During the reconstruction of the United States, there were many issues raised regardingAfrican Americans. The struggle for the development of African Americans tochange their conditions of living and future, wasreal. The development was just not for African Americans but it was going toadd up to the United States good future. During the time of reconstruction,African American were referred as inferiors and White Americans as superiors. Therewas inequality in many sections, and one of them was in politics.
The lack ofvoter’s right brought unequal balance in the politics which made it improper tothe community. Many of the African Americans people took leadership/initiativeto change the lifestyle of African Americans. Many of the leaders fought for AfricanAmerican’s rights and have given them some sort of freedom and right to dothings.One of the leaders fought for AfricanAmericans right, Jefferson Franklin Long was born as a slave in Alabama in1836. He opened his business to the tailor and that helped him to get intopolitics- Republican Party. Long was “elected as Georgia’s first blackcongressman in 1870” (Book, CH 14, Page 448) and he fought for the politicalrights of freed slaves. Most of his life, he spent on improving his life andthe lives of the same race as his. He fought for the right of self-determinationfor African Americans.
There were five states which had the majorityof black African voters; such as Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana andSouth Carolina while in some other states the majority of African Americanvotes fell such as North Carolina, Virginia, etc. South Carolina was only thestates where African Americans had control over the state legislature. But itwas sad that in none of the other states they accomplished to get theirgovernor elected. “For the first time in American history, blacks won a widevariety of elected positions”(Book, CH 14, page 465).
From this quotes, itseemed that it was a proudful moment for African Americans. Also, it was a big achievementfor them to get elected in different positions as it was really hard for them,even though they had freedom. It was surprising that many of the AfricanAmericans got different positions in the politics: in the state legislatures-more than six hundred blacks served, two from Mississippi got to choose toserve on the US Senate and sixteen got seats in the US House of Representativesand one of the seats was Jefferson Long who fought for the political rights offreed slaves. Africans Americans were considered as a responsible political communityand in addition to all this, they held some meetings to discuss the issues andchoose their candidates. Although they were not allowed to vote, women attendedthe gathering and that helped influence their outcome.In the south, they established theirfirst public school system which provided funds for social services, such aspoor relief and state hospitals.
In addition, the state constitutions writtenby the Republicans brought equality to the south and political democracy bygiving the suffrage to not only poor white men but also to the black men. Thishad a very positive change that in some states of the south married women gotmore control over the properties.African Americans eventually startedtaking part in the Reconstruction legislature and started introducing bills thatlater became laws (Branam, Chris W). They made some proposals and pointof order that were as likely to the whites. Their legislators were interestedin civil rights, education to law and order and economic development. But thesystem that was replacing slavery over labor and land occupation were under construction.
The state Arkansas’s were becoming new with all the other changes; such as transportationin education and the public schools has barely developed.In the document 14.5 of MississippiBlack Code, 1865, section 6 talks about the laws of the state. “The same dutiesand liabilities existing among white persons of this State shall attach tofreedmen, free negroes or mulattoes.
” (Launchpad 14.5) This quote states that allthe freedmen, free negroes er mulattoes got same duties and liabilities rightsas the white men. This shows that the situation of African Americans got bettergradually though in some parts and some White Americans were against it and wasstill treating them as slaves and wasn’t giving respect. Enough though therewere many problems accepting the freedom of African Americans and giving themequal opportunity, it is great that they started getting the same kind of rightat a government level.
This has helped them during the reconstruction and morein the long run.In conclusion, there were manyleaders who fought for American American to get into politics. As days wentsome of the African Americans became the part of government/political parties.Though there were laws that were giving them equal opportunities, white Americansstill were against it.
But the at least they got the positions in the politicswhich helped them in short and as well as in the long run. The politicalsituation was not so good during reconstruction but it was not so bad either.African Americans got some positions in the political parties. That helped themto raise and bring their value up, take parts in things and getting equalopportunities as a normal human being.


Freja's Boar, 2007. Bronze, 14 x 32 x 10 inches / 35.5 x 81 x 25.5 cm
The Nordic Goddess Freja, was the goddess of both war and love. She had a boar, Hildisvini, which became her symbol. To be under Freja's protection, warriors wore a boar symbol on their helmet.


Sanders’s views on Judaism similar to the last Jew as close to presidency Judah Benjamin
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
With his victory in the New Hampshire primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders became the frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Sanders would become the first Jew to hold the distinction and become that close to capturing the presidency. Sanders is not a practicing Jew and withheld from discussing his Judaism during his 2016 run for the Democratic nomination and only recently he has made his religious identity a central focus in his campaign. In a January 2020 New York Times interview with Sanders, when asked about believing in God Sanders declared, “I am Jewish, I am proud to be Jewish. I was bar mitzvahed from the Kings Highway Jewish Center, a long time ago. I am not actively involved in organized religion. I believe in God. I believe in the universality of people. That what happens to you impacts me. And I certainly believe in the constitutional right of freedom of religion. And I will strongly defend that.” In 2015, in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel asked Sanders the same question, to which he replied, “I am what I am. And what I believe in, and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together.”  Sanders’s Jewish co-religionists are not enthusiastic about the prospect of him becoming the first Jewish Democratic nominee and he is their fourth choice among the Democratic presidential candidates.
In American history, only one other Jew has come so close to the presidency, Judah P. Benjamin. Benjamin served in three cabinet posts in the Confederate States of America government; the country formed with the Southern states seceded from the Union, a catalyst for the Civil War to preserve the union. The wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Varina Davis in her memoirs acknowledged Benjamin, “The President promoted him to the State Department with a personal and aggrieved sense of injustice done to the man who had now become his friend and right hand.”  Benjamin was indispensable to Davis, working ten to twelve hours a day by his side, serving as a speechwriter and trusted confident. Benjamin biographer Eli N. Evans author of Judah P. Benjamin, the Jewish Confederate went as far as to claim Benjamin sometimes served as a surrogate or acting president of the Confederacy.
Benjamin was the first Jewish Senator, the first Jew nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court, and he was nominated to be the Ambassador to Spain an honor for a Jew, who came from a prominent Spanish Jewish family, and who traced their lineage to before the expulsion. The Confederacy had been welcoming to religious minorities, Benjamin, who was Jewish married into a successful Louisiana Creole and Catholic family excelled in an increasingly Protestant Christian evangelical majority. In the South and the Senate, Benjamin was a brilliant jurist, orator, a plantation owner, and a sugar cane cultivator. During the Civil War, Benjamin was “the brains of the Confederacy,” the Jew at “the very center of Southern history,” “in the eye of the storm that was the Civil War,” who remained in the “shadow” but took the fall as the Confederacy failed in the war.  Through it, all Benjamin refused to discuss his Jewish identity, anti-Semitism followed him throughout his political career and his actions in the Confederate cabinet caused an eruption of anti-Jewish prejudice in the North and mostly in the South, where the Jewish population had lived in harmony with their Christian neighbors.
Sanders also shares with Benjamin a reluctance to discuss his Jewish identity, which involved a religious childhood followed filled with Hebrew school and a Bar Mitzvah to marrying into a Catholic family and remaining Jewish in name only as a way to advance his political career in a Christian America. Sanders left out his Judaism, throughout the 2016 presidential campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, only to be trounced by Jewish voters. Sanders addressed his Judaism on the 2020-campaign trail in November 2019 with an article in the leftist Jewish publication the Jewish Currants “How to Fight Antisemitism,” Sanders declared, “I am a proud Jewish American.”
The threat of antisemitism is not some abstract idea to me. It is very personal. It destroyed a large part of my family. I am not someone who spends a lot of time talking about my personal background because I believe political leaders should focus their attention on a vision and agenda for others, rather than themselves. But I also appreciate that it’s important to talk about how our backgrounds have informed our ideas, our principles, and our values.
I am a proud Jewish American. My father emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1921 at the age of 17 to escape the poverty and widespread antisemitism of his home country. Those in his family who remained in Poland after Hitler came to power were murdered by the Nazis. I know very well where white supremacist politics leads, and what can happen when people do not speak up against it.
Sanders has increasingly discussed his Judaism in the weeks leading up to the all-important Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary turning his religion from a negative into a positive. Then Sanders debuted a new image at a Hanukkah celebration at the Brenton Skating Plaza in Des Moines, Iowa, the site of the first nominating contest, where Sanders would go to come-in a close second in a dead heat race against Pete Buttigieg, the Former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. On December 29, 2019, at the event Sanders denounced the recent anti-Semitic attack at a New York rabbi’s home in Monsey, lite the giant Hanukkah menorah, sang Hanukkah songs, and most startling wore a kippah. In his remarks, Sanders discussed anti-Semitism a new staple on the campaign trail:
“What we are seeing right now — we’re seeing it in America and we’re seeing it all over the world — is a rise in anti-Semitism. We’re seeing a rise in hate crimes in this country. We’re seeing somebody run into a kid here in Des Moines because that child was a Latino. We’re seeing people being stabbed yesterday in New York City because they were Jewish. We are seeing people being assaulted because they are Muslim. … If there was ever a time in American history where we say no to religious bigotry, now is the time. If there was ever a time where we say no to divisiveness, now is the moment.”
