US History Archives - Page 21 of 24

Hannah Adams: Historian of American Jews

After World War II, American Jewish history emerged as a significant field of study. Historian Hasia Diner has argued that the subfield actually began to emerge as early 1892, but if we consider pioneering texts about Jews composed by American writers during the nineteenth century, the work of Hannah Adams suggests that it began far earlier. A Christian, Adams discussed Judaism in two works, The History of the Jews, From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Day (1812) and A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations: Jewish, Heathen, Mahometan, Christian, Ancient and Modern (1817). Adams’ work is largely disregarded by contemporary American Jewish historians, who are skeptical of her motives as a Jewish historian, in part because she was a founder of the 1815 Female Society of Boston and the Vicinity for Promoting Christianity. Historians such as Howard Sachar, Arthur Hertzberg, and Leonard Dinnerstein suspected that if her goal was to convert Jews, her scholarship could not be trusted. Sachar and Dinnerstein are especially critical of Adams because they feel it was a reflection of America’s “fascination” with the Jewish rejection and supposed murder of Christ. Hertzberg recognized that Adams genuinely wanted American Jews to have equal rights in early nineteenth-century America, but like many other historians, he does not want to accord Adams the status of Jewish historian. In 1963 Salo Baron and Joseph L. Blau, were the first scholars to recognize Adams for publishing “the most useful contemporary general review of the position of the Jews in America,” but they too dismiss her Dictionary for having “only a superficial acquaintance with its subject.”

Jewish historians may have perceived Adams’ work as lacking substance, but a close examination of her work shows that she did indeed offer a valuable overview of what was known in the early nineteenth century about the Jewish religion in America and perceptions of early American Jewry. In the newly revised “Introduction” to Adams’ Dictionary, Thomas Tweed argues that “even though Adams clearly favored Christianity, she did not merely separate religions and sects into the true and false.” Tweed proposes that scholars consider the period in which Adams lived — a time when American Jews comprised less than one percent of the population (around 2,500). The first Rabbinical school had yet to be founded, Hebrew Schools had not been instituted, and there were no Jewish newspapers in the United States. Unlike in Europe, the U.S. had not undergone a Jewish Enlightenment — that is, a time promoting the academic study of Judaism. In this new “Christian nation,” Jews were seen as mysterious and were vilified for their rejection of Christ and their ancestors’ supposed role in Christ’s death. In this religious climate, Adams’ contribution to Jewish history, even while writing as a Christian in a Christian population, was innovative and significant. Adams’ discussion of Jews in her Dictionary initiated the study of Judaism in America even before Isaac Leeser published his English translation of the Hebrew Bible in 1853.

Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI. Oldest synagogue in the US still in use (Wikimedia)

Adams began her account by chronicling the history of Jews under Roman rule — namely, during the time of Christ. Adams could have used the New Testament as her only source, but instead she referred to the findings of ancient Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus to explore the complex historical position that Jews occupied in the Roman Empire. Jews were able to govern themselves, but at the same time they were forced to adapt to both oppressive Roman rule and Jewish leaders like Herod who did not represent Judaism. By pausing to explain this early history, Adams was able to convey how the Jewish position during the time of Christ was more complex than that pictured in the New Testament — a move that arguably dismantled the inflammatory image of Jews as Christ-killers.

First Hebrew Bible pulished in the US, 1814 (Library of Congress)

At the same time, her definitions provided insight into the Jewish religion to an otherwise uninformed American audience. For instance, her definition of “Cabbalists” (Kabbalah) discussed its connection to occultism, but also explored the Kabbalah as a methodological tool used to provide a higher level of interpretation of the Torah: “Jews extract recondite meanings from the words of scripture.” She traced the origins of the Kabbalah to the Oral Law, which enabled her to articulate the difference between the Torah (“written law”) and the Talmud (“oral law”). It is also interesting to note how Adams acknowledged the various terms associated with Jews, such as “Hebrews” and “Pharisees.” In her definition of the former, Adams made the radical move of explaining how the Apostle Paul was Jewish, thereby contextualizing Christianity’s Jewish roots. Her definition of “Pharisees” is of equal interest. Considering that the English vernacular uses Pharisees to mean “hypocrites,” and that the New Testament monolithically portrays them as the main opposition to Christ, Adams discussed their role as “celebrated” Jewish lawmakers who were devoted to preserving the law before, during, and after Christ. By providing a fuller picture of ancient Jews like the Pharisees, Adams provided an alternative perspective on Judaism’s historical legacy to a Christian-centric country.

