bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Lincoln Offensive
Authors: Fernández Johanna
Published: May 2021

To dramatize deplorable health conditions and the race and class origins of pre-existing conditions, the Young Lords took-over Lincoln Hospital in July 1970. The occupation forced the construction of a modern medical building and creation of one of the Western world’s first acupuncture drug treatment centers. Cited as the first of its kind in American medicine, the group incited a public clinical hearing where a lay audience cross-examined doctors after the death of a Puerto Rican woman, the result of an abortion procedure conducted by an unsupervised medical resident. The Lords organized with non-medical hospital staff in the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (HRUM) and white radical doctors in the Pediatric Collective under the banner, Think Lincoln. Together they drafted the earliest known Patient Bill of Rights. In the wake of late 60s draconian cuts in social spending, they and others staved off the advent of neoliberal social policies in the late 1970s. Historians interpret sixties revolutionary nationalism as a rejection of coalitions with white Americans. These alliances suggest otherwise. But the Lords challenged power dynamics in cross-racial and cross-class alliances, rejecting uninterrogated racial prejudices and liberal tendencies of middle-class white radicals and the potential for their disproportionate influence in coalitions.
A Second Occupation
Authors: Fernández Johanna
Published: May 2021

In Fall 1970, the Young Lords again occupied the FSUMC church, in response to the shocking death of one of their own, Julio Roldan, who after a false arrest was found hanged in the Tombs, NYC’s notorious detention center. The occupation happened against the backdrop of a prisoner uprising in the Tombs, a precursor to the Attica Rebellion. At the occupied church, the Young Lords mounted a precursor to contemporary movements against mass incarceration and for abolition. They launched a legal defense center to aid poor Black and Latino prisoners; challenged the politics of bail; denounced state repression of the left; the politics of law and order, and the hyper imprisonment of people of color. They identified structural violence, poverty, and racism as root causes of social problems and supported the redistribution of resources and wealth through the revolutionary overthrown of capitalism. The group’s radical actions led to the first official investigation of the death of a single prisoner, Julio Roldan. Roldan’s arrest and arraignment offered a window into the botched legal process that, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, exponentially increased the arrest and jailing of people of color living in urban centers.
Coda
Authors: Fernández Johanna
Published: May 2021

The story of the Young Lords is intoxicating to many because it resonates with the suffering and aspirations of millions of young people who are outsiders in America. Like the children of NAFTA—migrants from Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America during in the 1980s and 1990s— the Young Lords also underwent the crucible of migration as children. Their parents were the country’s superexploited workers, heavily concentrated in the lowest-paid, dirtiest, and most precarious and dangerous sectors of the economy. And Like migrants today, Puerto Ricans were blamed for America’s problems. As translators and cultural interlocutors between their parents and America’s hostile bureaucracies, the Young Lords gained a second sight. With it, they gave their generation the language and analysis to make sense of the trauma produced by the large-scale economic and political forces that massively displaced their parents from their homeland. They also helped their peers understand their place in American society as exploited, racialized, colonial people and the structural barriers they faced in an increasingly deindustrialized and dilapidated city. In struggle, they discovered who they were and asserted their place in America.
History Stories
Authors: Slocum Karla
Published: May 2021

Chapter One argues that history is a central way that Black towns are identified and narrated. The chapter discusses various narratives about Black towns that focus on particular aspects of the towns’ history and show a complicated appeal of the communities, including racial trauma, loss, and social and economic mobility. Highlighted topics include state narratives about Black towns as emblems of economic success and black social mobility in the past; town elders’ narratives about their family members’ traumatic experiences fleeing the Jim Crow South to seek freedom in a Black town; Black town residents’ narratives of Black businesses and land acquisition as a hallmark of Black town success and history; and community narratives of losing celebrated Black town schools to integration mixed with racism.
Economic Futures
Authors: Slocum Karla
Published: May 2021

Chapter Three is about Black towns’ fragile twenty-first century economies and the appeal of an economically insecure Black place as a site for remaking or rebuilding Black towns. It profiles the range of individuals and institutions that seek out Black towns for economic and housing development, business creation, or land and property acquisition. A mixture of ambitious residents who seek to improve the community profile and outside entities whose focus is profit or individual gain (sometimes at the expense and well-being of Black towners), is discussed. Also discussed is prison siting in some Black towns, the failure of prisons to provide employment opportunities, and the disconnect between prisons’ purpose and Black towns’ ethos and history of institutional commitment to local community.
Community of Blackness
Authors: Slocum Karla
Published: May 2021

