Dan Rather on the eve of the 2-year anniversary of January 6th
It was an attack on the very meaning and security of American democracy orchestrated by a man who had sworn to uphold the Constitution as the chief executive of our nation. Unbelievable. But believable. Buttressed by reams of evidence, including the man's own words and deeds.
And yet, here we are. Rather than unifying us as a nation, this date and all it represents divides us, weakens us, challenges the confidence we have in what we once believed was inviolable.
The scene of the insurrection — our mighty Capitol — is once more beset by chaos. This time it is coming from within the House, quite literally. But the two events are inextricably linked. For the most part, the rebels of January 2023 are marinated in the same Big Lie and nihilism that fueled the mob in 2021. In fact, many of these congressional office holders were cheerleaders and even participants in the earlier attacks on American democracy we now commemorate.
As shameful as these events are, they are as much a part of who we are as a country in 2023 as "We the people" or "a more perfect union." We cannot afford to look away. These forces of autocracy and the extreme far right might have been tempered in the recent midterm elections, but they were far from vanquished. As we see in the spectacle of choosing a speaker of the House, the chaos is endemic to the current Republican Party.
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Last slave ship survivor lived until 1940
The last known survivor of the last U.S. slave ship died in 1940—75 years after the abolition of slavery. Her name was Matilda McCrear.
When she first arrived in Alabama in 1860, she was only two years old. By the time she died, Matilda had lived through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, World War I, the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
To David's point, this is not some far off history as it can often feel in school. I had no idea that the last survivor of the slave trade had lived until just over 80 years ago.
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25 films, from Iron Man to When Harry Met Sally, added to the National Film Registry
Every year, 25 films are added to the National Film Registry for preservation and posterity, selected based on their cultural legacy within American film history. Films must be at least ten years old to be selected. This year's selections bring the grand total of films on the registry to 850.
Perhaps the most famous film added this year is The Little Mermaid, Disney's animated musical about a teenage mermaid who dreams of being human. The film's induction comes ahead of Disney's live-action remake starring Halle Bailey, which is currently slated for a 2023 release.
Other films added to the registry this year include the prom-gone-wrong Stephen King novel adaptation Carrie (1976), the original Hairspray (1988), the Blaxploitation crime drama Super Fly (1972) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), for which José Ferrer became the first Latino to win an Oscar for Best Actor.
The oldest film inducted this year is Mardi Gras Carnival (1898), a recording of the New Orleans parade that was thought to be lost but was recently rediscovered in the Netherlands. Pariah (2011), a low-budget coming-of-age drama directed by Dee Rees, is the most recent film added.
This year, at least 15 of the 25 films were directed or co-directed by filmmakers of color, queer filmmakers or women.
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Redditor asks why the FBI took over for the US Marshals in regards to handling national law enforcement
Question on Reddit:
In the early years of the United States, the US Marshals were the Federal law enforcement service. Why was a new agency (FBI) created to take over their role, with the Marshals relegated to mostly court order enforcement and escort, rather than continue using them as the general Federal LEO service?
The answer I link to, by indyobserver, is superb. Replicating the answer below for archiving:
The first part of the answer is simple; that's because the Marshals weren't relegated at all. What you describe was their job from the Early Republic onwards.
Why was that the case? The position was a patronage one, and up until the end of the 19th century one of the more surprising things about most patronage positions was that they were paid on a percentage of revenue obtained. So if you were a postmaster (the most prevalent patronage job available), you'd get a cut of every stamp sold and letter delivered. If you were a lawyer presenting a Civil War disability claim, you'd take home a rather hefty sum every time you filed on someone's behalf. And if you were a US Marshal, you could (and did indeed did) get paid some for arresting and extraditing, but your real money maker was in serving paper.
As such, investigating was something they had neither financial interest in pursuing nor any particular expertise at, and this began becoming a significant problem during the late 1800s given the sheer magnitude of land fraud taking place.
So there is essentially only one Federal agency that has any real investigatory experience during that time period, and that's the Secret Service - except when the Secret Service does so, it is acting without any law providing them the power to do so. For that matter, even the assumed function of protecting the President isn't mandated; for something like a decade Congress essentially allows them to do so with what passes as a wink and a nudge while being aware they need to pass legislation eventually. At least, unlike the investigatory role, they don't specifically prohibit the protection function and use the power of the purse to enforce it.
