Latest Us history Podcast Episodes
Dr. Claudia Hampton & the History of Affirmative Action in California
Unsung History - July 08, 2024 16:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1974, Republican governor Ronald Reagan appointed educator Dr. Claudia Hampton, a Democrat active in her local NAACP, as the first Black woman trustee to the board of California State University. For the next twenty years Hampton would be known as the affirmative action trustee as she advocat...
Josephine McCarty: Mother, Lobbyist, Spy & Abortionist
Unsung History - July 01, 2024 17:05 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsJosephine McCarty, née Fagan, aka Mrs. Virginia S. Seymour, dba Emma Burleigh. M.D., was many things: mother, teacher, saleswoman, spy, lobbyist, and abortionist. And in 1872 she was also an accused murderer, after eyewitnesses saw her fire a pistol on a public streetcar in Utica, New York, kill...
The Auburn Prison System & the Case of William Freeman
Unsung History - June 24, 2024 14:30 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1817, the second state prison in New York opened in Auburn, situated on a fast-flowing river so waterpower could be used to run machinery in the factories that would be housed in the prison. In a new practice of incarceration that would come to be known as the Auburn System, the prisoners lab...
Quilting & the New Deal
Unsung History - June 17, 2024 17:00 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsAs part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods included quilts, sometimes quickly-made utilitarian bedcoverings, but also ...
The Federal Theatre Project
Unsung History - June 10, 2024 15:30 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsBetween 1935 and 1939, the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed over 12,000 actors and put on over 1200 productions in 29 states. Led by Hallie Flanagan, the FTP, using only a small fraction of the total WPA budget, employed theater professionals; en...
The Red Summer of 1919 & Black Resistance
Unsung History - June 03, 2024 15:15 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1919, racial tensions in the US, exacerbated by changes brought about by the first wave of the Great Migration and by the return of Black soldiers who demanded equal citizenship from the country they’d fought for, boiled over into a summer of violence. In Washington, DC, 39 people died after ...
Le Pétomane: The Fartiste of the Moulin Rouge
Circus Stories: A Circus History Podcast - May 29, 2024 07:00 - 1 hourToday's episode is a rootin tootin ride as we transport back to the high brow performances of 19th century Paris and the world famous Moulin Rouge - strap your booties in ( are you getting the posterior references here...) We are discussing Joseph Pujol the most famous and most well paid "Fartis...
The Reconstruction Era & its Aftermath
Unsung History - May 27, 2024 15:00 - 50 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsAs the Civil War was drawing to a close, President Lincoln was preparing for what came after, with plans for reunification of the country, and he began to advocate for limited suffrage for Black Americans. John Wilkes Booth’s bullet cut short those plans, and Southerner Andrew Johnson, who was m...
The Southern Plantation System
Unsung History - May 20, 2024 16:50 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsFictional depictions of Southern plantations often present romanticized visions of genteel country life, but for the people enslaved on plantations the reality was that of a forced labor camp. At the same time the plantation was also their home. And although they had no choice in where or how th...
Slavery & Incarceration in New Orleans
Unsung History - May 13, 2024 16:00 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsShortly after New Orleans became a US city (via the Louisiana Purchase), the municipal council established one of the country’s first professional salaried police forces and began operation of Police Jail, both efforts aimed at the capture and control of enslaved people who had run away from or ...
The Jazz Maestros of Jim Crow America
Unsung History - May 06, 2024 16:30 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsDuke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie came of age in a deeply segregated country, battling racism to become celebrated musicians, composers, and band leaders whose music lives on. Joining me this week to discuss the lives and careers of these three musical geniuses is writer and journ...
Negro League Baseball
Unsung History - April 29, 2024 00:25 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded...
Log Cabin Republicans and the Gay Right
Unsung History - April 22, 2024 16:18 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1977, a California state senator named John Briggs took to the steps of City Hall in San Francisco to announce a ballot initiative that would empower school boards to fire gay teachers based only on their sexual orientation. In response, gay activists around California mobilized, including ga...
American Posture Panic
Unsung History - April 15, 2024 16:00 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsFor several decades in the 20th Century, American universities, including elite institutions, took nude photos of their students, sometimes as often as twice a year, in order to evaluate their posture. In some cases students had to achieve a minimum posture grade in order to graduate. How did th...
American Anxiety over Poor Posture
Unsung History - April 15, 2024 16:00 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsFor several decades in the 20th Century, American universities, including elite institutions, took nude photos of their students, sometimes as often as twice a year, in order to evaluate their posture. In some cases students had to achieve a minimum posture grade in order to graduate. How did th...