Chapter Four addresses the pull that various groups and individuals feel to connect with Black towns and argues that the pull is to connect with Black community, Black family, and the progress of the Black race. The Boley town rodeo parade draws in and recruits numerous and diverse Black social groups to participate in the annual event, which publicly presents a vibrant and inclusive Black space. Others relocate to a Black town. The chapter profiles a woman who moved to a Black town, motivated to connect with her family history in the place; and another woman who took up residence in a Black town, believing the Black space was prime for forwarding a project to bolster Black peoples’ racial sense of self and thereby improve race relations.
The Appeal of a Black Place
Authors: Slocum Karla
Published: May 2021

Chapter Five concludes the book by underscoring the significance and meaning of a Black-identified place. Despite structural inequality that Black communities face, they fulfil a purpose of community and affirmation of Blackness. The chapter argues that place can be a site for affirming Blackness and that that the appeal of a Black place like small, historic Black towns, is its Black identity and offering for community. The chapter situates the author’s own research and family history with the broader appeal that Black towns hold.
Reform and Radicalization
Authors: Harmer Tanya
Published: May 2021

Chapter four examines the emergence of a revolutionary left in Chile in the first years of Eduardo Frei’s presidency. Although this process would not dominate left-wing politics at a national level until later in 1960s, it resonated soon after Allende’s 1964 electoral defeat, influenced both by reformist projects and repressive efforts to contain them. By 1966, Beatriz was part of a weak but emergent revolutionary wing of the Chilean Socialist Party, inspired by local circumstances and international influences. These first years of the Frei government were dynamic, and productive. Beatriz and her cohort of medical students and socialist militants came into direct contact with the state’s new approach to healthcare, family planning, women, agricultural reform, and poverty. Beatriz benefitted from, and was shaped by, the reformist environment she inhabited, emerging like many of the radical left as a product of combined frustrations and opportunities it provided. By 1967, Beatriz had her first formal job in a community health center, epitomizing many of the Christian Democrat’s reformist goals. Closer to home, she had also fallen in love and married a young Socialist Party militant, Renato Julio, involved in effervescent student politics.
Working for the Revolution
Authors: Harmer Tanya
Published: May 2021

Chapter seven examines why and how Beatriz – and others on the revolutionary left –decided to become more intimately involved in Salvador Allende’s election campaign of 1970 and his presidency thereafter. It argues that Beatriz’s affective ties to him were pivotal in explaining her involvement and that he also benefitted from her ability to act as a bridge to the revolutionary Left, helping to bring it on his side. Beatriz participated in her father’s administration in a very specific way that fused her different loyalties to revolution together, bringing her intimate relationship with Cuba and training in covert intelligence and security to the job of assisting a democratically elected president. This chapter thus examines the confluence of different left-wing strategies and currents within Chile during the years of the Popular Unity government, how they interacted, coexisted, and responded to the mounting opposition they faced. It also explores the involvement and relationship Latin America’s revolutionary movements had with Chile during this period, arguing that Beatriz was one of their principal interlocutors.
Disillusionment
Authors: Harmer Tanya
Published: May 2021

Chapter ten examines Beatriz’s growing disillusionment with Chilean Left’s chances of overturning the coup and forging a revolutionary path forward. Although global solidarity had undercut the dictatorship’s reputation and drawing attention to human rights violations, left-wing resistance on the ground in Chile was decimated by repression. The Chilean Left in exile was also mired in factionalism and recrimination; its revolutionary project more contested, ambiguous, and distant than ever. From Havana, Beatriz was pessimistic about the future and the prospects for revolutionary change, but remained loyal to Cuba and the revolutionary left project she had been wedded to since the 1960s. Responsible for compiling reports on the dead and disappeared in Chile, she was also struggling to process what had happened and come to terms with her father’s death. Closer to home, she found it increasingly hard to square gendered expectations of marriage and motherhood with what she perceived to be her revolutionary duties. She was desperate to fight against the dictatorship in Chile but was not supported by Cuba’s leaders. Depressed and unable to affect what she regarded as meaningful change, she withdrew from solidarity work. Chapter ten ends with her suicide on 11 October 1977.
Onward March
Authors: Harmer Tanya
Published: May 2021

This concluding chapter examines the aftermath of Beatriz’s death and the significance of her life as a protagonist of revolution and change in Latin America’s long sixties. Moving beyond 1977, it charts the different responses to her suicide, revolutionary resistance to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chilean Left’s evolution into the 1980s, and the transition to democracy in Chile in 1990. It asks what Beatriz would have made of these developments and why her life is relevant both for history and for the present. It ends by looking at Beatriz’s legacy in the context of 21st century feminist movements in Latin America and the estallido social in Chile that erupted in October 2019.
Black Republican
Authors: Luskey Brian P.
Published: May 2021