Adams’ pivotal definition of “Judaism” was multifaceted, drawing attention to various aspects of Judaism. Paraphrasing the “Thirteen Principles” of Maimonides (1138-1204) — one of the most influential Jewish scholars — Adams explored Jewish prayers and kosher practices, showing their roots in the Talmud. Her insights demonstrated to a Christian-centric audience how complex and sophisticated Judaism was. Moreover, she did not refrain from describing in horrifying detail Jewish persecution by Christians throughout the ages: “[I]n Christendom, [Jews] have been despised, calumniated, oppressed, banished, executed, and burned.” By accusing her own religion of Jewish persecution, Adams not only historically anticipated America’s position as a future bastion of Jewish freedom, but helped to legitimize a marginalized faith.

First synagogue in the US (Charleston, SC) by John Rubens Smith, 1813

Adams’ History of the Jews predominately discussed Jewish experiences in the ancient world and in modern Europe, but towards the end of the book Adams briefly discussed the experiences of early American Jews. Significantly, Adams’ study precedes the two waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe, which would eventually increase the population of American Jews from mere thousands to over a million. Remarkably, Adams was able to determine that the first wave of Jewish immigrants consisted of “Spanish Jews” — Sephardic Jews — who had emigrated because of the Spanish Inquisition. Though Adams recognized this as the starting point of the Jewish community in America, she determined that Jewish involvement with the Dutch East India Company was the pivotal point of the Jewish community’s arrival in the United States. Adams made the historically significant point that the Dutch East India Company was the first to allow Jews to remain in America.

Aware that she was an outsider to the Jewish faith, Adams understood that she needed to look outside of her own environment in order to complete her history of American Jews. In History of the Jews, her readers must have appreciated the manner in which she conducted research on religious practices, on family, and on social life in various Jewish communities (Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia). In Adams’ footnotes, she made a point of acknowledging how prominent Jewish figures like Rabbi Seixas had provided her with the information to give her readers the most complete perspective possible for her history of Jews in America. The neglected Adams was not just a scholar, but a pioneer and forward thinker.

In sum, both Adams’ Dictionary and History of the Jews are significant contributions to the study of American Jewish history. The Dictionary presented insight into Jewish religious practices, while The History of the Jews offered its audience an early glimpse of Jewish American history. Though Adams’ perspective was biased because of her Christian beliefs, she deserves to be recognized for enabling us to more thoroughly understand the Jewish position in early American history.

You might also like:

Allison Schottenstein won the Perry Prize for the best Master’s Thesis in 2012. An abstract of her thesis can be found here.

David Crew’s review of Saul Friedlander’s major book on the Holocaust can be found on NEP here and his article about wedding photographs from the Nazi imposed ghettos can be found here.

Miriam Bodian writes about an unusual Jew interrogated during the Inquisition, in “A Dangerous Idea”

Historians mentioned in this article:

Hasia Diner, “American Jewish History” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, ed. Martin Goodman (2002)

Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (1992)

Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America(1994)

Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, eds., The Jews of the United States, 1790-1840: A Documentary History (1963)

The Enduring Chanel: Reaction to a Revolutionary Reformer of Women’s Fashions

by Leila Bonakdar, Kate Chen, Jessica Salazar, and Lauren Todd

“The idea to do our project on women in the Roaring Twenties initially intrigued us because the romanticized era appealed to our captivation with fashion, music and American culture. Few people look past the glamorization of the flappers, but we wanted to dig deeper to find both the causes of the reform in gender roles as well as the era’s lasting impact on women today. In November, after a preliminary perusal of various sources at our local public library, we decided that our project should explore the controversial fashions of the twenties that boldly symbolized the liberation of women from confining Victorian social expectations.”

Drawing of three women in ankle length dresses with hats.

“We visited with Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, a Women’s Studies professor at Texas Christian University, in December and she suggested that we focus on the legendary French designer, Coco Chanel, whose revolutionary designs helped shape the role of women in the twenties. However, the majority of our research came from sources found in the University of Texas at Arlington Library. With the aid of Lea Worcester from the Special Collections Department, we were able to access a trove of primary resources, including 1920’s magazines, advertisements, newspaper articles, photographs, and microfilm, that was instrumental in helping us develop our script. We also accessed the university’s online research database and borrowed several books about fashion, the twenties and Chanel to refer to later in our project. We had the opportunity to view an exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art that featured works of American artists in the 1920’s. Many of the artists (O’Keefe, Hopper, Murphy, etc.) had dramatic, avant-guard styles that seemed to demonstrate the boldness of the decade. Melba Todd, a Neiman Marcus Special Events Coordinator, gave us her perspective on the significance and legacy of Chanel. Additionally, we visited several other local libraries and conducted email interviews with experts in the field of fashion.