On January 25, 2020, Sanders’s campaign released a four-minute video on his Twitter feed about his Jewish identity, it included excerpts from Sanders’s October 2019 speech to J Street, “the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group,” annual conference and his campaign’s Jewish outreach director Joel Rubin, a former Barack Obama official, commentating. The video complete with Yiddish slang, “kishkes,” begins with Sanders declaring; “I’m very proud to be Jewish and look forward to becoming the first Jewish president in the history of this country.”
The video was meant to contrast Sanders with Republican President Donald Trump’s tolerance of white nationalism and anti-Semitism. Rubin narrates, “We live in a perilous time where not only are white nationalists attacking our synagogues and raising hate speech on the internet, we have a white nationalist right now sitting in the White House. We need to have someone in office who gets it, gets it in his kishkes, understands what it really means to ensure that we are healing our world.”  At the J-Street conference, Sanders also referenced anti-Semitism, saying, “If there is any people on Earth who understands the dangers of racism and white nationalism, it is certainly the Jewish people. And if there is any people on Earth who should do everything humanly possible to fight against Trump’s efforts to try to divide us up … and bring people together around a common and progressive agenda, it is the Jewish people.”
On Thursday, February 6, 2020, speaking at a CNN town hall for Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire, Sanders answered an audience question about his Jewish identity being “a help or a hindrance” as he runs for the presidency. Sanders responded to his Judaism, “impacts me very profoundly. When I try to think about the views that I came to hold there are two factors. One I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money … and the second one is being Jewish…. At a very early age, even before my political thoughts were developed, I was aware of the horrible things that human beings can do to other people in the name of racism or white nationalism, or in this case Nazism.”
On the campaign trail, the most surprising Sanders’s allies and shave been touting his Judaism, among them Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Professor Cornel West. At a September 2019 campaign rally, Sarsour declared, “I would be so proud to win, but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president this country has ever seen and for his name to be Bernard Sanders.”  At a pre-New Hampshire primary event on Monday, February 10, 2020, West, expressed, “We got a deep Jewish brother named Bernie Sanders who is bringing us together.” West supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and questions the Jewish historical claim to Israel.
Sanders’s position on Israel is also troubling and he is overtly critical especially of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Sanders declares he is pro-Israel, writing, “I have a connection to Israel going back many years. In 1963, I lived on a kibbutz near Haifa. It was there that I saw and experienced for myself many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded.” However, Sanders has sympathies with the Palestinians’ viewpoint, rights and “their displacement,” calling the Israeli settlements an occupation. Sanders’s plans threaten American military aid and funding to Israel making it contingent on their treatment of Palestinians, justifying it by saying, “$3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government.”  Sanders claims that kind of criticism “does not “delegitimize” Israel any more than acknowledging the sober facts of America’s own founding delegitimizes the United States.”  At the J-Street conference, Sanders justified his criticism, claiming, “It’s going to be very hard for anybody to call me — whose father’s family was wiped out by Hitler — anti-Semitic.”
American Jews have reluctant to support Sanders partially because of his campaign surrogates who have a history of making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks and Sanders’s position on Israel. A January 2020, Pew Research Center poll finds that only 11 percent of Jewish members of the Democratic Party intends to vote for Sanders in the primaries. Sanders garners most of his support from “religiously unaffiliated Democrats, self-described atheists and agnostics,” and from Muslims than he does from Jewish Democrats.  Jewish Journal Political Editor Shmuel Rosner points out, “Still, it is clear that he is not the Jews’ preferred cup of tea. For many Israelis, a Sanders presidency seems like a nightmare. Sanders says he is “proud to be Jewish” but many Jews find it hard to feel the same pride as they look at him.”  The New York Times in their interview with Sanders noted his different views on his religion and his place in history. The Editorial Board indicated, “Senator Sanders is religiously an anomaly among the candidates, for several reasons — if elected, he would be the first Jewish president, and also one of few who have openly discussed a disconnect from organized religion. He attended Hebrew school as a boy and spent time in Israel on a kibbutz, but has said he does not have a regular religious practice.”
In contrast, to Sanders’s recent declaration about his Jewish identity, Judah Benjamin supposedly only once declared his Jewishness in his political career on the Senate floor; however, historians dispute the occurrences since it was out of caricature for Benjamin. Benjamin chose not to discuss his Judaism but it followed him and he was the target of anti-Semitic attacks from colleagues and political enemies alike. Benjamin was the consummate insider and outsider as a Jew at both times. Sanders too shares the distinction of being an outsider in the American Jewish community and among Jewish voters.
In March 1858, while Benjamin delivered a speech supporting Kansas being admitted to the Union as a slave state supposedly, Republican Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio “denounced” Benjamin on the Senate floor calling him, “an Israelite with Egyptian principle.” Wade stated, “Why sir, when old Moses, under immediate inspiration of God Almighty, enticed a whole nation of slaves, and ran away, not to Canada to old Canaan, I suppose Pharaoh and all the chivalry of old Egypt denounced him as a most furious abolitionist… there were not those who loved Egypt better than they loved liberty… They were not exactly Northern men with Southern principles, but they were Israelites with Egyptian principles.”
To which Benjamin supposedly responded, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightning of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”  Although attributed to Benjamin, Benjamin never acknowledged his Jewishness in issues in the Senate that affected American Jews. Historian Bertram W. Korn does not believe that Benjamin delivered this remark. According to Korn, “The fact that Benjamin did not feel obliged, in either of these cases, to register himself as a Jew would appear to be much more significant than any of the questionable traditions and legends concerning allegedly defiant answers to which he is purported to have made to any anti-Jewish attacks upon himself.”  Evans also questions Benjamin’s declaration, since historians have told “ four different versions” of the anecdote and “the quote cannot be verified.” Still, Evans notes “the statement remains a part of the legend of Judah P. Benjamin, even though it indicates an uncharacteristic acknowledgment in public of his Jewishness.”
The Benjamin family was not Orthodox and kept their store open on the Sabbath, and they did adhere to the daily religious rituals. Judah’s father Phillip Benjamin “was an intellectual” and “well versed in Jewish law.” Phillip was one of the founders of Charleston’s first Reform synagogue, the Reform Society of Israelites after he and 46 other members of Congregation Beth Elohim petitioned the synagogue to among other reforms modernize prayers using English, shorten the prayers, and include an English sermon in the service. The petitioners looked to anglicize Judaism in Protestant Charleston. Evans indicates, “As a son of one of the leaders of the society Judah understandably would have been deeply affected by the religious divisions. The reform movement was not just for adults, it sought to influence history through the children of its members and the generations to come.” When Judah turned thirteen in 1824, he participated in a confirmation ceremony rather than a bar mitzvah. Phillip Benjamin served on the committee of correspondence of the new congregation. The family’s religious observance was lax, especially because of financial needs Phillip kept his store open on the Sabbath. In 1827, even under reform rules the new congregation “ousted” the Benjamins from the synagogue for not observing the Sabbath.
Despite his non-observance, Benjamin remained a Jew his whole life although he was never attended or a member in a synagogue or involved in the Jewish community of any city he lived throughout his adult life in America or Britain. According to Korn in his article, “Judah P. Benjamin as a Jew,” “Altogether it would appear that Benjamin had no positive or active interest in Jews or Judaism. The only known facts are that he was born into a Jewish family… that he never denied being Jewish or sought to escape his background through conversion to the Catholic faith of his wife and daughter.”  “More recently Evans claims, “To presume Benjamin a nonbeliever by his public acts represents a fundamental error in Southern history.” Evans believes Benjamin could not cut ties completely with his Judaism after his religious upbringing, arguing, “No Jew can make the leap from a childhood with religious immigrant parents to an assimilated Southern leader in twenty years, without retaining psychological ties to his Jewish past.”
The lack of personal sources about Benjamin makes it even more difficult to analyze his personal feelings about his Jewish identity as opposed to the public reticence available from the scarce sources. To Catharine MacMillan, in her article, “Judah Benjamin: marginalized outsider or admitted insider?,” “This failure is significant not only in the understanding of Benjamin’s life but also in a greater understanding of one of the most prominent Jewish figures in the nineteenth-century English speaking world. This prevents a greater understanding of the acceptance of Jewish people in America and the United Kingdom.”  Benjamin’s success was because of his passionate loyalty to Southern issues and his ability to downplay his religion. Despite Benjamin assimilating to Southern white Christian society, the anti-Semitic attacks towards Benjamin both before and especially during the Civil War gave rise to widespread anti-Jewish prejudice in the South. Historians will never know how he felt about the personal attacks or how he felt about his actions in the cabinet were affecting the wider Jewish community in the South.
The very little record does not indicate if he had any pride in being Jewish or involvement after his childhood. Whitaker in his Sketches of Life and Character in Louisiana, The Portraits Selected Principally from the Bench and Bar noted in 1847 that the public was aware that Benjamin was Jewish, writing, “Mr. Benjamin is by birth, and as his names imports, an Israelite. Yet how far he still adheres to the religion of his fathers, I cannot tell, though I should doubt whether the matter troubled him much.”  One incident indicates that Benjamin took an interest in the community; he purchased a subscription to the Philadelphia Rabbi Isaac Leeser’s newspaper The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. On March 20, 1848, Gershom Kursheedt, the leader of the New Orleans Jewish community notified Leeser in a letter that “Before I forget it let me state on Friday last Mr. J.P. Benjamin handed me $5.50 for you.” In 1843, Leeser sent free copies to influential Jews so they would purchase a subscription to his magazine. Benjamin was not as distanced to know the leader of the community and his connection to Leeser and to want to be current on Jewish issues.