During the economic crisis of the 1850s and early 1860s that made northerners’ individual and household independence seem more precarious, men like Thomas Webster gave voice to their ideology and tried to protect their interest. In doing so, they embraced both caution and speculation not only to end slaveholders’ grip on the nation’s political economy but also to benefit from slave emancipation. Their cautious hedges proved risky, and led to profound soul-searching in political and cultural debates among northern devotees of free labor. By 1860, the financial uncertainty borne of the Panic of 1857 and the secession crisis forced Webster to look for patronage from Republican allies to access a new capital stream. It was through the work of middlemen like Webster—as much as through the efforts of abolitionists, Republican politicians, Union soldiers, and enslaved people—that slavery ended and free labor’s promise for workers was unmade during the Civil War Era. Webster represented the speculative—many said the fraudulent—impulses and activities in an economy founded on the fact that having capital meant having power. That capital would make these northerners more independent in a competitive market, and their speculations would shape the contours of war and emancipation.
The Draft, Popularized
Authors: Luskey Brian P.
Published: May 2021

Benjamin F. Butler’s ideas about how to “popularize” certain types of coercion—the Federal draft—unfolded at the end of 1863 on the Virginia coast as he and his subordinates defined the parameters of wage labor in their military department. That was a process dependent upon the intersecting imperatives of coercion and consent operating within the army. The ways white officers, recruiters, and black soldiers experienced and understood wage labor during the war was through the filter of force, obligation, and free will. Union Army officers and recruiting agents sought access to laborers and tried to harness them to the nation’s—and perhaps their personal—benefit. These men did so in different ways, and they came into conflict with each other because they disagreed about the legitimate balance of consent and coercion in a wage labor economy.
Conclusion
Authors: Luskey Brian P.
Published: May 2021

Wage labor employers won the war for Union, and they had won it with the assistance of intelligence offices managed by private entrepreneurs and state institutions such as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Union soldiers, northern women, businessmen, army officers, and politicians should get credit for being among abolition’s agents. They believed wholeheartedly in free labor, because the trajectory that ideology mapped for northerners showed that the only way to more independence in a market in which all were dependent was through the accumulation of capital and the opportunity to exploit others’ labor. They fought the war for Union against the slaveholders’ aristocracy to bolster their own authority. The movement of workers created by soldier recruitment, emancipation, and what Abraham Lincoln called the “friction and abrasion” of war gave them opportunities to do so. Intelligence offices served this war for Union by marshaling workers whose “capital in self” the state and employers could access for their benefit. These institutions could also take the blame for the inequalities and disappointments of wage labor capitalism in ways that obscured the fact that the war’s labor movements had unmade the promise of free labor for working people.
A Dream Begins
Authors: Snider Jill D.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the Carthage, NC, childhood of African American inventor and entrepreneur Lucean Arthur Headen, with special attention paid to the social networks Headen’s family forged and to the mentors who inspired him to become an inventor. It describes the influence of former slave artisans, among them his grandfather, a wheelwright for the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company, and his great-uncle, a nationally known toolmaker, who schooled him in mechanics; his father, a sawmill owner, who sparked his entrepreneurial ambitions; and aunts and uncles active in the Presbyterian Church and Republican Party, who offered important social connections. Finally, it describes the economic strategy demonstrated for Headen by Rev. Henry D. Wood, who built a diverse coalition of supporters to finance the construction of John Hall Presbyterian Church and Dayton Academy (the church and school Headen attended). Headen later adapted this coalition-building model to finance his first inventions and business efforts.
A Dream Is Deferred
Authors: Snider Jill D.
Published: May 2021