We chose to do a documentary as our medium of expression because it allowed us to strategically use many of the visuals we found as we researched. In January we outlined the script and considered which issues would be crucial to our documentary. Our goal was to illustrate the significance of fashion in history. With our analysis, we were able to formulate the final script and record the voiceovers on Garageband. The documentary was compiled and edited on iMovie for the finished product.

Cartoon shows a woman in a large hat and long gown shooting at a flock of geese. — Source: The Library of Congress

The Roaring Twenties proved an ideal time to foster social, political and economic reform for women. And although fashion is considered by many to be immaterial to historical events, it often reflects changing attitudes because it is a powerful form of self-expression. Women reacted by embracing the androgynous, sleeker styles offered by Chanel as they audaciously proclaimed their independence and demand for equality. By shedding constrictive corsets and voluminous skirts, women were able to demonstrate their desire for freedom from oppressive social expectations. Chanel was more than a pioneer of fashion; her revolutionary designs and unusual role as a businesswoman consolidates her enduring legacy today.”

Boxing Shadows, by W.K. Stratton with Anissa “The Assassin” Zamarron (2009)

By Anne M. Martínez

In November 2005, Anissa “The Assassin” Zamarron entered the ring for one of her most important bouts: a chance to win the Women’s International Boxing Association junior flyweight title. At 35, fighting in her opponent’s hometown and having lost her last four fights, Anissa was considered the underdog. San Antonio’s Maribel Zurita, a decade Zamarron’s junior, had earned the title three months earlier and was overwhelmingly favored to retain it. After ten full rounds, as the fighters awaited the scoring result from the judges, Anissa took comfort in the belief that she had fought the best match of her career. In the eight months since her last fight, she had eaten better and trained harder than ever before, and her preparation paid off: her trainer, Richard Lord agreed. “You did a great job,” he repeated, as the ring announcer came to the microphone. Anissa didn’t know it at the time, but it was her last fight, and she won: WIBA junior flyweight world champion!

Movie poster of the movie Boxing Shadows

Boxing Shadows tells the story of Anissa Zamarron’s life in Central Texas, including her rise to two-time world champion boxer. To those unfamiliar with the sport, Boxing Shadows offers a primer on the training, traveling, and match-ups of the early years of professional women’s boxing. Zamarron fought in the first sanctioned women’s bout in New York State along with a number of international bouts before women’s boxing was much of a blip on the radar of most American sports fans.

Black and white image of the Bennett sisters boxings, c. 1910

The Bennett sisters boxing, circa 1910.

But the book, co-written by Zamarron and sports writer Kip Stratton, is about much more. Boxing was not just a meal ticket for Zamarron, it was a life-saver. She was born in San Angelo, Texas, and her family moved to the Austin area when Anissa was seven. Shortly after, her parents separated and her family was divided. Her brothers — her heroes — lived with their father and Anissa went with their mother who, having married in her teens, relished a freedom she had never experienced before, to work full time, go to happy hour every night, and date. The loss of the structure of family life, the longing for the company of her brothers, and the rough and tumble apartment complex where she spent these formative years pushed Anissa further and further into darkness.

Image of Anissa "The Assassin" Zamarron in the midst of a boxing fight

Anissa “The Assassin” Zamarron (The Women’s Boxing Archive Network)

Anissa felt a strong self-loathing as early as second grade, began cutting herself in middle school, and was committed to a mental hospital for the first time in her early teens. She discovered boxing in 1993 at age 23. After years of therapy, self-mutilation, and struggle, boxing was an outlet for the demons that drove Zamarron to hurt herself. Boxing did not end her battles with herself, but gave Anissa ways to work through challenges in the gym, rather than in her mind. Zamarron is open about her struggles with learning disabilities, mental illness, and drug addiction. Her success in the ring offers inspiration for others struggling to overcome similar challenges to reach their goals.

Master-at-Arms Seaman Rhonda McGee, left, spars with Patricia Cuevas during an exhibition match in the preliminary rounds of the 2011 Armed Forces Boxing Championship.