Jewish leaders looked to claim Benjamin as a member of the Jewish community more than Benjamin wished to identify publicly with his religion. Two stories circulated that embellished his involvement. The first attributed to Isaac Mayer Wise, who claimed in the fall of 1850 to have had two discussions with Benjamin, Secretary of State Daniel Webster and Lieutenant Matthew F. Maury. In 1874, Wise recounts in his memoir, Reminisces he discussed religion and Judaism with Benjamin in the two meetings, the first in Webster’s office then later at dinner. Korn believes the discussions did not occur because Benjamin became a Senator in 1853, while Webster died in 1852, and Benjamin did not visit Washington in the fall of 1850 but July 1851. Wise contradicted his story in a response to a Boston Transcript editorial from January 5, 1861, which criticized Jews, Benjamin, Senator David (Levy) Yulee and Benjamin Mordecai of Charleston for contributing to the secession crisis, Benjamin and Yulee through their Senate actions and Mordecai with a monetary contribution. Wise responded Jews were divided politically and that he had only met Mordecai. Neither did Wise mention meeting Benjamin in his obituary for Benjamin in the Israelite.
Years later, Herbert Ezekiel author of the book The History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 to 1917 (1917) claimed in 1860 that while Benjamin was in San Francisco arguing the mining case United States V. Castillero, he delivered a sermon at a San Francisco synagogue for Yom Kippur, on September 26. The United States V. Castillero was one of Benjamin’s most important cases in front of the Supreme Court concerned with “the ownership of the New Almaden quicksilver mine in California.”  Ezekiel quoted Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati. Wise had not been San Francisco that year and neither did the only Jewish paper The Weekly Gleaner claim Benjamin was anywhere near a synagogue let alone deliver a Yom Kippur sermon.
Two days earlier Rev, Julius Eckman of The Weekly Gleaner reported Benjamin delivered a lecture on politics and government at Tucker’s Academy for an Episcopal Church. The speech, however, did mention American Jewry, Eckman reported Benjamin made rare comments speaking out against political discrimination. Gleaner wrote, “He next referred in a very happy manner to the injustice in the distribution of offices and asked why the citizens of his religious tenets were not favored by those who have it in their power to bestow offices of emolument and trust. In a very pathetic manner, he asked ‘Would the great Washington have excluded a citizen from holding federal appointment because of his religion.’”
Ezekiel believed Benjamin’s speech was delivered as a Yom Kippur sermon, Korn, however, indicates the speech must have been one Benjamin delivered to the Church of Advent. Korn claims the official printed version of the speech referred to “the spoils system and political prejudice, not religious prejudice.” Korn argues Eckman was either drowsy that evening and did not hear Benjamin right, or he was so eager to identify Benjamin as a positive Jew that he misinterpreted what the Louisiana Senator did say.”  Korn’s basis for his analysis was because Benjamin never spoke about himself in his address or anything related to Judaism in his addresses, quoting Jefferson Davis who claimed, “No more reticent man ever lived where it was possible to be silent.”
Without many records, it is difficult to say for certain. Despite Korn debunking the Benjamin quote, Eckman’s paraphrasing of Benjamin speaks volumes on why he, for the most part, stayed away from Judaism in his public life, his fear his religion would hold his ambition back from political advancement. Historian Diane Ashton explains the situation for Southern Jews during the Civil War in her article “Shifting Veils: Religion, Politics, and Womanhood Among Jewish Women During the Civil War.” Ashton writes, “When the determination of friend or foe was the degree to which an individual displayed shared values and commitments and when religion was made to serve political causes, Jewish identity could be a liability or an asset.”  With the array of anti-Semitic attacks on Benjamin from his political foes, he long learned that assimilation and keeping his religious difference private was best for his political advancement.
Two later incidents while Benjamin served in the Senate, however, demonstrated just how distanced publicly he was from his religion. In 1850, the “American Minster to Switzerland” A. Dudley Moore negotiated a commercial treaty with the Swiss Confederation. An article in the treaty allowed Swiss cantons the right to refuse Jews’ entry and not allow them to benefit from the treaty, only Christians, and included the ability to expel any Jew conducting business in their canton. Secretary of State Daniel Webster and Senator Henry Clay opposed the clause and President Millard Fillmore wanted the clause removed from the treaty.
The controversy became known as L’Affaire Swiss. Rabbinical leaders in both North and South opposed the anti-Semitic clause and lobbied the government to advocate religious tolerance abroad. Among those leading the movement were “Rabbis Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, David Einhorn of Baltimore, J. M. Cardozo of Charleston, and Capt. Jonas Phillips Levy of New York.” Former Representative Phillip Phillips of Alabama and Jonas Levy advocated the government on behalf of American Jews. In the Senate, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan led a movement opposed to ratifying the treaty. Cass would later become Secretary of State and notably delivered a speech on the Senate floor on April 19, 1854, placing his support in America’s Jewish population.
Benjamin, however, refused to be involved in the Senate floor debate; instead, he did not identify himself as a Jew that would have been subjected to the treaty’s exemption. Benjamin presented the petition on May 10, 1854, on the Senate floor, he advocated for equality in the treaty but Benjamin chose not to include that he too was a Jew, excluding himself from his coreligionists. According to the Congressional Globe from the day, “Mr. Benjamin resented… a petition of citizens of the United States, professing the Jewish religion, praying that measures be taken to secure to American citizens of every religious creed, residing or traveling abroad, their civil and religious rights; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.”  The clause was rewritten but it still allowed the Swiss to discriminate against Jews. What had been an objection became a protest movement by American Jews, the situation only grew when an American citizen and Jew, A. H. Gootman, who conducted commercial business for five years was forced to leave La Chaux-de-Fonds, in Neuchâtel in 1856.
Except for presenting the petition, Benjamin chose not to take on a leadership role; historians suggest he felt it better for non-Jewish Senate members to take on that position. However, it was often the practice of some Jews in the South to “veil” as historian Diane Ashton called it, their religion in front of their Christian neighbors. If he would have taken on a leadership role he would have been known as the “Jewish Senator,” and he worked his whole career not to be defined or hindered by his Judaism.  In 1860, Benjamin remained just as detached, when China and Japan put similar clauses in their treaties with America only allowing Christians to worship freely. Again, Jewish leaders objected to the included clauses and lobbied that any American of any faith should have their right. Rabbi Max Lilienthal wrote to Benjamin looking for him to advocate in the Senate on American Jewry’s behalf. Benjamin replied:
Washington, March 24, 1860
My dear Sir:
I have received your favor of the 21st inst., and shall be watchful of the China treaty, in order to take care that by no omission shall the Israelites of the United States be debarred the privilege secured by the treaty to their Christian fellow citizens.
Thank you for your complimentary expression toward myself, I remain,
Yours with great respect,
Rev. Dr. Lilienthal.
Benjamin’s reply was detached from the situation, although he agreed to advocate, he did not include himself as one of the aggrieved Jews.
Benjamin would the ultimate political insider but he spent his life as a Jew on the outside from his religion and community. Benjamin remained an outsider as a Jew, who like the rest of the Southern Jewish population tried to be more devoted, loyal and fervent in all the South’s institutions and social constructs to avoid anti-Jewish prejudice. Legal scholar Catharine MacMillan even concurs, “Benjamin’s life, it is also argued, demonstrates how some individuals can ‘overcome’ the initial marginalization which attends the circumstances of their birth to move within the mainstream of society.” Historians agree that Benjamin’s ability to turn his “weakness into strength” led to his success and his “perseverance in the face of adversity.”  Benjamin died on May 6, 1884, although he remained a non-observant Jew, his wife Natalie St-Martin Benjamin had a Catholic priest administer last rites on Benjamin before he died, had his funeral services in a church and buried him at the St Martin family crypt at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
The United States is probably the most polarized politically it has been since before the Civil War, the ideological war between the left and right has widened into a chasm. Sanders has found being a Democratic socialist his new religion, his adherence to the ideology has helped him propel to the top of the candidates and gained him popularity among the growing progressives within the party. Benjamin too molded to the Southern social and political norms to rise the political ladder, he supported and defended slavery, states’ rights, and then secession to reach the heights of power in the South. Evans describes, “Benjamin as a Jew would have to be more loyal to the Cause than anyone else — more outspoken in the Cabinet, more courageous, and willing to wage war with the energy that total war demanded. And if he understood Jefferson Davis, loyalty to the President as the symbol to the Cause was the measure of a man’s worth to the Confederacy.”  Loyalty and adherence to America’s new political norms and downplaying their Judaism are the reasons both Benjamin and Sanders were able to advance in their political career despite their religion, now Sanders has the chance to use Benjamin’s strategy to reach what has until now elusive for Jews, the pinnacle of power in the U.S, the presidency.
