Coxey’s Army Marches to Washington “The movement has attracted the attention of the country as nothing else in the way of agitation has ever done, and as nothing else without violence ever could have done.” – Jacob S. Coxey, quoted in the Washington Post, April 21, 1894 Mention the word “depression” and typically, you’ll evoke images of 1930s bread lines and families escaping the Dust Bowl. However, during the nineteenth century, American workers endured... [Read more...]
Dorothea Lange Photographs Japanese-American Internment Camps “To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable … But I have only touched it, just touched it.” – Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) More than just a “good war,” former NBC newsman and “The Greatest Generation” author Tom Brokaw deemed WWII “the greatest war the world has seen.” But what corporate media shills like Brokaw tend to omit is that the U.S. fought... [Read more...]
The Seminole-African Alliance The Native American Indian people that comprised the Seminole Nation grew out of the Creek Nation in Florida. Multilingual and diverse, the Seminoles (from a word meaning “runaway”) became infamous for intermingling with runaway slaves from Georgia and the Carolinas — slaves that, as historian William Loren Katz explains, “since 1738 had built prosperous, free, self-governing communities.” Katz explains the genesis of this alliance: “Africans... [Read more...]
DANIEL ELLSBERG LEAKS THE PENTAGON PAPERS The Pentagon Papers are mesmerizing, not as documentation of the history of the U.S. war in Indochina, but as insight into the minds of the men who planned and executed it. It’s fascinating to be privy to the ideas that were being tossed around, the suggestions that were made, the proposals that were put forward. — Arundhati Roy On June 13, 1971, the New York Times published an article by Neil Sheehan called, “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon... [Read more...]
Curt Flood Challenges Baseball’s Reserve Clause “There is no Hall of Fame for people like Curt.” – Marvin Miller, former executive director of the Major League Players Association By 1969, Curt Flood (1938-1997) had compiled some rather impressive career stats as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals: a three-time All-Star center fielder with seven Golden Gloves, he batted more than .300 six times. But when the 31-year-old Flood was dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies before... [Read more...]
The Christmas Truce The winter of 1914 was a bleak one along the Western Front. The shell-pocked stretch of roughly 35 km between Belgium and northeastern France was a veritable wasteland, marked by muddy, corpse-ridden trenches and burnt-out husks of dwellings. But on Christmas Eve, lowering grey clouds miraculously gave way to clear skies, and opposing British and German troops, their morale boosted by parcels of gifts from their respective regimes, felt a stir of goodwill, and unofficial ceasefires... [Read more...]
American Indians Occupy Alcatraz Island Until the federal penitentiary was closed in 1963, Alcatraz Island was a place most folks tried to leave. On November 20, 1969, the island’s image underwent a drastic makeover. That was the day thousands of American Indians began an occupation that would last until June 11, 1971. The 1973 armed occupation of Wounded Knee along with the siege at the Pine Ridge Reservation one year later are etched deeper into the public consciousness in terms of recent... [Read more...]
Tommie Smith and John Carlos Raise Their Fists They stood barefoot on the medal podium at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics, beads dangling from their necks. As America’s national anthem commenced, sprinters Tommie Smith (b. 1944) — the son of a migrant worker — and Harlem’s John Carlos (b. 1945) raised their black-gloved fists in the air. Dave Zirin calls it, “arguably the most enduring image in sports history,” but hastens to add, “the image has stood the test... [Read more...]
Hugh Thompson Gets In the Line of Fire “Thompson and his crew watched as an infantry officer, wearing captain’s bars on his helmet, came up to the woman, prodded her with his foot, and then killed her.” — From “Four Hours at My Lai,” by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr. (1943-2006) wanted to fly choppers so badly that after a four-year stint in the Navy, he left his wife and two sons behind to re-up into the Army and train as a helicopter... [Read more...]
Jack Johnson Wins the Heavyweight Crown There was Muhammad Ali, of course. Before that, there was Joe Louis and Sugar Ray and Henry Armstrong explaining how you can’t discriminate against a left hook. “But in 1908,” says Ron Flatter of ESPN.com, “39 years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, there was Jack Johnson (1878-1946) — the first black man to hold the world heavyweight championship.” Winning the title was the easy part... [Read more...]
