110 years ago, three men set out on a bitter cold January 1 to walk from upstate New York to Virginia, and then over the Appalachians to Kentucky and Ohio. These were Shaker missionaries. Their goal was to spread the Shaker faith to the western United States.
Culture
Expanding Women’s History: Anna Julia Cooper, Zitkala-Ša, and Sui Sin Far
Like Black History Month, Women’s History Month is a radical and important starting point for better remembering histories and stories that can and should be part of our collective memories and narratives year-round.
Segregating Restaurants: How Women Got a Seat at the Table
Racial discrimination at lunch counters was once a common problem, especially in the American South. Peaceful protests in the 1950s and 1960s shined a light on the practice and eventually the government stepped in to end it.
Sara Ehrmann and the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Massachusetts
In 1928, a few months after the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, Sara Rosenfeld Ehrmann, a thirty-three year old Brookline housewife and mother of two young children, accepted leadership of the Massachusetts Council Against the Death Penalty (MCADP).
How The Beatles Reinterpreted Black Music
Integral to The Beatles’ success was the sheer amount of music they played before they even made it big – from dancehalls in Britain to seedy nightclubs in Hamburg, armed with the advantage of playing little known numbers from “race music.”
Ice Work If You Can Get It
The first scene of Disney’s smash hit 2013 cartoon Frozen is an homage to an extinct American industry.
Missing Leonard Nimoy, Mr. Spock, …and Richard Hofstadter
The death on February 27 of the greatest icon of reason in popular culture – Leonard Nimoy, who created the role of Mr. Spock in Star Trek – speaks to our culture’s need of reason.
Roxcy Bolton and the Naming of Hurricanes
After Hurricanes Inez (1966), Gladys (1968) and Agnes (1968) swept through neighborhoods in Florida, feminist and community activist Roxcy Bolton had enough.
The Impossible Moral Dilemmas of Slavery: William Wells Brown and the Slave Trade
William Wells Brown possessed immense and various talents. Born into slavery in Kentucky around 1814, Brown grew up in Missouri, fled enslavement in the early 1830s, and by the early 1840s had become a rising star of the antislavery movement.
What Can We Learn from American Sniper?
In just over a month after its release, the film American Sniper has made over $400 million and is now the highest-grossing American war movie of all time.