American History Too!

On Episode 30 of American History Too! we take a deep dive into the history of music and presidential campaigns in the United States. Joined by the Imperial War Museum's Fraser McCallum we discuss the rise of campaign music from the nineteenth century to the current 2016 election, including all the great love affairs and spats that have existed between politicians and musicians. 

Following our discussion of music, we then delve into a debate on whether the politics as entertainment - a theme so evident in this year's campaign - is a new phenomenon or whether it's been around since the beginning of mass democracy.  

We'll be back next month with a podcast on the history of the CIA. Until then, have a great election!

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

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In London on May 22nd 1846, the great anti-slavery campaigner and orator Frederick Douglass - who himself was a former slave – stood before a large audience and related to them the reasons why he was there: 

“Why do I not confine my efforts to the United States? My answer first, that slavery is the common enemy of mankind and it should be made acquainted with its abominable character. Slavery is a system of wrong, so blinding to all around, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of justice, in its immediate vicinity, that the community surrounding it lacks the moral stamina necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic evils, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is equal to its removal. I want the slaveholder surrounded, by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he has no sympathy in England, Scotland, and Ireland, that he has none in Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians…”

On this episode of American History Too! we're joined by University College London's Matt Griffin (@mattrgriffin) to explore the fascinating who, what, and why of trans-Atlantic anti-slavery campaigns in the mid-nineteenth century.

Cheers,

Mark & Malcolm

Reading List

R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1983)

David Brion Davis, ‘Looking at Slavery from Broader Perspectives’, The American Historical Review 105:2 (Apr., 2000), 452-466

Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 2015)

Amanda Foreman, World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (London: Penguin, 2011)

Van Gosse, ‘“As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends": The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World, 1772-1861’, The American Historical Review

113:4 (Oct., 2008), 1003-1028

Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2013)

In 1921, the influential magazine Literary Digest speculated on the morality and nature of the modern young woman:

Is the “old fashioned girl”, with all that she stands for in sweetness, modesty, and innocence, in danger of becoming extinct? Or was she really no better nor worse than the “up to date” girl, who in turn will become the “old fashioned girl” to a later generation? Is it even possible as a small, but impressive, minority would have us believe that the girl of today has certain new virtues of “frankness, sincerity, seriousness of purpose”, lives on a “higher level of morality” and is on the whole “more clean minded and clean lived” than her predecessors?

The Roaring Twenties in America are – in popular culture at least – seen as the era of the liberated flapper, Daisy Buchanan, and all night jazz. But is this really an accurate portrayal of womanhood, femininity, and beauty in the decade of “return to normalcy”? Today on American History Too!, we’re joined by the University of Strathclyde's Rachael Alexander to discuss how femininity and beauty were perceived in 1920s America, and what role mass-market women’s magazines had in reinforcing and changing stereotypes.

Thanks, as always, for listening!

Cheers,

Mark & Malcolm

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Joined once more by the University of Oxford's Paddy Andelic (@pkandelic) we take a deep dive into the recent history of the Democratic party and travel the road to Hillary Clinton. Beginning amid the chaos of the 1968 convention in Chicago, we talk through Humphrey, McGovern, Watergate Babies, Carter, Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.  

Thanks again for listening. Next month we'll be back turning our focus to cultural history, but look out for an election special before November!

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

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Still baffled by Donald Trump's nomination? Be perplexed no more!

With the Republican party heading to their convention in Cleveland to nominate the billionaire tycoon, we're joined by the University of Oxford's Paddy Andelic (@pkandelic) to discuss the Republicans over the past half century as we look to map out the road to Trump.

On our travels we cover Barry Goldwater, Civil Rights, Richard Nixon, Watergate, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both Bush I & II. We also delve into some of the issues and causes that have defined the GOP since the 1960s.  All this, and much more, on another bumper podcast of American History Too!

We'll be back soon with a podcast covering the Road to Hillary Clinton!