This chapter addresses the political and economic factors that thwarted Headen’s first attempts to follow his ambitions. It discusses his work as a Pullman porter in 1900-1901, and later as a student from 1901-1903 at Albion Academy, an advanced boarding school in Franklinton, NC, founded by the Presbyterian Church. Describing the faculty and student life at Albion, and Headen’s personal record there, it probes how Albion helped Headen navigate the rising violence and segregation of the Jim Crow era and keep his ambitions alive. The chapter also discusses Headen’s marriage in 1903 and his decision to become part of African American migration out of the South that same year.
A Dream Takes Flight
Authors: Snider Jill D.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 4 describes Headen’s experiences as an early aviator. It probes his decision to seek flying lessons in 1911 at the Aeronautical Society of New York; his relationship with his instructor (François Raiche); and the reception he received as an exhibition pilot in 1912. The chapter notes the various funding strategies Headen employed as he attempted to promote his aviation career and documents the conflicts he experienced with a rival black aviator, promoters, white reporters, writers for the black press, and back audiences in Chicago and St. Louis. The chapter interprets his experiences within the dual contexts of race and emerging attempts to regulate and professionalize flying.
A Dream Finds Allies
Authors: Snider Jill D.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 5 examines Headen’s embrace of Henry Wood’s coalition strategy, exploring how he adapted Wood’s model to promote an anti-submarine device he invented during World War I. To promote the device, which refracted light to render submarine chasers invisible, Headen assembled a broad interracial coalition that drew from Chicago’s business, religious, entertainment, political, and academic communities. Included were individuals as diverse as Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, for whom Headen worked as a chauffeur; philanthropists Nettie Fowler McCormick and Julius Rosenwald; black orchestra leader Joe Jordan; white banker George Liebrandt; University of Chicago professor Harvey Lemon; white patent lawyer Wilmot C. Hawkins; black minister Archibald J. Carey; and later Golden Gate Bridge constructor Joseph B. Strauss. The chapter documents how this coalition secured an audience for Headen with the U.S. Naval Consulting Board and the British Admiralty’s Board of Invention and Research (after 1918 the Department of Experimental Research, or DER). It also describes subsequent work Headen completed for the British Shipping Ministry, the positive assessment of his device by the DER, and the project’s languishing upon the war’s sudden end.
A Dream Crosses the Pond
Authors: Snider Jill D.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 9 discusses Headen’s professional and personal life between his emigration to England in 1931 until his death there in 1957. It documents the companies he directed in Camberley, Surrey, principally Headen Hamilton Engineering Co., Ltd. (with investor George D. Hamilton) and Headen Keil Engineering Co., Ltd. (with local builder James Richard McLean Keil), and the companies that distributed the bi-fuel engine kits he patented and manufactured for automobiles, lorries, and Fordson tractors. Addressing his legacy as an inventor, the chapter also explores the contributions his products made to British agriculture in the 1930s and to the war effort in World War II, and the long-reaching impact of anti-icing methods he patented for aircraft. Finally, the chapter examines Headen’s social position in England; his service in the Surrey Home Guard; his remarriage in 1945; his adoption of a son in 1948; and his death in Frimley Green in 1957.
Early Modern Dialogues and Colonial Knowledges
Authors: Bigelow Allison Margaret
Published: May 2021

Two late-sixteenth century Iberian medical writers, Nicolás de Monardes and García d’Orta, used the Renaissance genre of the dialogue to convey divergent scientific opinions about plants, metals, stones, and medical simples. When their works were translated by other European writers, Monardes’s dialogue remained a dialogue but d’Orta’s text was translated into a prose natural history. This chapter concludes the section on iron with a comparison of how linguistic, cultural, and generic translation influenced the transmission and reception of scientific knowledge across translations from Spanish and Portuguese into Latin, Spanish, English, and German.
Literary Forms, Imperial Projections, and the Limits of Possibility in Copper Colonies
Authors: Bigelow Allison Margaret
Published: May 2021

This chapter builds from the previous chapter and concludes the section on copper. It focuses on proposals for asientos de minas (contracts for mines) and asientos de negros(contracts for enslaved Africans) produced in a hemispheric and transatlantic dialogue between and among officials, writers, projectors, and miners in Sevilla, Madrid, La Habana, and Cocorote, Venezuela. By showing where and how Iberian authors borrowed from each other, this chapter charts how colonial writers modified evidence to project particular visions of African slavery, artisanship, and family life, and to sell imperial interlocutors on new forms of American wealth.
Our Actors May Become Our Emancipators
Authors: Dossett Kate
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines how Black performance communities in New York City and Seattle transformed the political narrative of Stevedore from an interracial labor drama into a play of Black self-determination. First staged by the Theatre Union in New York in 1934, this white-authored labor drama explores interracial relations between Black and white dockworkers. The Black hero who stands up for fellow dockworkers is framed on a rape charge. When the white mob arrives to lynch the Black hero, Black dock workers fight back with the help of white union men. Two years later Stevedore was staged by the Seattle Negro Unit. On the federal theatre the interracial ending was downplayed, and possibly dropped altogether: Black men appear to resist the white mob alone. Black self-determination, rather than interracial unionism wins the day. Stevedore’s fascinating production history offers insight into the practices and theoretical debates which framed political theatre in the 1930s. It suggests that Black performance communities moved beyond the realist-anti-realist binaries that consumed white leftist theatre and instead developed a Black realism with radical potential.
Conclusion
Authors: Dossett Kate
Published: May 2021