Downey, Arthur T. The Creole Affair: The Slave Rebellion That Led the U.S. and Great Britain to the Brink of War. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin, the Jewish Confederate. New York: Free Press, 1989.
Korn, Bertram W. “JUDAH P. BENJAMIN AS A JEW.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 38, no. 3, 1949, pp. 153–171. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43059749.
MacMillan, Catharine. “Judah Benjamin: marginalized outsider or admitted insider?” Journal of Law and Society, 42 (1), 2015, pp. 150–172. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14676478.2015.00702.
Nadell, Pamela S. and Jonathan D. Sarna, eds. Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives. Hanover N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001.
Singer, Jane. The Confederate Dirty War: Arson, Bombings, Assassination, and Plots for Chemical and Germ Attacks on the Union. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2005.
Stone, Kurt F. The Jews of Capitol Hill: A Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2011.
Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS is a journalist, librarian, and historian. She has a BA in History & Art History, and an MLIS, Masters in Library and Information Studies both from McGill University. She has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies program. She is currently expanding her article about Confederate cabinet secretary Judah Benjamin “The Mysterious Prince of the Confederacy: Judah P. Benjamin and the Jewish goal of whiteness in the South” into a full-length biography.
 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 149.
 Ibid., Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, xiii.
 Arthur T. Downey, The Creole Affair: The Slave Rebellion That Led the U.S. and Great Britain to the Brink of War, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 160.
 Eli N. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate, (New York: Free Press, 1988), 97.
 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 10.
 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 11.
 Korn, “JUDAH P. BENJAMIN AS A JEW”
 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, xvii.
 Whitaker, Sketches of Life and Character in Louisiana, 28.
 MacMillan, “Judah Benjamin: marginalized outsider or admitted insider?,” 11.
 Korn, “JUDAH P. BENJAMIN AS A JEW.” 156.
 Ibid., Korn, “JUDAH P. BENJAMIN AS A JEW.” 157.
 Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Sarna, eds. Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives, (Hanover N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001), 84.
 Korn, “JUDAH P. BENJAMIN AS A JEW.” 167.
 Stone, The Jews of Capitol Hill, 41.
 MacMillan, “Judah Benjamin: marginalized outsider or admitted insider?,” 18–19.
 Ibid., MacMillan, “Judah Benjamin: marginalized outsider or admitted insider?,” 18–19.
 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 121.
Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS is a journalist, librarian, and historian. She has a BA in History & Art History, and an MLIS, Masters in Library and Information Studies both from McGill University. She has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies program. She is currently expanding her article about Confederate cabinet secretary Judah Benjamin “The Mysterious Prince of the Confederacy: Judah P. Benjamin and the Jewish Goal of Whiteness in the South” into a full-length biography.


Anok-Imaskar was an empire that existed in ancient Kara-Tur, under the reign of Emperor Kujawa. It was one of the three successor states of the Imaskar Empire after it fell in −2488 DR, the others being Deep Imaskar and Solon. Later scholars would mark the Anok-Imaskar period as the First Age of Shou Lung, as it was a precursor to the later Shou Lung empire.
Unlike Imaskar's vassals, Durpar and Gundavar, which descended into barbarism, and the Raurin, which became a desert wasteland, the eastern provinces of Imaskar emerged relatively unscathed from the destruction of the western empire. The mountainous Khati province and the flatter Katakoro province were both protected from the Mulan rebellion by distance and the natural defenses provided by the Katakoro Shan.[speculation] Within a year of Imaskar's fall, in −2487 DR, the surviving artificer Kujawa—who carried one of the False Imaskarcana, Dhonas's Shroud—claimed the Dragon Throne in the Khati city of Thakos, the former capital of Upper Imaskar. With that, he declared himself Emperor and founded a new realm, Anok-Imaskar.
Anok-Imaskar was prosperous and quickly spread east, north, and south. It traded with its fellow successor state Solon to the west. Eventually, circa −2300 DR, Kujawa decided to found a second capital city to better govern the new southern lands his nation had claimed. He built it on a mountain plateau further south in the Shao Mountains, east of the Sempadan Forest. The new capital was called Tempat Larang.
Unfortunately, the nearby volcano Mount Bakos erupted in −2113 DR,[note 1] covering Tempat Larang in ash and lava, and the city had to be evacuated. Over the following decades, the empire's southwestern lands were also abandoned.
Emperor Kujawa repeated the history of his former peers in Imaskar when he died fighting the Immortal Nung Chiang, in the form of a t'ien lung dragon, in −1943 DR.[note 2] His death caused the empire to collapse, dividing into a number of warring states, including Chu'ta Te, Kao Shan, Mai Yuan, and Ra-Khati.
At its height around −2300 DR, Anok-Imaskar stretched from the Celestial Sea in the north to the Segara Sea in the south (a large portion of what was later Shou Lung and T'u Lung). It did not spread west, owing to claims by Solon on the lands south of the Raurinshield Mountains.
Among others, it included the lands of Khati (the realm that would later be known as Ra-Khati) and Katakoro (the later Katakoro Plateau); Chu'ta Te (later Chukei) Kao Shan, and Mai Yuan (which would all be provinces of Shou Lung); and the southern city of Tempat Larang.[note 3]
- ↑ The Grand History of the Realms uses the name "Mount Bakos" but this name does not appear in any other source. However, Ronin Challenge tells that Tempat Larang was destroyed by the volcano "Mount Tengkorak", which is located near the ruins of Tempat Larang on the accompanying map. While it is likely that "Bakos" was the Roushoum name for the volcano, this cannot be corroborated. Nevertheless, for simplicity, this article assumes this is the case.
- ↑ The Grand History of the Realms page 33 says Kujawa died in combat with "the celestial dragon T'ien Lung". However, a "t'ien lung" is a generic type of oriental dragon with a name meaning "celestial dragon"; this name may be in error. Ronin Challenge tells that the Immortal Nung Chiang opposed the empire's expansion into Tempat Larang, even triggering the Mount Tengkorak eruption. Furthermore, Nung Chiang manifests as a t'ien lung in the module, and is mentioned to also appear as a spirit dragon. Page 67 presents a story by Awagi Nukichi retelling the fall of Emperor Tan Chin (there called Joon Tsao Choo) at Kuo Meilan to an unnamed "spirit dragon" and appends a disaster striking Tempat Larang (presumably the volcano in the same book) a few years afterward. However, Grand History later retconned this, placing the destruction of Tempat Larang within the time of the newly invented Anok-Imaskar, Kujawa's death 170 years later, and Tan Chin's empire centuries after that, with Tan Chin defeated by Chih Shih as normal. Thus, in-universe, Awagi's story appears to be a mistaken conflation of the falls of both empires and it's not clear what it might say about Kujawa and Anok-Imaskar, and who killed Kujawa. While it is possible that Nung Chiang is T'ien Lung, no source confirms that Nung Chiang killed any emperor. Page 33 of The Grand History of the Realms also notes that Chan Cheng was the first of the Nine Immortals, suggesting Nung Chiang wasn't an Immortal previously. Nevertheless, the apparent intention is that Nung Chiang is T'ien Lung and this is assumed here for simplicity.
- ↑ In order to cover such far-flung regions of Kara-Tur, Anok-Imaskar likely covered more lands than what is mentioned in Grand History (only a few are given as examples). However, these are as yet unknown.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Brian R. James and Ed Greenwood (September, 2007). The Grand History of the Realms. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7869-4731-7.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Brian R. James and Ed Greenwood (September, 2007). The Grand History of the Realms. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 33. ISBN 978-0-7869-4731-7.
- ↑ Brian R. James and Ed Greenwood (September, 2007). The Grand History of the Realms. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 31, 33. ISBN 978-0-7869-4731-7.


John Adams [Blu-ray]
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John Adams is a sprawling HBO miniseries event that depicts the extraordinary life and times of one of Americas least understood, and most underestimated, founding fathers: the second President of the United States, John Adams. Starring Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Cinderella Man, HBOs American Spendor) in the title role and Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me, Kinsey) as Adams devoted wife Abigail, John Adams chronicles the extraordinary life journey of one of the primary shapers of our independence and government, whose legacy has often been eclipsed by more flamboyant contemporaries like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. Set against the backdrop of a nations stormy birth, this sweeping miniseries is a moving love story, a gripping narrative, and a fascinating study of human nature. Above all, at a time when the nation is increasingly polarized politically, this story celebrates the shared values of liberty and freedom upon which this country was built.]]>
Who's Who in History: character biographies
David McCullough: Painting with Words: A rare and personal glimpse at the life and works of author David McCullough
The Making of John Adams featurette
Top Customer Reviews
Paul Giamatti's performance in the title role is much in dispute as he, like many other actors, seems to play himself as much as his character. He turns from a loving father to the lawyer and representative who sometimes looks apoplectic rather than just an angry or fiery patriot. Much to his credit, I felt the John Adams of later years on subsequent episodes was extremely well-acted.
Abigail Adams is played by Laura Linney, and her performance is superb and not the least in dispute. From the first moment, she is thoroughly credible as the vivacious lover, friend, confidante, advisor, and wife of John Adams. Her acting here should garner her an Emmy. The actors protraying Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson turned in stellar performances.