Sideshow Secrets: Acts meant to Shock + Awe
Circus Stories: A Circus History Podcast - April 12, 2024 16:00 - 2 hoursWe do a deep dive (all the way down the gullet) exploring and dissecting sideshow performances meant to SHOCK and AWE. We chat about acts like the Human Blockhead, Sword Swallowing and more; get a glimpse on how these acts work, affect the human body and the sincere dangers involved. DISCLAIMER:...
The History of DARE
Unsung History - April 08, 2024 15:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn the fall of 1983, the LAPD, under Chief of Police Darryl Gates and in collaboration with the LA Unified School District, launched Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), sending 10 police officers into 50 elementary schools to teach kids how to say no to drugs. By the time DARE celebr...
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Unsung History - April 01, 2024 15:00 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsWhen Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his eldest child, 17-year-old Alice, rose quickly to celebrity status. The public loved hearing about the exploits of the poker-playing, gum-chewing “Princess Alice,” who kept a small green snake in her purse. By the time she died at age 96, Alic...
Eleanor Roosevelt's Visit to the Pacific Theatre during World War II
Unsung History - March 25, 2024 16:10 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn August 1943, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set off in secrecy from San Francisco on a military transport plane, flying across the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t until she showed up in New Zealand 10 days later that the public learned about her trip, a mission to the frontlines of the Pacific Theater...
Eliza Scidmore
Unsung History - March 18, 2024 17:15 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsJournalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore traveled the world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, writing books and hundreds of articles about such places as Alaska, Japan, China, India, and helping shape the journal of the National Geographic Society into the photograph-heavy magazine it is today...
Foreign Missionaries & American Diplomacy in the 19th Century
Unsung History - March 11, 2024 16:43 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1812, when the United States was still a young nation and its State Department was tiny, American citizens began heading around the world as Christian missionaries. Early in the 19th Century, the US government often saw missionaries as experts on the politics, culture, and language of regions...
Religion + Circus: The Traveling Circus Ministry
Circus Stories: A Circus History Podcast - March 07, 2024 08:00 - 2 hoursWhat do you think of when I say Circus Church? Or Clown church service? Not many people associate religion with the circus folk - but you might be mistaken. How do religion and circus collide ? Enjoy our LENGTHY episode as we explore how religion infiltrated circus and the history and genesis b...
Tammany Hall, FDR & the Murder of Vivian Gordon
Unsung History - March 04, 2024 16:22 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1931, Judge Samuel Seabury was leading an investigation for Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt into corruption in New York’s magistrate courts when a witness in the investigation named Vivian Gordon was found murdered in the Bronx. Because of the public demand for answers in this high-profile mur...
The Combahee River Raid of 1863
Unsung History - February 26, 2024 17:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsStarting in November 1861, the Union Army held the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, using the Sea Islands as a southern base of operations in the Civil War. Harriet Tubman joined the Army there, debriefing freedom seekers who fled enslavement in nearby regions and ran to seek the Union Army’s p...
The History of Ice in the United States
Unsung History - February 19, 2024 16:30 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsToday, Americans consume 400 pounds of ice a year, each. That would have been unfathomable to people in the 18th century, but a number of innovators and ice barons in the 19th and 20th centuries changed the way we think about the slippery substance. Joining me in this episode is writer Dr. Amy B...
The History of Blue Jeans
Unsung History - February 12, 2024 18:05 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIf you’re like most Americans – or most people on earth – you have a pair of jeans, or maybe five, in your wardrobe. There’s a decent chance you’re wearing jeans right now. These humble pants were invented by a Reno tailor in the 1870s in response to a frustrated customer whose husband kept wear...
The History of Pinball
Unsung History - February 05, 2024 14:56 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn January 1942, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sent New York City police out on an important mission; their objective: to find and destroy tens of thousands of pinball machines. But some of pinball’s most important innovations, including the development of flippers, happened in the decades that it w...
Wheel of Death!
Circus Stories: A Circus History Podcast - February 01, 2024 08:00 - 2 hoursThe WHEEL of Death also known as the Space Wheel. We are barreling into the new year with a chonky episode that is equally as dangerous. Please enjoy the ins and outs of the daredevil performance - the Wheel of Death (seriously like how and why do people do this!) We discuss the early to current...
The History of US Foreign Disaster Relief
Unsung History - January 29, 2024 17:30 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1812, the United States Congress voted to provide $50,000 to assist victims of a horrific earthquake in the far-away country of Venezuela. It would be another nine decades before the US again provided aid for recovery efforts after a foreign rapid-onset natural disaster, but over time it beca...
LSD, the CIA & the History of Psychedelic Science
Unsung History - January 22, 2024 14:53 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsIn 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally developed the potent psychedelic LSD, although it would be several years before Hofmann realized what he’d created. During the Cold War, the CIA launched a top-secret mind control project, code-named MKUltra, experimenting with LSD and other psy...
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