The conclusion considers the impact of Black Federal Theatre on the broader history of African Americans and the New Deal. It argues that African Americans did not wait to be inspired or reined in by New Deal programs, but rather devised new techniques and adapted existing dramatic forms to make space for Black authored dramas. The rich history of Black drama developed on the Federal Theatre Project has long been marginalized in histories of U.S. theatre and culture and isolated from the radical Black traditions it helped create. Knowledge producing practices of archival and academic institutions have long marginalized Black cultural histories. However the Black Arts Movement played a pivotal role in the recovery of Black Federal Theatre. The work of Theodore Ward was published for the first time in 1970s Black Theatre anthologies and celebrated by Black theatre artists such as Amiri Baraka. The history of the archive of the Federal Theatre Project is a reminder of how easily Black history can be buried as well as the long and rich theatre heritage which has shaped the radical Black tradition.
The Hope of the Nation
Authors: Fry Zachery A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the rage militaire that spurred citizens to enlist in the Union Army, as well as the image of General George B. McClellan's within that patriotism. It details early attempts to root out disloyalty in the officer corps and lays out the consequences of the army's first significant campaign on the Virginia Peninsula. Saddled with ill health and frustrated by defeat, the Army of the Potomac by mid-1862 struggled to rationalize its predicament, and many ended up blaming the broad class of "politicians" at home for meddling. Among the army's most politically aware officers and men, opinions differed sharply over whether McClellan was victim or villain, with some pro-Republican men arguing that "hard war" and emancipation would be necessary.
A Devotion Almost Idolatry
Authors: Fry Zachery A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter details the aftermath of the 1862 Maryland Campaign and the spirited debate within the Army of the Potomac over the preliminary emancipation proclamation. These opinions carried weight in the 1862 midterm congressional and state elections. Some army figures ran for political office, including General James S. Wadsworth. However, voting laws pushed by Democrats generally prohibited soldier absentee ballots, a fact that offended many in the ranks. The chapter then discusses the overwhelmingly negative reaction of officers and men to McClellan's removal from command, which prompted them to spurn the political class even further.
Epilogue
Authors: Fry Zachery A.
Published: May 2021

The epilogue presents soldiers' reactions to Lincoln's assassination before discussing veterans' political activity in the immediate postwar period. For men who had come to predicate loyalty on obedience to the sitting administration, Andrew Johnson's rise to the presidency frustrated many and spurred them to form pro-Republican fraternal groups. These groups, including the Soldiers' and Sailors' National Union League and the Boys in Blue, exerted significant influence in the 1866 midterm elections and helped Republicans in their contest against presidential reconstruction.
Catholic (Non)Feminism
Authors: Henold Mary J.
Published: May 2021

In this chapter, the history of the National Council of Catholic Women in the 1960s and 1970s – the years during and following Vatican II – is reassessed. The NCCW has been commonly perceived as a powerful anti-feminist organization for Catholic laywomen that was controlled by the Catholic hierarchy, but its archives reveal a sustained effort to engage with feminist ideas after the Second Vatican Council. Although most of the NCCW’s leadership did not self-identify as feminist, the group espoused many feminist beliefs, particularly about women’s leadership, opportunity, challenging ideas about women’s vocation, and women’s right to participate fully in the life of the Catholic church. The NCCW, under the leadership of Margaret Mealey, developed new organizational structures, educational programs, and publications to educate their membership about changing gender roles and the need to press the church for greater inclusion. Comparison to the international organization the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations (WUCWO), reveals the limitations of their feminism, however. Whereas WUCWO was willing to openly embrace feminism and feminist activism, NCCW was divided and preferred not to self-identify as feminist.
Complementarity and Intimate Life
Authors: Henold Mary J.
Published: May 2021

This chapter focuses on the community of lay Catholic women who wrote for the magazine Marriage, a magazine for Catholic couples. Transitioning gender roles were a major preoccupation in the magazine in the years during and following Vatican II. Catholics debated issues of vital importance to the identity of Catholic laywomen, including complementarity, gender essentialism, working women, male headship in the family and feminism. The chapter also examines Catholic attitudes toward marital sexuality after the Rhythm Method was largely abandoned by American Catholics as a means of contraception. Although the magazine remained moderate in its responses to the women’s movement, analysis suggests that attitudes about Catholic women’s role in the church, home, and the workplace shifted significantly. Acceptance of complementarity was waning by the mid-1970s as increasing numbers of Catholic laywomen challenged cultural beliefs about Catholic womanhood.
Faithful Daughters
Authors: Henold Mary J.
Published: May 2021

Chapter four explores how two conservative, fraternal orders for Catholic laywomen – the Catholic Daughters of America (CDA) and the Daughters of Isabella (DI) – experienced the upheavals of feminism and Vatican II. The two groups attempted to reassess their organizations and beliefs in the wake of Vatican II, seriously considering new ways of viewing both Catholicism and Catholic womanhood. Ultimately, however, the groups rejected new conceptions of laywomen’s identity and vocations, affirming complementarity and female difference. Analysis of their records suggests that these laywomen perceived their power to be linked to traditional perceptions of Catholic womanhood and their own obedience to authority. As a backlash to the changes of Vatican II began in the mid-1970s, they had little incentive to adjust their worldview.
Who Is Celia Sánchez?
Authors: Sippial Tiffany A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter surveys the way that Sánchez—as the most visible female revolutionary and the one most closely associated with its famous leader—was imagined within the U.S. press. U.S. newspapers initially offered an adulatory, even romanticized, portrait of Sánchez’s relationship with Fidel Castro and her strategic importance for the Cuban revolution. The U.S. press quickly refashioned this image when the tenor of U.S.-Cuban relations shifted in the early 1960s.
Toward the Gates of Eternity
Authors: Sippial Tiffany A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the events surrounding Sánchez’s declining health, disappearance from the public eye, and ultimate death from lung cancer in 1980. Sánchez’s lavish state funeral initiated a new phase in a myth-making process that began in the Sierra Maestra. Commemorative sources representing a wide spectrum of political, artistic, and poetic voices in Cuban society played a critical role in the creation of Sánchez as the official “New Woman.” Circulated both nationally and internationally, this version of her story was not without its critics who, like the revolutionary authorities who eulogized her, saw Sánchez’s death as an opportunity to reflect upon the revolutionary project more broadly.
Brother, Can You Spare a Ride?
Authors: Reid Jack
Published: May 2021

