American History Tellers

In the spring of 1865, the United States celebrated the end of four years of Civil War. As American soldiers laid down their weapons, four million formerly enslaved Black people in the South grappled with the daunting task of building new lives as free citizens in a nation still deeply divided over race.

With the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the challenges of healing the nation unexpectedly fell to his successor: President Andrew Johnson. Soon, Johnson’s policies toward former Confederates would draw battle lines between those who saw Reconstruction as an opportunity for radical change, and those desperate to preserve the status quo.

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By the early 1970s the United Farm Workers had won a series of successes in California and were attempting to extend their reach into other states. But soon, conservative politicians began to push back and the losses started mounting. Cesar Chavez began criticizing and alienating friends and fellow union leaders as he struggled to maintain control of the movement he had worked so hard to build. Soon he would find that his dream to empower farm workers was unraveling.

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In 1964, the United States finally ended the controversial Bracero Program, which had flooded American farms with millions of low-paid guest workers from Mexico who competed for jobs with resident laborers. Soon after, the two largest farm worker unions in California united and launched a daring strike against the state’s wealthiest grape growers. Under the charismatic leadership of Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers of America coalesced into a powerful movement that drew national attention and forced growers to the bargaining table.

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In the 1940s and ‘50s, farm laborers in California, many of them Mexican and Filipino, faced low wages and brutal working conditions. Their demands for change were often met with harsh tactics from the powerful growers. Soon, a plainspoken but magnetic labor organizer named Cesar Chavez stepped forward to rally workers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Chavez and his allies joined forces to call an unprecedented strike, giving birth to the United Farm Workers of America.

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The 1919 Molasses Flood was a terrifying and telling moment in the history of Boston’s North End. It was also a snapshot of a developing city in the wake of the first World War. Jake Sconyers explored the events for HUB History, a podcast that revisits stories from Boston’s past. Today, he joins Lindsay to discuss the working class Italian immigrant neighborhood where the disaster happened, how the disaster impacted the community, and the mythology of the Great Molasses Flood today.

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On January 15, 1919 a giant storage tank holding more than two million gallons of molasses collapsed, sending a deadly wave crashing into the streets of Boston’s busy North End. The flood was over in minutes, but it left death and destruction in its wake. Victims and their families demanded justice, initiating a long, and contentious court case that raised questions about a possible anarchist bombing, faulty building plans, and a rush for profit in the World War I economy.

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After she was deposed by powerful American business interests, Hawai’i’s Queen Liliʻuokalani lived out the rest of her days advocating for her people. Julia Flynn Siler, author of Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure, joins Lindsay to discuss the rise and fall of Hawaii’s only queen, and her legacy.

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On December 7, 1941, Hawai’i was hit by one of the most unexpected military assaults in modern warfare. More than 300 Japanese fighter planes and dive bombers attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,400 people and plunging the United States into World War II. After the assault, many of Hawai’i’s nearly 160,000 residents of Japanese descent were viewed with suspicion and fear. But eventually thousands of Japanese-American men enlisted in the Army and went on to fight with valor. Their heroism would in time contribute to Hawai’i becoming America’s 50th state.

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After Hawai’i became a U.S. Territory in 1900, tourism to the islands exploded. Luxury steamships brought tourists eager to buy fashionable Hawaiian shirts, try their hand at surfing, and stay at fancy hotels that began to dot the beach at Waikiki. The U.S. military expanded its presence, too – bringing thousands of sailors and soldiers to the islands. But as tourism transformed the economy, Native Hawaiians became further marginalized. Then a sensational murder case exposed the dark underside of race and class divisions in Hawai’i’s changing society.

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In the early 1900s, an enterprising young American named James Dole introduced pineapples to a windy plateau in Central Oahu. He’d been warned that the crop was perishable and unprofitable and that his venture was sure to fail. But within a decade, his plantation – and the immigrant workers brought in to farm it – reshaped the landscape and economy of the Hawaiian Islands. Dole’s savvy marketing helped build the mystique that made Hawai’i a tourist destination. But his reign as Hawai’i’s “Pineapple King” would be cut short.

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