Many complain that this did not follow the book of the same title, and was not true to history exactly. To the first query the answer is what does? To the second, it is a well-written and well-acted drama that deserves our attention.
The series begins with the Boston Massacre and John Adams representing the British soldiers. With his successful defense, he is noticed by the Crown, as well as the colonials who are striving for independence. Both want his services. Adams chooses independence over the king and we see him as representative, foreign minister, beggar and borrower, ambassador, vice president, and president. His one anchor through these assignments and occupations in the struggle of a new nation is his love and respect for his wife, Abigail whom he always refers to as "my friend.Read more ›
The series insists on focusing on Adams' lows. It seems the writers took all the depressing elements of McCullough's book, which were few, and magnified those to center stage. For instance, John Adams' alcoholic son Charles has a major part in the series, but played a relatively minor role in the book. The mudslinging between Jefferson and Adams in Adams' second election for president was jettisoned for the Charles Adams storyline. Also, Adams, presented by McCullough, was a good natured man with a self-deprecating sense of humor. In the series he seems to live in misery.
They also took scenes that were generally upbeat and made them darker. When Adams meets King George III (in my opinion the climax of the story - or at least the first half of the story) in the book, the King is very polite and friendly (much like his portrayal in The Madness of King George III). He smiled a lot and made Adams more comfortable, if not less in awe. In the series the King is just plain weird. I can only guess the filmmakers were hinting at King George's future illness/madness. It's almost as if this series is based on another book about John Adams - a darker book. This series really missed the tone of McCullough's great book.
Still -- divorcing myself from the book -- I find this series is well-made and held my attention. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are very good. My advice would be to watch the series first, then read the book for a much more uplifting story.
Giamatti is simply brilliant as Adams. If he doesn't win the Emmy for this, I may declare my own independance from the "dark tyranny" of the ATAS. Linney is equally wonderful in her portrayal as the groundingly sapient Abigail. Their love story is one of the greatest in American history, and it's been marvelously recaptured here.
If it's even possible to have "spoilers" for a factual historical drama, then the following might qualify, but if you want to see what each eposide covers, here's my stab at it:
Episode 1: Join or Die.
Begins with the Boston Massacre, and covers the period leading up to Adams departure for Philidelphia to represent Massachusettes in the First Continental Congress.
Episode 2: Independance.
Covers the First Continental Congress, the beginning of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord, the nomination of GW (by Adams) to serve as general of the new Continental Army, the Second Continental Congress, and Adams collaboration with Jefferson and Franklin to bring forth the Declaration of Independance.
Episode 3: Don't Tread on Me.Read more ›
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The program is important because it shows how the Founding Fathers argued, maneuvered and compromised. How families lived their lives. Read morePublished 11 hours ago by David Reiss
The actor who portrayed President Adams was very good The actress who played Abigale Adams didn't quite make me feel this was what Mrs Adams was about but it certanly was an... Read morePublished 13 hours ago by Richard Walter
Hard to watch. I don't know if John Adams was as troubled-looking in real life. Paul Giamatti's John Adams looks troubled and confused. It made me anxious watching him. Read morePublished 1 day ago by Tom
The music gives me chills! Wonderful mini-series. A must for history buffs!Published 1 day ago by AD Seattle
This is a great mini series that I throughly enjoyed. It helped my 12 year old an I understand the Revolutionary war and all that John Adams went through for our country. Read morePublished 2 days ago by Cassie
Great insight of our history. Castings and settings very good.Published 2 days ago by Loren McClain
I love this miniseries; yet it was hard to keep my students attention during a class showing. It is full of great information and I am happy to have it in my video library... Read morePublished 2 days ago by MEW


ALAN STRICKLAND MILITARY CORRESPONDENCE Service Great War WW1 Military
Old, antique collection of ephemera / war correspondence between soldier A.F. (Alan) Strickland and others. Dated from approx 1914-1918, but see what's listed (postcards, telegrams, letters) . Perfect for militaria collector!
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1979 EASTON PRESS ARISTOTLE POLITICS & POETICS Hardcover Leather Book GREEN Collectible Gilt


The Champa Earrings are inspired from the beautiful flowers of Magnolia champaca.
Crafted with Nickel-free Brass plated with 18K Gold.
Jewellery played an important role in ancient Kalinga. Artistic representations of daily life reveal how affluent people used jewellery to display wealth and prestige. Some of the best -preserved examples come from the rock sculptures of 13th-century Sun temple at Konark, as well as the gold ornaments of Lord Jagannath crafted in 15th-century and presently housed at the Puri temple’s treasury.
Our Jewellery is adapted from these ornaments. This piece embodies Kalinga’s rich cultural heritage.


On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike is a history of the great strike of marrngu (the Pilbara’s Aboriginal pastoral workers) during the later 1940s. This week we feature two reviews of the book, one from the historian and social scientist Tim Rowse, and the other from a former senior Commonwealth bureaucrat in Indigenous affairs, Michael Dillon. Each review brings a perspective that reflects the readers’ background and expertise, but both are agreed that Anne Scrimgeour has produced a masterful work of history, an important guide for future policy makers and an enduring legacy in the wake of her untimely death earlier this year.
Indigenous Agency and Policy Transition
Though it is not as well known or as frequently commemorated as the Gurindji walk-off in 1966, the 1946-49 strike by Aboriginal pastoral workers in the Pilbara region has been the subject of several historical works and novels. What Anne Scrimgeour brings to this topic is her thorough approach to sources (including interviews with participants conducted as long ago as 1991) and her willingness to question received interpretations. As well, I will argue, she illuminates the Western Australian government’s shift, in these years, from ‘protection’ to ‘assimilation’. That policy transition has usually been presented as the outcome of rethinking by politicians, senior public servants and academic experts. While these actors were undoubtedly important, in some times and places new forms of Indigenous agency compelled a policy change. That is, policy change became necessary as a solution to a problem that old approaches had created by ignoring or discouraging Indigenous agency. In On Red Earth Walking Scrimgeour tells the story of the exhaustion of one mode of state authority and the inauguration of another – a transition made easier by a change of senior government personnel but made necessary by Aboriginal refusal en masse to live by established habits of compliance. When marrngu (the Pilbara’s Aboriginal pastoral workers) collectively demanded better pay and conditions from the region’s wool growers, they exposed weaknesses in the state administration of Aboriginal affairs and stimulated policy innovation.
Marrngu began to discuss striking for higher pay in 1944; they were encouraged to do so by a non-Aboriginal contractor Don McLeod who was himself an employer of marrngu. From around July 1945, marrngu close to McLeod promoted strike action around the region’s stations, and it was agreed that 1 May 1946 would be the date to stop work, though strikes on some stations had won wage rises by that date. The police responded to people walking off the job by arresting and gaoling leaders such as Clancy McKenna, Dooley Binbin and by arresting and fining McLeod. Such actions provoked protests by solidarity groups in Perth, but they also intimidated many marrngu. The numbers of strikers grew in July 1946 when many marrngu refused to return to their stations after their permitted visit to the Port Hedland horse races in July. By the first week of August, there were two striker camps – Twelve Mile (near Port Hedland) and Moolyella (near Marble Bar) – their residents surviving on what we would now call a ‘hybrid economy’, a mixture of rations, hunting and tin-mining.
The Western Australian Labor government (led by Frank Wise) aligned with the pastoralists in this industrial dispute; police and ‘travelling inspectors’ enforced laws such as the Aboriginal Rights Amendment Act 1936 that severely abridged the citizenship rights of people classed as ‘natives’ and the Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944 that set out the criteria by which a magistrate should judge a ‘native’ request to be exempt from such controls. Employers who paid the government for a licence to employ Aboriginal people believed (with good reason) that what they were buying included police and travelling inspector assistance in resisting any challenge to employer authority. However, the government’s most potent enforcement tactic – imprisoning or fining those considered strike leaders – proved to be frail. McLeod, McKenna and Dooley Binbin appealed their convictions twice – unsuccessfully in Western Australia’s Supreme Court (November 1946) and then successfully in the High Court of Australia in March 1947. In addition, officials who could threaten individuals effectively had no answer to the solidarity and economic viability of the growing striker camps at Twelve Mile and Moolyella.
The election of a Liberal government in March 1947 created the opportunity for a change of state tactics and senior bureaucrats, and the Bateman Report (1948) warned the McLarty government that communist agitation would become more influential among the State’s Aboriginal people if the government did not take a more sympathetic view of their grievances as workers. Old habits died hard among Pilbara officials, however, and their advice led the new Commissioner of Native Affairs, Stanley Middleton (appointed August 1948), to continue the old tactics: declaring Twelve Mile an area ‘prohibited to natives’ in December 1948 and arresting and removing activists in the first half of 1949. Such repression aroused more criticism from the State’s civil society, and by July 1949 the strikers were provoking the government to arrest them. That repression was actually weakening the state-employer position was highlighted in the period April-July 1949, when the Seaman’s Union refused to move wool from Port Hedland as long as strikers were in gaol. From the state government’s point of view, tactics of repression were backfiring – crippling the region’s wool industry and promoting communist influence. In July 1949, Middleton sent a new public servant envoy to talk to the strikers, Sydney Elliott-Smith, and soon he and the strikers had agreed to a new wage-scale.