Boxing Shadows is devastating in its frankness, uplifting for its courage, and all the more impressive when one meets Anissa. In May of 2012, I visited Anissa at Richard Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas to talk about Boxing Shadows. [You can see the video interview at the bottom of this page or on our Youtube channel here.] Zamarron is marked, more than scarred, by her past. She is surprisingly forgiving of those who disappointed her or otherwise contributed to the internal battles she fought as a child. After the interview, Anissa prepared to spar, and even then, nearly seven years after her last bout, in the ninety seconds it took Richard Lord to wrap her hands, the Anissa I had just interviewed was completely transformed. She forgot about the camera, disconnected from everybody in the gym, and began moving like a boxer — even standing still. Focused in a way I had not seen in the half dozen years I had known her, at that moment — “The Assassin” was back.

Video Credits:
Producer: Amanda E. Gray
Co-Producers: Therese T. Tran and Anne M. Martinez
Cinematographer: Therese T. Tran
Editor: Amanda E. Gray
Colorist/Online: Therese T. Tran
Transcriber: Lizeth Elizondo

Photo Credits:
All photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Except the photo of Zamarron in the ring, which comes from the Women’s Boxing Archive Network

You may also enjoy:
More by Anne Martínez, “Rethinking Borders”
More on women’s athletics: “Title IX: Empowerment Through Education”

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Fordlandia by Greg Grandin (2010)

by Cristina Metz

Greg Grandin has written a page-turner that tells the story of Henry Ford’s foray into the Brazilian Amazon and much more. In 1925, Ford met with Harvey Firestone to discuss England’s challenge to the US rubber supply. Much as the Belgians had done in Africa in the late nineteenth-century, England had extracted this resource by proxy—through companies such as the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company in the Amazon and its Asian colonies. Ford’s response was to embark upon his own South American venture into the world of rubber.

That same year, the governor of Pará sent Custódio Alves de Lima, a Brazilian diplomat, traveled to the U.S. with the aim of enticing Ford into establishing a rubber plantation in the region. The governor was prepared to grant Ford a number of perquisites, including land and tax concessions. Henry Ford took the bait. Within two years, he received a concession of close to 2.5 million acres, half private property at a cost of $125,000 and half public property granted to him free of charge. This tract of land that would soon be called “Fordlandia” became more than just a potential rubber plantation. Ford saw it as an opportunity to begin a new socio-industrial experiment that sought to impose his brand of Americanism on a people and environment.

Over the next few decades, Ford’s determination to build a place that would “safeguard rural virtues and remedy urban ills” would meet its match in the Amazon. Ford’s emissaries began a Sisyphean attempt to clear land during the rainy season, they siphoned money to line their own pockets, and they began exploiting workers who were already leery of working on Ford’s jungle experiment. Workers were expected to work in extremely high heat and humidity. Adverse work conditions, coupled with an ignorance of Amazonian epidemiology, led to many deaths. Such a high rate of mortality at Ford’s Amazon project was a common feature of other U.S. and European forays into Central and South America in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In The Path Between the Seas, for instance, David McCullough tells the story of how the building of the Panama Canal, which at various points in its history was in the hands of a Frenchman and an American who each refused to give up in the face of nature’s challenges, also resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of workers from disease and various threats of the Panamanian jungle.

Ford also tried to impose a lifestyle that did not jibe well with Fordlandia workers. His attempt at cultural imperialism met violent resistance, such as a multi-day riot that started in the worker’s dining hall. Up until the riot, the men had often taken their meals at local brothels and saloons. Ford, who was a teetotaler, implemented a new policy to coerce the men into eating their meals at the mess hall instead. Money for meals was automatically deducted from their paychecks and the workers resented this. To make matters worse, Ford managers chose a bland menu: oatmeal, canned peaches, and unpolished rice. The mess hall riot signaled the beginning of the end of Ford’s project aimed at restoring a bygone era. By 1945, Fordlandia had failed.

Grandin is ambivalent about explaining this failure as rooted in Ford’s hubris, opting instead for the negative effects of deindustrialization. Much of the evidence, however, points to Ford’s excessive self-confidence as a primary factor for the failure of his Amazonian project. To begin with, he purposely did not hire experts—botanists, agronomists, interpreters—who could have helped Fordlandia succeed. The Amazon was not the only place where Ford’s personal hang-ups, like his suspicion of experts and his cantankerousness, caused problems. Grandin transports readers back and forth between Brazil and the U.S. to show that at the same time that Ford was trying to build a perfect world in the middle of the jungle, his empire at home was beginning to show the strain of scandals and shop-floor abuses of despotic foremen in his factory.