Why do they prohibit the investigatory role? That's because of one of the genuinely nasty Executive-Legislative fights that take place under Teddy Roosevelt.
So at the time - and indeed pretty much since the adoption of the Homestead Act - there was a massive industry funneling those who had theoretical land rights to consolidators like mine operators who would pay people (often over and over, given lax record keeping requirements - Union veterans were particularly sought after since they didn't have a 5 year waiting requirement to gain title) to grab chunks of land and mineral rights. The two most prominent and applicable to the formation of the Bureau of Investigation were in Oregon and Colorado.
The Oregon scandals were a long series of fraud, with a couple of Congressmen (Binger Hermann most notably) and Senator John Mitchell assisting it over a couple of decades. Mitchell was only one of 12 sitting senators ever to be criminally indicted and even more seriously, only one of 5 convicted; he got six months in prison and died there from an infection after getting a tooth removed, which struck many of his friends in Congress as patently unjust punishment - hence one of the reasons for the nasty political fight.
But the 1907 event in Hesperus, Colorado was far worse. It was the lead Secret Service agent, Joe Walker, who'd gotten something like 1400 indictments from land fraud, along with another agent, Thomas Callaghan, and a couple of government contractors who were working as investigators for the Interior Department, John Chapson and Tom Harper.
They went to a homestead claim to investigate a report that it had actually been made on behalf of the Porter Fuel Company, a large coal miner in the region, hitched their horses in a place ominously referred to by locals as "Dead Man's Gulch", found the shaft and immediately realized that given it was reinforced it was an air shaft rather than a well, left Walker above considering he was significantly older than the 3 others and in no shape to rappel down it, went down, explored a bit to confirm it was a mine, tried to come back up, and discovered it'd been sealed off with railroad ties and dirt.
Harper excavated enough to have part of the roof fall in on him (which had him fall too, when only the logs reinforcing the shaft slowed him enough so that it wasn't fatal - he broke a few ribs), went back up to continue excavating, made a hole big enough to exit and tie off a rope they'd brought down, and the other two exited as well.
A short distance away lay the body of Walker, who'd been blasted in the back at very close range with a shotgun (he had at least 12 bullet holes in his back); his revolver was still holstered. They split up to try to better the odds that one would survive to summon help; Chapson stayed behind with the revolver to guard the body, Harper went to a nearby farmhouse he knew had a telephone, and Callaghan went back to town to get the sheriff.
On the way there, he ran into two men on a buggy, one a miner, the other holding a shotgun and identifying himself Joseph Vanderweide, both the superintendent of Porter Fuel and the owner of the homestead. They told Callaghan they were out with a shotgun on Sunday 'hunting rabbits' (which you don't do with a shotgun if you want to use their meat later); Callaghan arrested them, ran into the sheriff along the way (there'd been an 'anonymous tip' of a shooting), and they were brought to the Durango jail.
Vanderweide eventually confessed, but claimed self defense, which was extraordinarily dubious given the shot in the back and that the revolver was untouched. The trial, conducted in state court with a judge and jury of locals opposed to government restriction on land use (for instance, the judge had reduced the 1400 indictments of the grand jury down to one, murder), was a farce and both men were acquitted. The only value of it was that in the investigation, the full plan was revealed: they were going to drop dynamite down the shaft along with Walker's body and claim a gas pocket had exploded, conveniently eliminating any evidence of the murder of all four.
The case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court when the two were indicted on a separate count of conspiracy to commit murder, but it ruled it was essentially double jeopardy and the two walked away free. Walker is now generally regarded as the first Secret Service agent murdered in the line of duty.
While the lack of punishment led to outrage in the press, on the other hand Congress was not particularly happy that the Secret Service had not only blown past its statutory authority but was investigating multiple members for land fraud. To give you an idea of how upset Congress was, it took the extraordinary step of expunging a message from the President on the subject from its records - the first time that had been done since the Polk administration during the Mexican American War.