The McLarty government rejected this agreement, believing that it was influenced too much by Elliott-Smith’s dealing with McLeod. Scrimgeour argues that McLeod made an error of judgment in enabling his communist allies to publicise the agreement as their victory. The political objective of conceding no legitimacy to communist leadership of Aboriginal people continued to guide the government’s revised approach to settling the industrial dispute. The state thus ended negotiations with the strikers and focused on persuading the pastoralists to pay what the strikers had said they would accept. Pastoralists did so – station by station – in negotiation with the workers who had previously worked with them. The gains of the Aboriginal workers were real; conditions were no longer similar to slavery, and many workers sought and were granted wages without ‘keep’ (rations) – a step toward the household autonomy from employer long considered normal for Australian workers.
That is the story in bare outline. In the rest of my review I want to underline Scrimgeour’s contribution to the way that we write the history of Aboriginal policy.
One of Scrimgeour’s themes is the emergence of the Pilbara Aboriginal workers as a collective actor that could enforce discipline on its members and be accepted by pastoralists and the state as a legitimate negotiator. In this possible political trajectory McLeod’s communism seems to have been both an asset and a liability. There is no doubt that his ideological commitment underpinned his respect for the latent political capacities of Aboriginal workers and that his work with key Aboriginal individuals contributed to the realisation of those capacities. But Australian governments, fighting the Cold War, treated his communism as a threat in itself, and this coloured their evaluation of the nascent Indigenous collective action with which McLeod was associated, reinforcing a common, racist devaluation of Aboriginal intelligence. The state government’s resolution of the strike in the winter of 1949 effectively pre-empted the further development of Aboriginal leadership, lest that leadership flourish under communist influence. Middleton’s assimilationism was nonetheless a progressive policy, in that it was better that the state assume the role of Aboriginal people’s defender in their dealings with other interests than simply remain the enforcer of the pastoral interest.
This realignment of the state government under Aboriginal pressure can be seen in the wider context of the changing relationship between governments and other forms of colonial authority. In adopting ‘assimilation’ as a policy around 1950, Australian governments were differentiating themselves from and – to a degree – competing with other forms of colonial authority. This change is clearest in the remote regions of Australia where, until World War Two forced public investment in northern Australia, the state had been administratively weak, delegating authority over Indigenous Australians to pastoralists and missionaries. Any tremor in the effectiveness of those two delegated authorities brought up the issue of whether the state should be doing more: to supervise pastoralists and missionaries and perhaps even replace them as the authority effectively present in Indigenous Australians’ daily lives. One of the defining structural changes in colonial authority in remote Australia after 1945 was the expansion of state (both Commonwealth and States) capacity to manage the Indigenous population, with the corresponding eclipse of non-state authorities such as missionaries and pastoralists.
It is productive to read On Red Earth Walking as a ‘policy history’ and not just as a retelling of an industrial dispute because Scrimgeour gives us so much detail about how Western Australian government officials were re-positioning themselves in the years 1946 to 1949. They had to cast state authority into a new mould because pastoral authority had suddenly failed. Central to the ‘business model’ of pastoral colonial authority was that Aboriginal populations could be managed as cheap labour pools; nothing more was required of the State government than that police and travelling inspectors discipline Aboriginal mobility, inhibiting the formation of a regional labour market. That task was made easier (requiring few public servants) by Aboriginal custom – the attachment of mobs to their ‘country’ – and by the evolved ‘feudal’ relations of mutual obligation between pastoralist and resident mobs.
Scrimgeour’s story begins at the moment when that ‘business model’ (my term not hers) broke down under the pressure of increasing state regulation of a particular sector of the Aboriginal population. Those immediately aggrieved were people of mixed Aboriginal and European descent, sometimes self-described as ‘Euralians’; some were members of the Australian Workers Union and some had formed the Euralian Association in 1934. During the war, they were suspected by the state and federal governments of being susceptible to collaboration with invading Japanese, and they were seen as a health and moral risk to sexually active soldiers. To deal with both problems, Port Hedland was declared a ‘prohibited area’ in November 1942. The mixed descent people experienced this regulation as an unjustified break in their merited advancement to equality with whites, a feeling reinforced by the government’s increasingly rigid war-time administration of the permission to employ Aboriginal people. Euralians suddenly found that they were treated as if they were mere ‘natives’. Their anger inspired Don McLeod, an activist in the Anti-Fascist League and himself a regulated employer of Aboriginal labour (well-sinking, fencing), to agitate against the racial stratification of war-time labour regulation. He was emboldened by his friendships within Western Australia’s small Communist Party of Australia network (mostly Perth-based), all espousing the principle that every colour of humanity had equal rights. He quickly found allies around Port Hedland among Aboriginal men of initiative. That it was within Aboriginal people’s collective capacity to refuse the pastoralists’ terms of employment was an idea nourished both by local conditions and by the ideological confidence of outsiders such as McLeod.
Much of Scrimgeour’s narrative is about the slow and piecemeal spread of the strike. Not everyone downed tools on 1 May 1946 because customs of mutual service and the threats of police and travelling inspectors (including showing chains to the targets of their homilies) were reasons not to rebel. However, the High Court’s March 1947 ruling, disallowing Western Australia’s earliest exemplary arrest of ring-leaders, revealed that the state government’s coercive powers were not as great as government officials, pastoralists and marrngu had assumed. So, by 1947, the two mutually reinforcing sinews of colonial authority in the Pilbara – habitual assent to employer command and state policing of those who chafed at employer command – were severely damaged. Would sheer material need restore the old obedience? Scrimgeour shows how resourceful marrngu were in provisioning themselves at the Twelve Mile and Moolyella camps. Under striker Tommy Sampie, the Twelve Mile residents even started a school.
This was a crisis of a particular form of pastoral authority, but not the end of a Pilbara pastoral industry. There were still employers willing to profit from growing wool, and there were still workers willing and able to make their living from managing herds and shearing sheep, on country. They just needed to rethink the terms of their relationship. Some employers saw this more quickly than others and McLeod and his associates promoted their approach – respectfully negotiated terms and conditions – as the desired mode of pastoralist authority.
This required changes in the state itself. The defeat of Labor and the installation of a Liberal-Country Coalition (under Liberals Duncan Ross McLarty, Premier, and Robert Ross McDonald, Native Affairs) enabled Western Australia’s reconsideration of settler colonial governance. These conservatives were receptive to the argument presented by anthropologist A.P. Elkin that Australia’s states could learn from the federal government’s exemplary colonial administration in Papua New Guinea. Commissioner of Native Affairs, Stanley Middleton, recruited from that PNG service, brought with him the idea that many decisions were best devolved to the level of the ‘district’. It took some months before Middleton realised that, in the Pilbara district, the officials serving him were still operating from the only model that they knew, in which upstanding Aboriginal people were better arrested and removed than negotiated with, based on the assumption that Aboriginal people were the child-like beneficiaries of pastoralists’ generosity. One of the rewards of Scrimgeour’s immersion in the State archives is her portrayal of officials such as John Wriede Bulmer Gribble, Thomas Emmes Jensen and Laurence O’Neill – men who had acquired their reputations for ‘knowing the natives’ under the ‘feudal’ conditions that pastoralists were now having to surrender. After a few months, Middleton was astute enough to realise that he must replace such champions of the collapsed colonial paradigm, in order to re-establish Native Affairs as a plausible advocate of Aboriginal workers within an industrial relations system closer to what Australians considered ‘normal.’ It is interesting that his new man on the spot, Sydney Elliott-Smith, was of Tasmanian origin, with experience as a magistrate and military officer in Papua – not a product of local training.
The book under review was prepared over thirty years, and it reveals Scrimgeour as an industrious, devoted and thoughtful historian of a region in which remarkable things have happened and continue to happen. Could the recent destruction of rock shelters at Juukun Gorge be another local crisis in the relationship between state and corporate authority, precipitating wider substantive policy change?
At the end of On Red Earth Walking, Scrimgeour notes that some strikers who had experienced the autonomy of Twelve Mile and Moolyella camps did not go back to herding and shearing sheep for pastoralists but made enterprises of their own – such as harvesting grass seed and ‘yandying’ for tin, columbite and tantalite – with McLeod again their partner. By 1952 there were 700 such miners. I hope that someone will write a book telling the story of this series of enterprises – arguably the most practical prefiguration of ‘self-determination’ in Australian history.
A Map for Future Governance in Indigenous Affairs
Australia emerged from World War Two with an energised economy, a greater focus on international trade, a Labor Government in Canberra with a focus on post war reconstruction and building economic resilience. In Western Australia too, Labor held office through the war, from 1936 to 1947.
In the Pilbara, economic activity consisted primarily of sheep farming on large pastoral leases and sporadic small-scale mining. Iron ore mining only emerged in the late 1950s. The pastoralists relied heavily on Aboriginal (marrngu) labour, both male and female, and exercised extraordinary control over the Aboriginal labour force by virtue of the provisions of the Western Australian Native Administration Act 1936, which, while ostensibly intended to protect Aboriginal people, contained restrictive provisions that controlled all aspects of their lives, including provisions governing employment.