This chapter covers the Great Depression and explores the ways this socio-economic environment impacted American perceptions of transient individuals—focusing on the perspectives of hitchhikers, the media, and law enforcement agencies. Economic dislocations and widespread unemployment spurred discussions about the merits of social cooperation and self-reliance in American culture, manifesting in heated debates about the “worthiness” of hitchhikers’ pleas for lifts. With the depression stagnating automobile purchases, the New Deal social order softened American attitudes toward white male hitchhikers. Still, Jim Crow policies and patriarchal attitudes made it more difficult for minorities and women to solicit rides. Detailed stories throughout document the tactile experience of those on the road, offering new insights into the lives of Americans during the Great Depression.
It’s Easy for a Soldier Boy to Catch Rides
Authors: Reid Jack
Published: May 2021

This chapter explores how several factors during World War II made hitchhiking widely accepted and commonly practiced on the home front. Gasoline and tire rationing, increased volunteerism during the war effort, and the fact that most hitchhikers were now servicemen in uniform instead of unemployed transients led many Americans to look more favourably upon the practice. Even critics of hitchhiking during the Depression years came to see offering soldiers lifts to and from their bases—as well as civilians heading to work—as a patriotic duty. As a result, the media, government regulators, and law-enforcement officials typically looked past periodic acts of violence associated with ride solicitation—focusing instead on ideas of duty and sacrifice in the name of the war effort.
Something Has Changed
Authors: Reid Jack
Published: May 2021

The epilogue summarizes key arguments in the book and reflects on ideas about ride solicitation in contemporary society—noting the intersections between hitchhiking and modern ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. Hitchhiking was common for decades in the United States, because it complimented the transportation needs of a cross-section of Americans while also meshing with the nation’s values—whether it be during the Great Depression, World War II, or the “hitchhiking renaissance” of the 1960s and ‘70s. The practice lost traction when thumbing rides fell out of touch with national values amid the rise of the conservative movement, increasing transportation regimentation, and growing concerns for personal safety.
Projecting Possession
Authors: Erbig Jeffrey Alan
Published: May 2021

This chapter addresses the juridical battles that arose between Spain (and by extension the Jesuit-Guarani missions) and Portugal prior to the 1750 Treaty of Madrid as each sought to claim legal possession of regional lands. It inserts local interethnic relations, governed by territorial conditions, into broader juridical debates to demonstrate the discursive gymnastics that imperial administrators employed as they claimed tolderías as vassals yet shirked responsibility for their actions. Given the tenuous and unenforceable nature of such claims, as well as growing confidence in the precision of geographical explorations and measurement, the two royal courts eventually agreed to combine mapmaking with treaty-making as a means to circumvent Native actors in the determination of possession. The border demarcations did not represent the realization of imperial territorial control, but rather prescriptive claims over space, as tolderías maintained control over most of the region.
Simultaneous Sovereignties
Authors: Erbig Jeffrey Alan
Published: May 2021

This chapter demonstrates how the mapping of a Luso-Hispanic border in the Río de la Plata transformed territorial practices. Following the boundary commissions, colonial officials sought to populate the border with migrants from the Azores and Canary Islands or from the Guarani missions. They promoted sedentism, private property rights, and well-regulated commercial practices, which dovetailed with broader Bourbon and Pombaline Reforms. Spanish officials undertook extermination campaigns against tolderías, while Portuguese officials made frequent pacts with Charrúa and Minuán caciques. Tolderías’ experiences of these efforts derived from their territorial positioning. Those furthest from the border found themselves bereft of the economic and political benefits of competing imperial foes, while those closest to the border were able to take advantage of imperial border-making initiatives.
Getting Acquainted with the University and the City, 1960s–Early 1970s
Authors: Quraishi Uzma
Published: May 2021

Chapter 2 details the arrival of South Asian students and immigrants in Houston during the 1960s. Along with college towns and major cities across the United States, Houston was an ideal host city for would-be immigrants. South Asians constructed ethnic, national, class, and racial identities through the university and the city. The University of Houston became the cultural hub and a key site for identity formation.
Inhabiting the Internationalizing City, 1970s
Authors: Quraishi Uzma
Published: May 2021

