcrowding. High unemployment. Crime everywhere. Drugs widely available. The nearly all-white police force was seen as an occupation army.

When: On August 11, a policeman pulled over a young black man to check him for drunken driving. When the young man was arrested, a crowd gathered. Within a few hours the crowd had grown to a mob, and the frustration was no longer simmering in the August heat. It exploded.

What By nightfall of the next day, small, roving bands of young people throwing rocks and bottles had grown to a mob of thousands. Rocks and bottles were replaced by Molotov cocktails as the riot erupted into a full-blown street rebellion with widespread looting. Among the most popular looted items were weapons, and when police and firefighters responded to the violence and fires, they were met with a hail of bullets and gasoline bombs. When Dick Gregory, the well-known African American comedian and civil rights activist, tried to calm the crowds, he was shot in the leg.

The battle raged on for days as thousands of national guardsmen poured in to restore order. There was open fighting in the streets as guardsmen set up machine-gun emplacements. By the sixth day of rioting, Watts was rubble and ashes. The toll from six days of mayhem was thirty-four killed, including rioters and guardsmen; more than 1,000 injured; 4,000 arrested; and total property damage of more than $35 million.

Why: The aftermath of Watts was more than just a body count and insurance estimates. Watts signaled a sea change in the civil-rights movement. When Martin Luther King toured the neighborhood, he was heckled. Saddened by the death and destruction, he admonished a local man, who responded,

“We won because we made the whole world pay attention to us.”

The Watts summer of 1965 was the first in a string of long, hot summers that left the cities of the North and Midwest smoldering. The worst came in 1967, particularly when Newark and Detroit were engulfed in rioting. In the wake of these rebellions, presidential commissions were appointed, studies made, and findings released. They all agreed that the problem was economic at its roots. As Martin Luther King had put it, “I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers, and now I’ve got to do something to help them get the money to buy them.”

One of these studies, conducted by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, was known as the Kerner Commission. In 1968, it warned that America was

“moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

How much has really changed?
Here is a link to excerpts from the Kerner Commission Report:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6545/
On the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report in 2008, Bill Moyers of PBS produced a show on the Commission and what has –or hasn’t — changed in four decades.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03282008/watch.html

Here is the original New York Times report on the “Negro” riots:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0811.html#article
You can read more about Watts and the civil rights era in Don’t Know Much About History

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates valley Ersa, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” (Harry Truman, from his diaries, as quoted in The Making of the Atomic Bomb).

Okay, Mr. President. Here’s the situation. You’re about to invade Japan’s main islands. Your best generals say hitting these beaches will mean half a million American casualties or more. Based on horrific battle experience—from Guadalcanal to Okinawa—you believe the Japanese will fight to the death. They have six million battle-hardened troops who have shown complete willingness to fight to the death for their homeland—a samurai tradition of complete devotion to the divine Emperor that is incomprehensible to Americans. A ten-year guerilla in Japan war is a possibility.

Now you have a bomb with the destructive power of 20,000 tons of TNT that can force Japan’s surrender. It worked in a test. But it may not work when you drop it out of a plane.

Modern history has presented this pair of options—the Big Invasion versus the Bomb—as “Truman’s Choice,” a choice Truman inherited with the Oval Office. President Roosevelt had responded to Albert Einstein’s 1939 warning—a warning Einstein later regretted—of the potential of an atomic bomb by establishing the Manhattan Project in 1943. Known to a handful of men, Truman not among them, the project was a $2-billion (in pre-inflation 1940s dollars) effort to construct an atomic weapon. Working at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), atomic scientists, many of them refugees from Hitler’s Europe, thought they were racing against Germans developing a “Nazi bomb.”

The first atomic bomb was exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Truman was alerted to the success of the test at a meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam, a city in defeated Germany. Almost since the day the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, critics have second-guessed Truman’s decision and motives. A generation of historians have defended or repudiated the need for unleashing the atomic weapon.

What history has confirmed is that the men who made the bomb really didn’t understand how horrifying its capabilities were. Of course, they understood the destructive power of the bomb, but radiation’s dangers were far less understood. As author Peter Wyden tells it in Day One, his compelling account of the making and dropping of the bomb, scientists involved in creating what they called “the gadget” believed that anyone who might be killed by radiation would die from falling bricks first.