This was the political, economic and social context that provided the foundation for a major political campaign, built around an extended strike by marrngu workers for better wages and conditions on pastoral leases, and an associated political campaign for access to traditional lands. The strike and political campaign, while slow to emerge, extended over three years and created the foundation for a broader Aboriginal social movement involved in small scale mining enterprises, the later purchase of a number of pastoral properties by marrngu interests, and the development of a post contact social system based on cooperative principles. The strike also led to allegations of communist interference, the arrest, neck-chaining and imprisonment of numerous Aboriginal strikers, the gaoling of various strike leaders and supporters, litigation that went to the High Court, and intense bureaucratic and political manoeuvring not only in Port Hedland and the Pilbara, but at the highest levels within the Western Australian Government.
Anne Scrimgeour’s masterfully detailed exposition and narrative explores the background and underpinnings of the political campaign, critically assesses alternative perspectives, and elucidates its broader significance and implications. Her analysis is based on detailed and extremely thorough archival research to provide a step by step account from the perspective of government agencies (primarily the Department of Native Affairs (DNA) and the police) and, to a lesser extent pastoralists, complemented by extensive first and second hand interviews with marrnguinvolved in the strike. Her analysis of cross-cultural relations between marrngu and pastoralists is sophisticated and nuanced, exploring the contradictions inherent in relationships that while structurally oppressive were often personally warm and friendly.
The unfurling of the campaign and associated strike is inherently interesting. After all, it recounts a David and Goliath struggle, involving the least powerful members of society — who while entitled to become citizens by virtue of the WA Natives (Citizenship Rights ) Act 1944, were still required to apply and meet certain stringent criteria — and one of the most powerful interest groups in the state, the pastoralists, who had the full support of the Labor state government and its agencies.
Scrimgeour is particularly strong in explicating the challenges faced by marrngu in sustaining their campaign. These included maintaining unity, finding alternative sources of income and sustenance, accessing external support from churches, progressive well-wishers in Perth and amongst the unions, and not least in avoiding the draconian consequences of breaching the Native Administration Act 1936. This legislation controlled who and where marrngu might meet supporters, where they might travel, and ultimately provided for the forced exile from the Pilbara of marrngu individuals deemed troublesome. One of the threads running through Scrimgeour’s account, is the extent to which government officials’ actions, and particularly their words, were overtly racist (albeit reflecting their times). The DNA worked hand in glove with the police and pastoralists to maintain a reliable and cheap Aboriginal labour force, and to constrain individual marrngu capacities to offer their labour beyond the current employment. While informal practice by the police was much more robust than provided for by the law, Scrimgeour’s account demonstrates how publicity for the marrngu cause beyond the Pilbara ultimately forced the police and the DNA to adopt much more cautious and legally appropriate administrative processes.
As the political campaign and strike developed, the pastoralists and the DNA struggled to design and implement an effective strategy to contain it. Scrimgeour recounts in detail how at first, they underestimated marrngu resolve and the impact of their alliance with progressive supporters in Perth. Later, their focus on developing strategies aimed at decapitating the leadership of the movement and exiling them to departmentally controlled Aboriginal settlements such as Moola Bulla in the Kimberley or Moore River settlement fell short due to a fear of attracting adverse publicity.
A particularly complex issue for anyone keen to understand the Pilbara campaign and strike is to assess the role of the marrngu leadership, and their relationship with a local non-Aboriginal Pilbara activist, station worker, miner and wharfie, Don McLeod. Scrimgeour’s narrative proffers a detailed and ultimately persuasive assessment that acknowledges McLeod’s initiative and ongoing role as well as the reality that without endogenous marrngudetermination and commitment the strike and political campaign would have failed. This interpretation was not shared at the time by the DNA, the police, nor the politicians, who overwhelmingly saw McLeod as a ‘communist agitator’ manipulating Aboriginal people. This was one of the mistakes that led to the ultimate success of the strike
Scrimgeour has provided us with an extraordinary account and insight into the unfurling of the strike over three years in the Pilbara. As it developed, Scrimgeour’s account makes clear that those involved on the government side came to see it as having wider and more problematic ramifications. On the marrngu side, Scrimgeour also recounts how deeper aspirations for access to country and self-determination were also at play, albeit less overtly articulated. Still, it is fair to say that most of those involved on all sides probably saw the conflict as a local or at most regional struggle.
While the core thematic driver for Scrimgeour’s narrative is the strike, she provides fascinating insights into numerous other issues of historical interest: the ways in which the lopsided but mutual dependence of pastoralists and marrngu manifested; the biographical backgrounds and personalities of the key strikers and their leaders; the early development of Aboriginal controlled schools in the Pilbara; the development of successful small scale mining enterprises by the strikers; highly informative biographical insights into key bureaucratic officials; and so much more.
As mere narrative exposition, On Red Earth Walking provides by far the most detailed, comprehensive and sophisticated assessment and analysis of the Pilbara strike available. Along with Mary Ann Jebb’s terrific history of the development of the Kimberley pastoral industry ‘Blood, Sweat and Welfare’, and Chris Owen’s eye-opening history of Kimberley colonial policing ‘Every Mothers Son is Guilty’, On Red Earth Walking is an essential contribution to the historiography of colonial and north west Australia. However, the significance of On Red Earth Walking is much more than that.
Scrimgeour’s account of the strike opens portals to myriad issues of much more contemporary significance: how to identify the public interest in the face of private sector lobbying; the appropriate role of security services and use of intelligence in domestic politics; the challenge of hearing Indigenous voices; who should choose Indigenous leaders and representatives; the importance of non-Indigenous allies to successful Indigenous advocacy; the independence of our judicial system; and much more. These are not inconsequential issues, and all were salient at various points in the Pilbara conflict. Scrimgeour generally does not comment overtly, but provides more than enough information to ensure readers themselves ask the questions: how was that allowed to happen? … and could it happen today? In this vein, perhaps the most important issue to emerge from Scrimgeour’s account is the structural embeddedness of racially discriminatory policy within the institutional framework of Western Australia. And of course, this raises the question: how far have we come in removing all vestiges, formal and informal, of those policies?
Finally, it is worth observing that Scrimgeour’s account is largely devoid of anthropological or sociological theory, while simultaneously laying out detailed evidence which might be used to support theoretical discussion and conclusions. So for example, drawing on Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory, there is ample evidence in her detailed narrative account that the genesis and development of the political and industrial conflict was influenced strongly by both the constraints and opportunities allowed by institutional structures and the initiatives of individual and group actors to challenge, and ultimately shape those institutional frameworks. Similarly, following Pierre Bourdieu, one might argue that Scrimgeour presents ample evidence for the existence within police and DNA staff of internalised expectations in support of settler interests leading to habituated assumptions of marrngu incompetence, laziness, lack of intelligence and so forth. These and other potential theoretical interpretations are left for readers to ponder. This is a book that challenges readers to ask further questions.
In relation to ideological and political matters, Scrimgeour avoids simplistic left/right ideological tropes, while evincing broad support for the aspirations of the strikers. She is prepared to be sceptical of McLeod’s claims to have been given authority to represent marrngu at a meeting in 1942 at Skull Creek, questioning the dates and his interpretation, while acknowledging his status amongst the strikers. She recounts without overt comment the hard-line pro-pastoralist policy of the Wise Labor Government and its Minister for the North West, Bob Coverley, and the more progressive shift towards assimilation by the new Liberal Minister for Native Affairs Ross McDonald from March 1947. Again, readers are implicitly challenged to question preconceived notions that Labor governments are inevitably progressive and Liberal governments conservative.
I raise Scrimgeour’s theoretical and ideological parsimony not as a criticism, but to make the point that while On Red Earth Walking is the best book on the Pilbara Strike written to date, and will remain essential reading for anyone interested in this issue for many decades to come, it contains evidence and insights that have a much broader import than a narrative case study of settler/Indigenous relations in a particular region, the Pilbara.
Scrimgeour’s singular achievement has been to write a sophisticated history that traverses complex historical terrain from multiple perspectives, and over the course of this journey, to sift and winnow fact from surmise, identify areas of doubt or uncertainty, elucidate likely motivations, and suggest potential interpretations. In doing so, she has implicitly pointed the way for further research on multiple fronts. On Red Earth Walking is not the last word on the
Pilbara strike and its simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary protagonists; it is the starting point for new journeys of interpretation, and historical analysis, and thus will stand the test of time in its own right.
My single complaint regarding the book is that the maps and photographs could have been more extensive, detailed and better quality. They compare poorly with the maps and photographs in Monty Hale’s 2012 bilingual memoir Kurlumarniny: We Come from the Desert, which Scrimgeour edited. In the scheme of things however, this is a minor quibble.
On Red Earth Walking deserves a wide readership amongst and beyond historians. It implicitly poses questions that are central to our nation’s future. The culmination of her life’s work seeking to document the political and cultural aspirations of marrngu people in the Pilbara, in On Red Earth Walking Anne Scrimgeour has bequeathed the nation a map into our future.