In typical Grandin style, the book ends in the contemporary period. Today the Amazon forest suffers from rapid deforestation caused in part by projects like Ford’s. His doggedness in growing rubber trees his own way led Ford to clear acres upon acres of forest. Soy farming, another of Ford’s projects, required the use of toxic chemicals that have allowed this non-native crop to thrive by killing off native species. The environmental degradation that modern industry and agriculture cause is not often something that consumers consider when they purchase a car that has Brazilian soy-based plastic parts or purchase a piece of furniture containing particle board made from young trees that could have reforested the Amazon if they had been left to mature. This disjuncture between the environmental and human degradation associated with mass production and consumption is characteristic of far too-many commodity chains.

If Fordlandia is a story about one man’s attempt to impose his will over nature, it is also a story about modernity and globalization. While Grandin mentions only superficially the presence of women, Chinese, U.S. Confederates, and West Indian workers in the Amazon, readers can be sure that their presence was an effect of the shortening of time and space brought on by modernity that facilitated increased movement of people, goods, and ideas. In contrast to works that exalt the benefits of the modern world—in the realm of ideas and technological advancements, for instance—Grandin implies a weighty question. Has global industrial capitalism, of which Fordlandia is a microcosmic case-in-point, actually advanced humanity or are we now in an age of what scholars have called “the coloniality of power” where all of the old imperial modes are as entrenched as they were in the none too distant past, but now sporting the sheen of the twenty-first century?

Photo credits:

All images courtesy of thehenryford/Flickr Creative Commons.

“Home Economics Training is for the Improvement of Home and Family Life?”: African American Women Professionals and Home Economics Training in Texas, 1930-1950

This year, third year doctoral student Ava Purkiss received the prestigious L. Tuffly Ellis Best Thesis Prize for Excellence in the Study of Texas History. Her paper, titled “‘Home Economics Training is for the Improvement of Home and Family Life?’: African American Women Professionals and Home Economics Training in Texas, 1930-1950,” examines African American enrollment in the home economics major at Prairie View A&M University in the 1940s. Read the abstract to her award winning paper below.

Abstract:

In 1943, Prairie View A&M University published an academic catalogue that described the careers that black women could pursue with degrees in home economics. As a historically black institution, Prairie View provided important social and economic opportunities to African Americans in Texas. The catalogue asserted that students’ prospective careers included “teaching home economics and parent education groups, managers of tea rooms, school dormitories, cafes and cafeterias, hotels, child health centers, nursery schools, [and] home demonstration agents.” Evidently, home economics provided opportunities for black women to raise their vocational statuses beyond menial labor. At the time of the publication, home economics was the most popular major for women at Prairie View with thirty out of eighty-two female students enrolled. These Prairie View students represented a few of the African American women in Texas who challenged racial, social, and economic inequality by creating a cadre of professionals through home economics education. My paper argues that black Texas women used their training in home economics as a professionalization tool, and entered the labor force as home demonstration agents (state employees who worked in rural homes), teachers, and entrepreneurs between 1930 and 1950. Despite the extant literature that presents white women as the leaders in home economics, numerous black women in Texas proved to be resourceful and enterprising black home economists. Using college catalogues, newspapers, hall of fame nomination forms, interviews, and demonstration agent reports, this paper expands typical categories of “feminized” professions while enhancing our understanding of the nature of black entrepreneurship, the African American middle-class, self-help, and education within Texas historiography.

Photographs of the aformentioned academic catalogues, published by Prairie View A&M University in the 1940s, that described the careers that black women could pursue with degrees in home economics (All courtesy of the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin).

Image from an academic catalogue from the 1940s depicting the careers that black women could pursue with degrees in home economics

About Ava Purkiss:

Ava Purkiss is a third year United States history student at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies African American women’s health and physical culture in the early twentieth century, with a focus on the economic, political, and social barriers to exercise that African American women encountered and ultimately circumvented in pursuit of health and fitness. She will spend the summer of 2012 conducting pre-dissertation research in various U.S. archives under the direction of her advisor, Dr. Tiffany Gill. Ava earned her B.A. in psychology from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and her M.A. in African New World Studies from Florida International University in her hometown of Miami, FL.