As Indian and Pakistani students graduated from Houston’s universities, found employment, and reconstructed ethnic identity, they joined other South Asian residents in settling throughout the city in the late 1960s and 1970s. The local metropolitan context was that of an internationalizing, rapidly developing urban area. As the formal architecture of Jim Crow was dismantled in these very decades, South Asian immigrants’ engagement with the city illuminates the social and economic hierarchies that continued to shape the city.
Death and Disability
Authors: Browning Judkin , Silver Timothy
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the environmental effects of death, and what happens when a corpse becomes part of the natural environment. Bodies decomposed rapidly, producing an unbearable stench. It led both armies to develop techniques for burial, embalming, and transportation of the dead to prevent sickness. The Overland Campaign—especially the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the Crater—and its extraordinary number of casualties, is the primary military focus. The chapter also discusses the advancements in medical care to treat wounded soldiers. Large numbers of disabled men had environmental effects as well, such as fewer acres of farmland due to the loss of labor, and expensive government policies to provide pensions for the disabled after the war.
An Environmental Legacy
Authors: Browning Judkin , Silver Timothy
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the long-term effects of the Civil War on the environment. The experience during the war led to improved techniques in the medical field and created a hospital system that was emulated around the world. The desire for accurate and reliable weather information led to the formation of the organization that ultimately became known as the National Weather Service. The experience with horses, hogs, and cattle during the war led to the formation of the first veterinary medicine programs in the United States. The treatment for illnesses led to hundreds of thousands of soldiers becoming hopelessly addicted to opium after the war. The livestock losses were so extreme that many southern states never recovered their livestock totals. Agricultural practices led to soil erosion, and the desire to preserve landscapes led to the creation of the National Park Service, among many other examples.
Postal Workers and the Rise of Collective Bargaining
Authors: Rubio Philip F.
Published: May 2021

This chapterprovides some deep historical background for the strike. It examines labor in the early post office (that was all white by law). It follows the emergence of the first postal unions after the Civil War and their relationship with the federal government. From there it focuses on the early 1960s and partial collective bargaining rights granted to government workers under President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988, which led to rising expectations of more labor rights.
Anti-Catholicism
Authors: Corrigan John , Neal Lynn S.
Published: May 2021

Protestant settlers continued in North America their intolerance of Catholics. The colonies legislated against Catholics and during the nineteenth century, as the Catholic population grew rapidly, violence between Protestants and Catholics broke out more frequently. Armed Protestant militias and mobs attacked Catholics in cities, taking life and destroying property. Protestant organizations such as the American Protective Association arose to seek disenfranchisement of Catholics and to limit their growth and power. That effort was carried forward by the Ku Klux Klan. The Catholic clergy came under particular criticism, as was the case in Europe.
Anti-Mormonism
Authors: Corrigan John , Neal Lynn S.
Published: May 2021

Violent opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged shortly after the coalescence of the group in the early 1830s. Mormons were subjected to intolerance everywhere they settled. Local, state, and territorial governments were opposed to them in varying degree. After founder Joseph Smith was murdered in Illinois many Mormons migrated westward. Their practice of polygamy brought them continued criticism during the nineteenth century. Intolerance of Mormons was punctuated by numerous instances of organized violence against them.
Anti-Semitism
Authors: Corrigan John , Neal Lynn S.
Published: May 2021

This chapter highlights the prominent role that religion has played in nineteenth and twentieth century anti-Semitism. The diverse primary sources, ranging from photos and political cartoons to religious texts and newspaper articles, focus on five central moments in this history—nineteenth century Christian texts, the Leo Frank Case, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the “Summer of Hate” (1999), and Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. These documents help readers examine the ways Christian theology and, more recently, that of white supremacist religious groups, has fomented anti-Semitism in the United States.
The Branch Davidians and Waco
Authors: Corrigan John , Neal Lynn S.
Published: May 2021

The chapter examines the how and why of the events that led to a fifty-one day siege and ended with the deaths of over seventy Branch Davidians in April 1993. The primary sources demonstrate how the Branch Davidians were constructed as a dangerous “cult,” the ways federal law enforcement relied on this stereotype, the resulting misunderstandings that occurred in the negotiations as a result of this stereotype, and the deadly consequences. The primary sources, including media portrayals, FBI negotiation transcripts, and Koresh’s writings, provide readers with opportunities to explore the tragic results of utilizing the “cult” stereotype. The chapter ends with various perspectives on why Waco happened.
Wedding Cakes and White Supremacy
Authors: Corrigan John , Neal Lynn S.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines recent instances of religious intolerance, including the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, white supremacy and the Unite the Right rally, and conservative Christians using freedom of religion arguments to defend anti-LGBTQ actions. These case studies demonstrate how religious intolerance is changing to include more issues and groups and adapting to new technologies. These examples also showcase some of the continuing patterns that characterize religious intolerance. The chapter challenges us to reconsider the myths of American religious history and to remember that tolerance is not the same as freedom or equality. We must continue the hard work of democracy.
Seer Stones and Western Esotericism
Authors: Davis William L.
Published: May 2021

