Mark Monmonier is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. This interview is based on his new book, Clock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address (University of Iowa Press, 2022). JF:...
1920s
A St. Louis anti-vaxxer was arrested, strapped down by four men, and vaccinated after trying to convince Blacks from the South not to take the vaccine
The article is from the St. Louis Dispatch, August 6, 1923. Thanks to historian Andrew Wehrman for bringing this to my attention. Here is his Twitter commentary:...
What Can the 2020s Learn from the 1920s?
A lot, according to CUNY historian Ted Widmer. Here is a taste of his piece at The New York Times: It has been a long time since the winter of 1920, but the old fault lines are still visible, not only...
H.L. Mencken on the Presidency
This has been going around the Internet. Source and context here....
Did These Headlines Come From Breitbart or 1920s KKK Newspapers?
Take the quiz at The Vault....
3 Myths About Prohibition
Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of the era of Prohibition. Over at Philly.com, Villanova political scientist Mark Lawrence Schrad, an expert on this short-lived era in American history, points to three commonly held myths about the 18th Amendment. “Temperance...
The York County, Pennsylvania Pow-Wow Murders
Apparently this is Pennsylvania history day at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Check out Holly Genovese‘s post on the 1929 York County Pow-Wow murders. A taste: In 1929 a York County, Pennsylvania man Nelson Rehmeyer was murdered by three...
Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversial Video of the Day
The lead-in to this video says it all. This is from 1925, the year of the Scopes Trial: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6SsYh_Gr-A&w=560&h=315]...
The National Endowment for the Humanities Funds "Spirited: Prohibition in America"
Donald Trump’s current budget proposal will eliminate government funding for the humanities. This means that local communities and American citizens will need to come up with other ways to fund programs like this: The NEH on the Road program shares...
Why Did the KKK Hate J.C. Penney's?
Cara Giaimo explains at Slate: In 1930, E.D. Rivers—state senator, gubernatorial candidate, and Great Titan of the Ku Klux Klan—stood up in front of his constituents in Clarke County, Georgia, and made an impassioned speech. “For the first time in the...
Mapping the Rise of the KKK
Check out this digital map produced by the Mapping the Ku Klux Klan (1915-1940) project at Virginia Commonwealth University. I think it is fair to say that the Klan spread very quickly in these years. Here is an article from the Virginia Commonwealth website:A joint project...
Warren Harding: Baptist
Warren Harding was the first Baptist to serve as President of the United States. Over at First Things, Timothy George, the Dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, examines the man who many consider to be one of our...
The Washington Senators Win the 1924 World Series
Courtesy of the Library of Congress: http://media.loc.gov/player/flowplayer.commercial.swf?0.357737009646371...
“Get Yourself a Broom and Sweep Your Troubles Away,” 1924
Courtesy of the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox http://media.loc.gov/player/flowplayer.commercial.swf?0.6067619021050632<!– Recording Title Get yourself a broom and sweep your troubles away Composer Albert Von Tilzer Piano Frank E. Banta Ukulele Frank Crumit Lyricist Billy Rose , James Brockman Tenor vocal Frank Crumit Genre(s)...
The World’s First Mobile Phone
1922: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILiLaRXHUr0] From British Pathe videos
Massive Open ON-AIR Courses
Susan Matt and Luke Fernandez remind us that before MOOCs there were college courses broadcasted over the radio. In 1937, as she lay ill in bed, Annie Oakes Huntington, a writer living in Maine, thought of ways to spend her...
History Wars: 1920s Style
The Story of Our American People Move aside David Barton. As Adam Laats, a historian of education at SUNY-Binghamton informs us, Mr. Barton was not the first author to write a strongly patriotic history of the United States that caused […]
Paul Lukas: Report Cards Saved My Life
In 1996 Paul Lukas “stumbled upon” nearly 400 report cards from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. Most of them were from the 1920s. If I found these report cards I would probably think of some way to analyze them […]
Culture Wars–1920s Style
We may think the so-called “culture wars” are a late 20th century phenomenon that has spilled into the 21st century, but as Randall Stephens notes in his review of Barry Hankins’ new book Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties,...