Visit Ava Purkiss’ homepage.

Mapping the Earth, Mapping the Air

by Felipe Cruz

The history of aviation is filled with heroes and their machines. Exhibits in the many air & space museums spread around the United States are filled with pictures of young pilots, proudly posing by the side of their aircraft before attempting some feat to enter into a long list of “firsts.” While we often focus on these brave characters and their daring flights, aviation became what it is today through more mundane activities than risking lives, performing stunts, or breaking records. The pilots who aided cartographers and engineers in the production of special aviation maps represented a much bigger contribution to the expansion, reliability, and increasing safety of air transportation.

Knowing one’s exact location was among the greatest challenges of the human push into the air, as it is in the exploration of any new frontier, before there were such things as aeronautical charts, that is, maps for aerial navigation. It is easy for a generation with pocket sized access to Google Maps to underestimate how different our world looks from above if you have only seen it from ground level. Pilots in the 1910s and 1920s scrambled to adapt any maps in existence to use in their cramped, loud and open cockpits.

Railroad, highway, land survey and other maps were often cut up into smaller strips depicting the exact routes pilots had to navigate. These “strip maps,” chopped and annotated from various sources are a common archival find among the possessions of pilots from the first half of the twentieth century.

This strip map shown here is a nautical chart that was cut to only show the area needed by the pilot, then folded and punch holed to be stored in a binder for easy manipulation.

Because strip maps were cut out from maps made for other forms of transportation, pilots were often forced to follow routes that already existed. American Air Mail pilots, for example, followed railroads, known then among pilots as the “iron compass.” Even with a track marking the path on the ground, pilots still required some help along the way. That could be farmers painting navigational aids on the roof of a barn, or making bonfires and installing beacons to help pilots through the night. Seaplanes flying along the coast, like the ones Pan Am operated on the New York – Buenos Aires route during the 1930s, could count on the same infrastructure sailors had used for hundreds of years. They used nautical charts, which not only showed them the coastline, but also any lighthouses along it. This early aeronautical chart was intended to be used by pilots navigating the coast around Rio de Janeiro. It was obviously made from a nautical chart, but inland features useful for aerial navigation were also added.

These adaptations made from railroad or nautical maps worked fine – so long as one only intended to fly up and down the coast or along railroads, a serious limitation on the promise of untethered transportation implied in aviation. It only took a sudden fog to throw a pilot off his railroad track with no means to find his way back. For seaplane pilots that same fog could cover coastal mountains, and since nautical charts showed the depth of the ocean but not the height of mountains, that meant serious trouble – especially as weather forecasts were often lacking in both frequency and precision. Even more mundane problems plagued pilots, especially in the days of open cockpits, when a map could fly right out of a pilot’s hand into the open air.

This aeronautical chart from the late 1930s tries to include useful meteorological information, by adding a little angel blowing the wind in the statistically prevailing direction.

Before real aeronautical charts became available, pilots often worked around these limitations by adding their own bit of navigational knowledge to maps for their own reference or to share with other pilots. Archival copies of adapted strip maps used by pilots before the 1930s often had a variety of small annotations, pointing out where one could find fuel, farms with fields large enough for landing, the height of dangerous peaks, and even descriptions of geographic features useful for navigation. This kind of information, first informally added to maps by pilots, was eventually formalized in aeronautical charts.

The notes on the two maps above were added by a pilot prospecting an area for an airline, noting the heights of the mountains and the conditions of landing fields – two pieces of information unavailable on the nautical chart which he used.

By World War II, many places with developed aviation industries already had maps that could be used for aerial navigation, charts that helped pilots interpret the ground below to understand what they were flying over. But as airplanes flew higher and higher, aeronautical charts would come to represent airspace three-dimensionally, showing different areas of airspace, restricted or reserved for different purposes at different altitudes. Finally, with the expansion of radio-navigation towers, even invisible radio highways were depicted on these maps, so that pilots could use special instruments to follow radio signals, decreasing the need for visual references on the ground altogether. Here you can see a modern aeronautical chart showing many invisible features, such as airways created by radio signals and divisions of airspace at different altitudes.

The modern aeronautical chart, rather than being only a visual representation of the ground, has become a truly three-dimensional representation of space.