Chapter One contextualizes Joseph Smith's use of a "seer stone" to compose the Book of Mormon within contemporary folk magic practices, the philosophies of Western esotericism, and Christian occultism. The seer stone (sometimes described as a "Urim and Thummim") represented one of several folk magic practices that the Smith family pursued, most notably in relation to "money digging" or treasure hunting with mystical objects as guides. Such mystical pursuits entangled esoteric thought with religious efforts to discover God's mysteries, and Smith's practices reflected this magical worldview.
Constructing Book of Mormon Historical Narratives
Authors: Davis William L.
Published: May 2021

Chapter Six explores Smith's use of story outlines as the narrative anchors for his oral composition of the Book of Mormon. By reviewing the sketch outlines, or "skeletons," of stories in advance of his dictation sessions, Smith could use such outlines as a mental guide, which he expanded extemporaneously into fully developed narratives in the moment of delivery. The original Book of Mormon summary headings for internal books, chapters, and sections provide explicit examples of this method of oral composition. Smith dictated the outlines of stories before dictating the stories themselves, revealing his advance knowledge of the narrative shape and structure of his stories, which he expanded extemporaneously during dictation to his scribes. This chapter also challenges the apologetic claim that such outlines represent ancient colophons, along with exploring Smith's use of mnemonic cues and embedded outlines. Finally, based on internal and external evidence, the chapter argues that Smith was fully aware of the overall story structure of the Book of Mormon before he started dictating the work.
Community Development in Cold War Guatemala
Authors: Foss Sarah
Published: May 2021

By the mid-1960s, Guatemalan newspapers regularly discussed the nation’s underdeveloped status, identifying it as a national embarrassment. However, the regions that the Guatemalan government identified as underdeveloped were largely rural and indigenous, thus presenting a unique set of cultural behaviors and practices that challenged the western development ideas the government wished to initiate. This chapter compares two development projects that different governmental institutes implemented in Guatemala between 1956-1976: the Plan de Mejoramiento de Tactic, Alta Verapaz and the Programa del Desarrollo de la Comunidad. The key sources that serve as evidence for the chapter’s arguments are anthropologists’ field notes, oral histories, and unpublished internal government documents. The chapter argues that as leftist guerrilla activity increased, the Guatemalan government capitalized upon international concerns with poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, and they used development as a peaceful means to fight the Cold War.
Cuba, the USSR, and the Non-Aligned Movement
Authors: Getchell Michelle
Published: May 2021

Based on archival research in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) and the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation (AVPRF), as well as on published primary source document collections, this paper argues that Cuba’s role as Soviet ally conflicted with Fidel Castro’s desire to assume a leadership role in the Non-Aligned Movement. As Castro sought to balance his aspirations for leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement with his obligations as Soviet ally, Soviet officials attempted to capitalize on Cuba’s position in the movement to achieve a closer relationship between the Third World and the socialist bloc. U.S. officials struggled to discredit Castro and delegitimize his claims to non-aligned status, but were ultimately unable to prevent the movement’s turn toward a more pronounced anti-American stance in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Argentina’s Secret Cold War
Authors: Sheinin David M. K.
Published: May 2021

At the close of the Cold War, Argentina and the United States held secret, high level nuclear talks. For years and without success, Washington had pressed Argentina to shut down its nuclear program. Nuclear intent, its interpretations, and its misunderstandings are at the core of how Argentina shaped a Cold War nuclear politics. That politics, in turn, defined its approach to the Non-Aligned Movement and to the developing world more generally on non-nuclear matters. Drawing in large measure on Argentine government archival records, this chapter explains Argentina’s emergence in the 1960s as a builder and exporter of experimental nuclear reactors to poor nations including Iran (1970s) and Algeria (1980s); as a provider of nuclear medical technology and products to developing nations; and as trainer of hundreds of nuclear technicians and engineers from around the globe as a function of four central parameters.
A Mexican New International Economic Order?
Authors: Thornton Christy
Published: May 2021

In December of 1974, Mexico’s president, Luis Echeverría, stood before the General Assembly of the United Nations to present the founding principles of what was to be a New International Economic Order, a project intended to address the economic crisis then wracking the Third World. The principles that the Mexican president imagined were codified a document that Echeverría had been drafting over the previous two years, the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States. This chapter traces this advocacy to discover the Mexican roots of the New International Economic Order, and in so doing demonstrates how Mexican diplomats, economists, and policymakers shaped not only ideas about sovereignty, self-determination, and economic development during the twentieth century, but also the codification of those ideas in international law, agreements, and institutions.