With Congress not willing to allow any sort of formal consolidated federal investigative branch, Roosevelt snuck in the Bureau of Investigations with a quiet action that wasn't noticed initially by Congress. Those powers (and the amount of personnel) expanded greatly with World War I, largely by default as there was no other agency - including the Marshal Service - capable of the massive amount of record keeping involved in investigating a significant amount of both aliens and citizens.
Finally, keep in mind that the other problem here was very little criminal law existed for the nascent Bureau to enforce; Congress had enacted almost none of the legislation we take for granted today and what there was dealt mostly with fraud. In fact, the first modern federal criminal law was the Mann Act in 1910; for a couple of decades it was about the only thing on the books that the Bureau could enforce for violent crime that crossed state borders. Up until the 1930s the Bureau's arrest powers were essentially unused for the most part; it left almost all criminal cases to local and state police because there really wasn't all that much to prosecute on a federal level. For that matter, once it finally did, the lawyers and accountants Hoover had hired as agents in the 1920s initially proved a terrible match for the gangland warfare the FBI got thrown into in the 1930s; very few carried firearms up until that point (doing so was urged by FDR's attorney general Homer Cummings rather than Hoover himself), and some had never even fired a weapon before they were tossed into the battles that created the modern image of the agency.
Teddy Roosevelt talks about the Colorado case a little in his autobiography and it's covered a bit in some of the FBI histories, but the best narration of the story and a lot of the context I discuss comes from The Birth of the FBI by Willard Oliver; it's an interesting read. I also recommend Beverly Gage's brand new biography on Hoover released a few days ago, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century; it's likely to be the reference biography on him going forward.
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The earliest born photographed person is thought to be Conrad Heyer, born in 1749
Conrad Heyer was born in 1749. He crossed the Delaware with George Washington. And, at the age of 103, he had his photo taken. Not the first photo taken, but believed to be the photo of the earliest born person, ever.
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"There is nothing to remember"
Anil Dash is a tech entrepreneur in NYC. He also happens to be an American of middle eastern descent. Both mean that 9/11 held a very impactful place on his life.
He's written annually about 9/11 and what it has meant to him as an American and as someone with brown skin. His commentary also delves into how the day has been used both as a reason to be assaulted by someone else, as well as a talking point for politicians, and less about the truth and the actual event as it occurred.
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From Facebook: September 11th, 2015
I originally posted this to my Facebook seven years ago. Reposting here as my memorial for today. I'm also taking the opportunity to edit it some.
Another year, another time to remember an event that changed my life, my country, and my world. 9/11 was just a little over a month before I turned 18.
I'll never forget going into one of my classes, it was English,which was Mr. Halbeck's English class. The class was... sure, we were at this appoint aware of what was going on, but we were teenage kids and we didn't fully grasp the reality of it. It was on TV and we were upset but we weren't really upset, yet. This terrible thing was happening miles away, sure it was in America, but we were in Florida and it was happening in New York. People were talking and chatting and the news was on but most of us weren't in shock.
I saw Mr. Halbeck sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and a look of utter shock on his face, and I naively asked him, "Are you okay Mr. Halbeck?" He turned to me and said, "Are you?"
It was his two words which brought the weight of this event crashing down around me. It was the day the world changed for me and my generation.
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Historican Heather Cox Richardson's notes from August 11th
I quite enjoy her write ups as sort of a review and wrap up on the day's news with primarily a focus on the US government and Trump. Here is an excerpt from the linked post:
This afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief press conference in which he announced that the unjustified attacks on the Department of Justice (DOJ) have led it to file a motion to unseal the search warrant the FBI used and a redacted version of the receipt for the things removed from the premises. He also confirmed that copies of the warrant and the property receipt were left with Trump, as regulations require. Had Trump wanted to release them, he could have…and he still can, at any time.
Contrary to right-wing reports, Trump’s lawyer was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, which a federal court authorized after finding probable cause. Garland said that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and he also pointed out that the Department of Justice did not publicize the search; the former president did. Because of the public interest in the matter—and to clear up confusion over it—the department is asking a judge to unseal the documents.