Figure sources:

Amelia Earhart: Wikimedia Commons

Figure 1 – Humphrey Toomey Collection, Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida

Figure 2 – T. Courtesy of Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil

Figure 3 – Courtesy of Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress

Figures 4 & 5 – Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida

Figure 6 – Wikimedia Commons

For more on aeronautical history:

Akerman, James. Cartographies of Travel and Navigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Corn, Joseph. The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Fritzsche, Peter. A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

The National Air and Space Museum has an online and physical exhibit on the history of early Air Mail pilots and navigation.

The Civil World: A Global “War Between States”

by Henry A. Wiencek

Can historians reinterpret the American Civil War as a global event? This question inspired Henry Wiencek, a first year doctoral student in history at the University of Texas at Austin, to create the website “The Civil World: A Global ‘War Between States.’”

A rendering of the naval battle between in the infamous CSS raider, Alabama, and the Union Keasarge.

Weincek designed the site to provide an “intellectual portal” for historians, students, and general interest readers alike to consult in order to learn about the economic, diplomatic, and social changes ushered in by the Civil War on the international stage. That the Civil War can be interpreted as an international event may come as a surprise to many readers. The conflict, after all, is often taught and thought of as a regional phenomenon: its origins, key players, events, and consequences are traditionally thought to be constrained within U.S. borders. Wiencek’s website tells a different story. Through its diverse collection of maps, newspaper clippings, and recent historical literature, “A Civil World” argues convincingly that the war’s international stage played a significant role in the war’s origins, trajectory, and eventual outcome.

(A Harper’s Weekly cartoon satirized the widespread fear that a post-bellum, pre-Reconstruction America will descend into a “Mexican” state of constant civil war.)

Abraham Lincoln as the “Federal Phoenix” in the British magazine Punch.

University of Texas at Austin – Department of History

(Professor: Jeremi Suri)

Title IX: Empowerment Through Education

by Priya Ramamoorthy, Maanasa Nathan, Kavya Ramamoorthy, and Smrithi Mahadevan

In 1972, the U.S. Congress passed Title IX to end discrimination against women in education. This website , which won First Place for Group Website (Junior Division) at National History Day 2012, provides a history of Title IX in three main parts: the changes Title IX brought about, the reactions to Title IX, and its impact on women’s education, especially in athletics.

Button: Equal Education Title IX is law now

The authors also provide historical context that brought about Title IX, interviews with major figures who contributed to is passage and implementation, and a discussion of the ways Title IX is still being used to protect women’s rights in education, even Helen Reddy singing “I am Woman” in 1975.

They use interviews, songs, magazine articles, statistics, and much more to give a rich history of Title IX and its impact.

[Note: video seems to work better in Firefox than in Chrome or IE]

Group Interpretive Website
Junior Division
Noel Grisham Middle School
(Teacher: Sheryl Rank)

Photo credits:

All photos courtesy of “Title IX: Empowerment Through Education”

From Poison to Pure Joy: The Revolution in Milk Safety

by Sidarth Subramanian and Henry Roseman

From the beginning, our goal was to have a fair amount of primary as well as secondary research. We knew that there was a well-known local dairy, Lucky Layla Farms, close-by. When we contacted them, we found out that they pasteurized locally and offered tours. We interviewed some of the technicians and toured the plant. We also toured a dairy farm, and while there, bought a bottle of raw milk for our experiments.

A Wisconsin milk pasteurization facility.

We conducted a number of experiments on raw milk and pasteurized milk. We started by doing a pH test using pH strips and a starch test using iodine. Then we looked at milk under a microscope. We also cultured the milk in an incubator for 48 hours then looked at it under microscopes. In addition, we consulted with Professor Ellen Jordan, a dairy specialist at Texas A&M University.

Checking the temperature in a pasteurization facility.

In addition to this primary research, we did a great deal of research online and discovered the contributions of Louis Pasteur and Nathan Straus. We also read many books, including Straus’ book on his journey. We continued researching even after completing the video for the regional competition. In fact, we discovered an interesting connection between Nathan Straus and Anne Frank in our research after the state competition, but it was unrelated to our topic.

A woman takes home milk from a milk station.

1912 Newspaper. Headline reads: "Milk for 2,200 babies: Straus stations gave 2,193,684 bottles during year just closed."

We like technology and cinematography, so we chose the documentary category. We started our documentary by collecting a lot of research. Then, we wrote the script outline. We used Power Director, Google Docs, and Dropbox to work on it together. We took turns editing the script, finding pictures, splicing video, and updating the bibliography. The last few weeks were spent editing, adding final touches, and wrapping up loose ends. After every stage of the competition, we incorporated feedback from the judges.