Memoirs of Georgia, Vol. II, Atlanta, Ga., page 927
Published by The Southern Historical Association in 1895
James L. Sims, farmer, Hogansville, Troup Co., Ga., son of William G. and Permelia (Cheatham) Sims, was born in Meriwether county, Ga. Oct. 10, 1837. His paternal grandparents, John and Fannie (Garr) Sims, were natives of Virginia and came to Georgia early in this century and settled in the woods near Athens, Clarke Co., Ga. Mr. Sims’ father was born on this farm July 7, 1811, was reared there, and educated in the “old-field” schools of the locality and period. In 1829 he went to Meriwether county, Ga., and settled in the woods, living in tents until they could build cabins – minus floors – in which the family lived in that condition for some considerable time. In 1837 he moved to Troup county, where he very nearly repeated his pioneer experience in the county he left. He was married Dec. 15, 1836, to Miss Permelia Cheatham – born near Athens, March 8, 1815 – daughter of Josiah and Permelia (Jones) Cheatham, pioneer settlers near Athens. Mr. Cheatham was a soldier in the war of 1812, and lived to be more than 103 years old. To Mr. Sims’ parents the following children were born: James L., the subject of this sketch, born Oct. 10, 1837; Emeline, born Sept. 17, 1838; William N., born July 13, 1840; Cynthia E., born Oct. 20, 1841; Fannie, born Feb. 26, 1843; Mary, born July 5, 1845; John I., born Sept. 6, 1847; Josiah G., born April 25, 1849; Jones C., born Jan. 22, 1851, George R., born June 15, 1853. He began life very poor, but he was industrious and energetic, and being progressive, with exceptionally good business judgment, he became quite wealthy. Mr. Sims was reared on the farm, and his limited education, was obtained in the old log school house. In 1862 he enlisted in Company B., Capt. James McCalla, Thirteenth Georgia regiment – Col. Ector – which command served in the Virginia army under Gen. John B. Gordon. He was in battles at Savannah and Shepherdstown, and numerous skirmishes; but his health not being good he was a great deal of the time in hospitals. He began life with one mule and cow, and settled in the woods where he now lives. Beginning with but little and a small farm, he has gradually increased his land holdings until now he owns nearly 600 acres of excellent land, with a good residence and good outbuildings, and his cleared land under the best of cultivation. He is now one of the solid and substantial citizens of one of the best counties in Georgia. His thriftiness is worthy of imitation – his success an inspiration to young farmers of small outfit. Mr. Sims was married Dec. 15, 1868, to Miss Jane Powledge – born in Meriwether county April 27, 1845 – daughter of John M. and Fannie (Foy) Powledge, whose families were among the early settlers near Savannah, Ga. The following children have been the fruit of this marriage: Robert F., John M., James O., Laura F., Irene J., and Foy P. Himself and wife are prominent members of the Methodist church.
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Giambattista Passeri. Plate 134. From Picturae Etruscorum in Vasculis.
Rome, 1770. Engraving. ca 12 1/2 x 8. Very good condition.
Epitomizing eighteenth-century fascination with antiquities this print was taken from Giambattista Passeri's famed collection of antique Etruscan pottery. As Abbate of Pasero, he was one of the most well-known and enthusiastic collectors of ancient terra cotta. A prolific scholar, Passeri published a book of the designs found on the objects he purchased, and the result was an exceptionally striking group of prints showcasing classic themes of ancient Etruscan and Roman design.
Click the links below to view others from this series:


Some of the large scale county maps were published in more than one edition, many incorporating revisions. A great deal depended on the ownership of the copper-plates. A major publisher of reprints and revised editions was William Faden who took charge of the business after Jefferys’ death in 1771. Chapman himself had experience of revising county maps. He acquired the copper-plates of Burdett’s Derbyshire map and was in the process of engraving revisions and additions at the time of his death. What was the fate of the plates for the Nottinghamshire map? Was the map reprinted and revised? If so are there surviving copies?
We know that Chapman died in 1778 (Gough 1780 p.369) but not the date, nor the place, nor the circumstances. For whatever reason, it would appear that his ‘stock’ remained in his rented room at Pall Mall until it was auctioned, ‘by order of the Executors’, by John Christie in December 1784. The contents of the sale might more accurately be described as the ‘assets’ of Chapman’s business and his personal collection of maps and prints, there was no stock of printed maps. Included in the auction were all the plates of Chapman’s own maps together with plates of Armstrong’s Durham map, which Chapman had published, and the plates of Burdett’s map of Derbyshire which Chapman had acquired and was revising’. The Essex plates were purchased by William Keymer, a Colchester printer, who had subscribed for the map. The Nottinghamshire and Newmarket plates were sold to William Faden, and the Derbyshire plates to William Snowden. The fate of the Durham plates is unknown.
Reprints and Revisons
Faden reissued the Nottinghamshire map without amendments in 1785. Only 2 extant copies of that edition have been traced. Faden went on to publish a ‘Second Edition: corrected’, 1792. There are more extant versions of the second edition, and interestingly, one in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (of which more later).
Whereas all the extant copies of the 1776 edition are joined sheets mounted on linen, five of the second edition are described as ‘1 map on 4 sheets’. That is not the case for Map92(1) which is mounted on linen and attached to rollers.
The nature of the amendments compared to the 1776 map reflected developments in transport and land use. The first edition included the course of the recently constructed Chesterfield Canal in the north of the county. The second edition shows three additional canals: the Erewash Canal on the western boundary of the county, completed in 1779; the course of the Grantham Canal to the south east of the county which opened in 1797; and the sinuous course of an ‘intended canal to Nottingham’, which opened in 1796. As well as canal developments the second edition recorded the effects of enclosures that had taken place over the intervening 20 years and the resulting loss of common land.
The County Atlas
Faden continued in business well into the 19th century, he died in 1836, and as far as we know he retained ownership of the copper-plates of Nottinghamshire and the other county maps he acquired. We know that the business of map-making had a long tradition of copying, if not outright plagiarism, and the large-scale surveys soon became the ‘latest surveys’ and the ‘best authorities’ on which publishers relied. Since the 16th century the most popular format for publishing county maps had been the atlas. In the late 18th century the ‘old’ maps were steadily replaced by reduced versions of the ‘new’ large-scale county maps. Generally published at scales of more than 6 miles to the inch, the utility of such atlases depended on the skill of the engraver, and one exceptionally skillful engraver was John Cary (1755-1835). He published two atlases in 1791 and 1793, which included maps of Nottinghamshire (Wadsworth 1930), and Wadsworth was satisfied that ‘they were derived from that of John Chapman, as a comparison of the two … will shew’ and ‘such details as roads, mileage, etc., follows closely Chapman’s Map’ (p.114).
Chapman’s map remained the authority for the next fifty years until a crop of new surveys were completed in the 1820s and 30s. John Greenwood’s one inch map on six sheets was published in 1826 (Greenwood) and George Sanderson published ‘Twenty Miles Around Mansfield’, a 21/4 inch map, in 1835. Meanwhile the surveyors of the Ordnance Survey were advancing across the country and their one inch map of Nottinghamshire was published on seven sheets between 1824 and 1840 (One-inch Old Series map of England and Wales).
The experience of Chapman’s Nottinghamshire map is not unusual. Nearly all the large-scale county maps were reprinted, revised or reduced for the atlas market, whether by the original surveyors, or by map-publishers who had acquired the plates, such as William Faden. Once the survey was completed and the original map published it was subject to the fortunes of the market. It is to this stage in the life-story that we now turn.


On August 24, 1979, the NBA's Washington Bullets made a historic visit to China, becoming the first professional US sports team to be invited to the country.
With games hosted in Beijing and Shanghai, the Bullets (now named the Wizards) participated in two exhibition games against the Chinese national team and the Bayi Rockets – the latter of whom gave the visitors a run for their money in a game that ended 96-85 to the Washington team.
Screengrabs via Youtube
These were games as much about politics as they were about the sport. Only months earlier US President Jimmy Carter had eased relations with China.
Deng Xiaoping duly extended an invitation to the 1978 NBA Champions, thus forging diplomatic ties. The Bullets graciously accepted, and what followed was a trip fondly remembered by players and coaching staff alike.
READ MORE: How the NBA Captured China's Sporting Heart
Image via @PostSports/Twitter
Basketball soared in popularity soon afterwards, with state media broadcasting NBA games in the 1980s.
It was a full quarter of a century before NBA teams actually played in China again, however, when the Rockets and Sacramento Kings battled it out in exhibition games in 2004.
While the Washington outfit’s visit had not sown the seeds for basketball in China, it certainly brought a watering can along.
“You could tell basketball was getting popular," former head coach Dick Motta later recalled. "Everywhere you went and there was open space, you saw a basketball hoop. They loved it. It was just a matter of time before they developed it.”
Understanding the enormity of the occasion, some of the players returned to the Middle Kingdom in 2009 to mark the trip’s 30 year anniversary.
Hall of Famer Wes Unseld was joined by then-Wizards stars Caron Butler and Randy Foye, as well as former Bullet player Gheorghe Muresan, in a celebration of a proud part of the team's history.
Watch a video from the 1979 visit below (VPN off):
Outside of China? Watch on Youtube here.
For more This Day in History stories, click here.
[Cover image via Zhihu]