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Einstein Got Roosevelt's Attention Regarding Uranium
Read this excerpt in Sleeper Agent, discussing the origins of nuclear weapons. It seems notable to me that the researchers at Columbus had to go to Einstein and get him to write a letter in an effort to get Roosevelt's attention about their concern that refining Uranium could be dangerous if not managed properly.
About three months later, in July, Szilard, Teller, and Wigner, perhaps motivated by such apparent indifference, visited Albert Einstein at his Long Island cottage to ask him if he would be willing to sign a letter written by Szilard, to President Roosevelt about the recent research in atomic energy at Columbia, about its potential, both good and bad, and about the unnerving possibility of such a powerful explosive being developed in Germany. Einstein, who was then teaching physics at Princeton, signed the letter on August 2. It read: “Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.… In view of the situation you may think it desirable to have more permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.”
President Roosevelt received the letter on October 11, and after reading it he reportedly said, “This requires action.” Ten days later the newly formed Advisory Committee on Uranium met for the first time.
Sleeper Agent by
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Redditor /u/Hoyarugby delivers great insights and context about American black men volunteering to go fight in Ethiopia and defend it from Mussolini
Reddit title for this photo: "African Americans in Harlem volunteering to go to Ethiopia and fight to save Africa’s last uncolonized nation from fascist Italian dictator Mussolini. Almost all volunteers were blocked from leaving by the US government. Few managed to go to Ethiopia. Summer 1935."
The top comment, which I linked, is super interesting and yet another example of a moment in American history I had no awareness of.
The war that is being discussed is The Second Italo-Ethiopian War which I did know about (only at the highest level of awareness, no real in depth knowledge) but I was completely unaware of this aspect of it from the US history perspective.
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Mary Mcleod Bethune becomes first black American in National Statuary Hall
I am ashamed to admit that I had to go look her up. Her name was familiar as someone I learned about in school, and I believed she was taught as part of Black History and the Civil Rights, but I couldn't be more specific. Here's looking to celebrate as that hall is filled with more and more non-White Americans.
Here is a great biography on the Bethune-Cookman University website:
Bethune-Cookman University’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, is one of America’s most inspirational daughters. Educator. National civil rights pioneer and activist. Champion of African American women’s rights and advancement. Advisor to Presidents of the United States. The first in her family not to be born into slavery, she became one of the most influential women of her generation.
Dr. Bethune famously started the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls on October 3, 1904 with $1.50, vision, an entrepreneurial mindset, resilience and faith in God. She created “pencils” from charred wood, ink from elderberries, and mattresses from moss-stuffed corn sacks. Her first students were five little girls and her five-year-old son, Albert Jr. In less than two years, the school grew to 250 students. Recognizing the health disparities and lack of medical treatment available to African Americans in Daytona Beach, she also founded the Mary McLeod Hospital and Training School for Nurses, which at the time was the only school of its kind that served African American women on the east coast.
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Library of Congress' Digitized Federalist Papers
From the first of the Federalist papers, James Madison wrote the following. Emphasis is mine.
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
I came upon the above link after seeing a Tweet screengrabbed which talked about how Jefferson believed the Constitution should be written every twenty years, and the ensuing conversation. The part which the tweet was referring to comes from a letter Jefferson penned to Madison while he was in Paris, as the Constitution was being drafted. It's a bit dense, but I found it enlightening to read what his thoughts were:
What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals. To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, & to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21. years, & their period of life 34. years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21. years of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come on, and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it’s course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts & incumbrances of the 1st. the 3d of the 2d. & so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead & not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it’s own existence. At 21. years of age they may bind themselves & their lands for 34. years to come: at 22. for 33: at 23. for 32. and at 54. for one year only; because these are the terms of life which remain to them at those respective epochs. But a material difference must be noted between the succession of an individual, & that of a whole generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws of the whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied by a decedent to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his child on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole generation, that is, the whole society dies, as in the case we have supposed, and another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may have lent money to their predecessors beyond their faculties of paying.
I really want to sit down and read the Federalist papers. Just need some time. Lots of time.
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Happy Fourth? - by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
The United States of America is and always has been an idea more than a place. Yes, we are rooted in our past, but just as importantly, America is about the dreams of our future. I have borne witness to too much heroism and courage to not celebrate what this nation has been and can be in the future. I have seen it in battles in far-off wars and marches in our streets, on picket lines and in courthouses, in classrooms and community centers, in mass movements and quiet defiance.