Nurses weigh a newborn baby at a milk station.

We do not think much about the milk we drink everyday. However, at the turn of the 20^th century, milk was a harbinger of death to many infants. It took great science, many battles, and much persistence to reform milk production in the United States. The pasteurization of milk has revolutionized our lives today. We can consume tasty dairy products without fear of contamination because of Louis Pasteur’s discovery and Nathan Straus’ work. Furthermore, Straus’ reaction to the problem posed by raw milk led to reform in the milk industry and directed us toward national food safety. The Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA) was created as an indirect result of Straus’ campaign. Strauss’ fight for safe milk has been forgotten, but his legacy lives on every time someone drinks pasteurized milk.”

Awards:

Group Documentary (Junior Division)

Greenhill School, Addison, TX

(Teacher: Monica Bullock )

Photo credits:

All images courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner (2011)

By Henry Wiencek

Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial examines Abraham Lincoln’s views on American slavery, southern secession and the convergence of events that produced the Emancipation Proclamation.

Although Foner’s narrative relies on speeches, correspondence and newspaper materials many scholars have previously engaged, the author seeks a new “Lincoln in motion” by “tracking the development of his ideas and beliefs.” Rather than framing emancipation as an inevitable outcome, Foner approaches it as a confluence of both ideological and contingent forces: Lincoln’s personal desire to curtail slavery, the military necessity of destroying its economic value and, above all, the President’s determination to preserve the Union.

Beginning with Lincoln’s childhood years in Kentucky, Foner’s sees in the future President a moderate temperament and perpetual anxiety over division—a judicious disposition that helped shape his views on slavery. As a state legislator, Lincoln spoke out against the institution’s divisive nature, anticipating its potential to threaten America’s social and political stability. However, the author is careful not to cast Lincoln as an arbiter of total race equality, revealing instances in which he was all too willing to engage, and manipulate, contemporary racial ideologies. One notable example is the presidential campaign of 1858, during which Lincoln accused the Democratic candidate, Franklin Pierce, of encouraging racial “amalgamation” by opposing the Fugitive Slave Act. Foner depicts these attitudes as fairly ordinary within the Republican Party of antebellum America, at that moment between “radical abolitionism” and the Democratic Party’s virulent racism.

Foner argues that Lincoln’s instinctive moderation continued to inform his presidency throughout the Civil War. Calming sectarian tensions and reestablishing legal authority across the Union persisted as his chief objectives. During the early years of the war, abolition was not an inherent objective for Lincoln, but rather a bargaining chip to encourage reunification. While he sought to avoid the slavery question on a national level, the President was simultaneously courting border states with offers of compensated emancipation, leading one contemporary writer to note that to “soothe southern wrath…the negro is thrown in as the offering.”

At The Fiery Trial’s conclusion, Foner directly challenges the dominant view of the Emancipation Proclamation, namely that it represented a uniquely progressive decision impelled solely by the moral evil of slavery. Stressing the document’s political and military objectives, Foner depicts the pronouncement as one final effort to entice slaveholders back into the union. Although its language eschewed the gradualism of Lincoln’s earlier views on abolition, the Proclamation’s emancipatory edict was borne out of wartime necessity. In addition to providing fresh soldiers for the Union cause, it effectively gutted the Confederacy’s labor pool and, by extension, larger economic system.

Foner ultimately portrays the Emancipation Proclamation as a pragmatic means of achieving both political and military objectives; and very much in keeping with Lincoln’s inclination to be “propelled” by provisional events rather than moral imperative. Lincoln himself even acknowledged as much: “I claim not to have controlled events…but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” By forgoing the inevitability of emancipation, Foner removes Abraham Lincoln from the idealism of history and recasts the 16th President as a practical administrator, intent on restoring political control over the United States. Emancipation, despite its broader significance in American history, was a means of attaining that outcome.

You may also like:

Our blog post debating the origins of the American Civil War.

George Forgie’s offers a list of his favorite history books about the Civil War.

Kristie Flannery reviews a book about the very visible legacy of the American Civil War.

Professor Jacqueline Jones talks about her latest book Saving Savannah.

Photo credits:

Alexander Hay Ritchie (engraver), F.B. Carpenter (artist), “The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Before the Cabinet,” 1866. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

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