“Some 70,000 people probably died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. This included about twenty American airmen being held as prisoners in the city. By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.”

(US Dept. of Energy History of the Manhattan Project. Link below)

Today should not be a day to argue about the politics of the bomb. It should be a day of solemn remembrance of these victims. And of contemplating the horrific power of the weapons we create.

You can read more about Hiroshima and the dropping of the atomic bombs in Don’t Know Much About History from which this blog has been adapted. Other “Must Reads”: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes; Truman by David McCullough]
This is a link to the Hiroshima City Museum of Peace (there is an English language site): http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/
This is a link to the Dept. of Energy History of the Manhattan Project: http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/hiroshima.htm
This link is from the National Science Foundation and was created for the 60th anniversary of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: http://hiroshima-remembered.com/

The latest fracas over faith in the public square involves the plans for Cordoba House, an Islamic Center, including a “mosque,” to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Proposed to bridge the differences between Islam and the West, the $100-million project, which includes a prayer room rather than an actual mosque,  has won the backing of Mayor Bloomberg, among others. But with the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, the race for Governor of New York heating up, and a Presidential election in the wings, Cordoba House was plunged into America’s boiling pot of religious politics. And like New York’s recent weather, the political firestorm that has been ignited shows no sign of cooling.

The pot was first stirred when Sarah Palin implored the group behind Cordoba House not to build the center, asking Muslims via Twitter, to “refudiate” the plan.

Raising the temperature was Newt Gingrich on his website, Newt.org, where he warned that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_re_us/us_ground_zero_mosque_politics

This whole argument might be construed as a momentary blip in a slow summer news cycle. But the fear and loathing of faiths that supposedly threaten America’s existence is nothing new. The grade school notion of America as a “Melting Pot” nation in which all are welcomed to worship is a myth. Since Spanish Catholics slaughtered French Protestants in Florida in 1565, ingrained religious animosity has been an unhappy and uncelebrated American tradition.  For centuries, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and other “foreign” religions have encountered disdain, discrimination and worse.

In fact, the political attacks on the Islamic Center recall an earlier assault on a religious compound built near an American memorial.

It was August 1834 and the place was Charlestown, Massachusetts, outside Boston. The “threat” then came from a Roman Catholic convent where Ursuline nuns ran a private school for girls called Mount Benedict.

But the Ursuline Convent stood near sacred ground – the site on which the Bunker Hill Monument was being built. To many Americans, the Ursuline compound nearby was an affront, a symbol of a foreign faith that was evil, hateful and a threat to the nation.

On the night of August 11, 1834, a few hundred locals descended on the convent.  As the nuns and their young charges cowered, both the convent and school were ransacked and torched by the mob. A mausoleum was then opened, coffins overturned and the remains scattered. When the three nights of arson and mayhem was over, the Ursuline convent and the school it housed were in ruins.

The desolation of the Ursuline Convent in August 1834 is not one of the proud events that historic Boston touts to patriotic visitors. And it is hardly unique. America’s past is littered with similar examples of intolerance, sectarian hatred and ultimately, religious violence. A decade after the attack on the Ursuline Convent, Philadelphia was torn apart by the anti-Catholic Bible Riots, in which dozens died and the homes of mostly Irish Catholic immigrants were destroyed along with two Catholic churches in an argument begun over which Bible to use in public school.

For much of America’s history, the religious fear and loathing were directed mostly towards Catholics—especially Irish Catholics—who were thought to be plotting to turn America over to the Pope. Now, of course, the perceived threat comes from Islam and a symbol like Cordoba House has replaced the nefarious Ursuline Convent.

In 1790, after taking the oath of office just a few blocks from what is now Ground Zero, President Washington wrote a letter to another much maligned and distrusted group –the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.

“Happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

His words should be required reading for public officials –past, present and future.  They might even make a good plaque at Ground Zero.

You can read more about the burning of the Ursuline Convent, the Philadelphia Bible Riots and the history of anti-Catholicism in A NATION RISING.

Observing a Choctaw tribe—the old, the sick, the wounded, and newborns among them—forced to cross an ice-choked Mississippi River during the harsh winter, Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote,

“In the whole scene, there was an air of destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adie