How dare the craven cynical actors who seek to destroy the heart of American democracy take away our pride. They will not define America for me, just as their predecessors did not define it for those who fought to make this nation better. The battles ahead will not be easy, but neither was the fight for justice in the past. Entrenched power is never easily overcome.
On this Fourth of July, I am celebrating fully and without reservation. I honor it as a day of struggle, and the struggle endures. I recognize it as a day of reflection on how fragile our rights and democracy are. But I also see it as a day to acknowledge how far we have come and how far we can go. I will never accede to an America where that journey is over. And in this I know that I am not alone.
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Why Florida Didn't Participate in the American Revolution
Despite growing up in Florida, I had never learned why Florida wasn't one of the original 13 colonies. I assumed it was because, at the time, Florida was still primarily a Spanish colony (deduced from my childhood visits to St. Augustine, the oldest city in America.)
The blog entry is fairly top level, but definitely interesting for brief insights. Would love to read more.
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Texas Board of Education got proposal to call slavery 'involuntary relocation'
A group of educators in Texas proposed referring to slavery as “involuntary relocation” in second-grade classes — before being rebuffed by the State Board of Education.
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Some Links For the PNW and Seattle's Civil Rights and Racist History
The PNW is viewed as a liberal bastion in the USA these days, thanks to the population centers in our states. But that isn't the whole truth, and it hasn't always been that way. The rural parts of the state are still quite politically conservative and, worse, some areas actively foster white supremacist beliefs. Even the population centers haven't been liberal and civil rights minded until recent history.
Today is the 188th anniversary of the Oregon territory's anti-free black man law, but there are many more recent examples to contend with in this region's history. From the treatment of the local tribes and their citizens, to segregation and racism of other people, to the internment camps, and more.
Some additional reading:
On Jun 26, 1844: Oregon Territory Bans Free Black People
On June 26, 1844, the legislative committee of the territory then known as “Oregon Country” passed the first of a series of “Black exclusion” laws. The law dictated that free African Americans were prohibited from moving into Oregon Country and those who violated the ban could be whipped “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes."
The Seattle Civil Rights Movement - Wikipedia's entry regarding Seattle's Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History (a UW project)
Seattle has a unique civil rights history that challenges the way we think about race, civil rights, and the Pacific Northwest. Civil rights movements in Seattle started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and they relied not just on African American activists but also on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. They also depended upon the support of some elements of the region's labor movement. From the 1910s through the 1970s, labor and civil rights were linked in complicated ways, with some unions and radical organizations providing critical support to struggles for racial justice, while others stood in the way.
Seattle's Ugly Past: Segregation in Our Neighborhoods
Newcomers to Seattle love the variety of neighborhoods. We’re a counterpane of livable places with modest and grand homes often tucked together in a green and pleasant landscape. It’s a residential smorgasbord of cultures, home styles and enclaves, from houseboats to high-rises, bungalows to classic boxes. But that excitement of choice wasn’t always there for everyone. For most of the 20th century, the city was restricted and segregated, if not literally gated.
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A thread discussing the historical context of society's view of Star Wars
AKA why problematic white-centric views are so prevalent (though not the majority) of Star Wars fans
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I am greatly enjoying the Ken Burns Ben Franklin documentary, though I must also note I am thankful that it is not one of Burn's epic 14-part series. Two episodes feel largely right.
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Yesterday was Fred Korematsu Day
Internment camps are among the worst things in America's history. And it is wrong that in learning about it in school, I don't recall learning about Korematsu. It wasn't until I was out of college that I heard his name, and so it is all the more important to ensure others learn of him as well.
"Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, the decree that forced the relocation of people of Japanese descent to internment camps. The court ruled in favor of the government and against Korematsu in what is now widely considered one of its worst decisions. The majority of justices claimed the detentions were not based on racial discrimination but rather on suspicions that Japanese-Americans were acting as spies."
I wonder if there is a book for parents that focuses on arming them with the darker lessons in history that schooling often overlooks. Seems like it would be a good resource for raising a socially and historically aware child.
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