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

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In 1936, not long after German heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling knocked out his African-American opponent, Joe Louis, the journal Der Weltkampf published the following statement:

“These countries cannot thank Schmeling enough for this victory for he checked the arrogance of the Negro race and clearly demonstrated to them the superiority of white intelli- gence. He restored the prestige of the white race and in doing so accomplished a cultural achievement. I for one am convinced that Schmeling was fully conscious of this fact and that he fought as a representative of the white race.... The victory of Italy in Abyssinia must be regarded in the same light.... After the war started there was only one thing left, the fight of a white against a black nation. This has become a racial fight. The same question must be asked: What would have happened if Abyssinia had won? The same answer applies: the whole black world would have risen up against the white race in arrogance and bestial cruelty.”

Were these horrific attitudes towards a man whom many experts regard as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time confined to Nazi Germany? Or did his own countrymen view the great Joe Louis as inferior, unworthy of the status of a great champion? And what of other great athletes such as Jesse Owens? How did white America react? In order to answer these and other questions, today on American history too, we’ll be exploring the complex, convoluted, and at often appalling history of race and sport in inter-war America.

Scholarship

In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens - Donald McRae

The Fight of the Century: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and the Struggle for Racial Equality - Thomas R. Hietala

Ring of Hate: The Brown Bomber and Hitler's Hero - Joe Louis, Max Schmeling and the Bitter Propaganda War - Patrick Myler 

Beyond Glory: Max Schmeling vs Joe Louis and a World on the Brink - David Margolick

Joe Louis: Hard Times Man - Randy Roberts

Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes - Randy Roberts

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson - Geoffrey C. Ward

A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties - Roger Kahn

Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 - David Clay Large

Hitler's Olympics: The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games - Christopher Hilton

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series - Eliot Asinof

The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth - Leigh Montville

On January 20th 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - which banned the production, transport, and sale of alcohol - went into effect. Among the many Americans rejoicing at the passage of Prohibition that evening, was one Pauline Sabin. 

Sabin, a wealthy WASP socialite, who was New York’s first ever female member of the Republican National Committee, foresaw many positives to an alcohol-free society. Like many American women, Sabin viewed alcohol as a threat to the morality of her family, particularly her two young sons, and, in her own words, Sabin believed that “a world without liquor would be a beautiful world.”

Quickly, however, Sabin and many others realised that such utopian hopes were misplaced. Prohibition, it seemed was creating more problems than it solved. Looking around at the increased crime and disrespect for law and order in the country, Sabin came to the conclusion that Prohibition was actually creating a worse world for her sons as opposed to the beautiful world she had once imagined. 

By 1929, convinced of Prohibition’s failure, Pauline Sabin formed and led the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR). An organisation that quickly accrued over 1.5 million members and led the charge to repeal Prohibition. 

Women had played a crucial role in Prohibition’s passage and much to everyone’s surprise they would play an equally important role in its eventual repeal in 1933.  

Prohibition would throw up many such surprises throughout the thirteen years it remained on the books and many of its failures still hold important lessons for our society today.  As such, on this episode of American History Too, we aim to answer a simple question:  Why did American Prohibition fail?

Reading List

David Kennedy, Freedom From Fear (1999)

David E. Kyvig, “Women Against Prohibition,” American Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Autumn, 1976), 465-482.

Mary Murphy, “Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in Butte, Montana,” American Quarterly, Vol.46, No.2 (Jun., 1994), 174-194.

Michael Parrish, Anxious Decades (1992)

Kenneth Rose, American women and the repeal of Prohibition (1996)

Wendy Sarvasy, “Beyond the Difference versus Equality Policy Debate: Postsuffrage Feminism, Citizenship, and the Quest for a Feminist Welfare State,” Signs, 17:2 (Winter, 1992), 329-362

In early 1943 – while the Battle of Stalingrad raged thousands of miles away – US government officials explored the hotel room of a recently deceased scientist. They were looking for the plans to a weapon that could change the war. They were looking for a death ray. The death ray did not exist, but there was enough doubt that Federal officials thought it wise to assess the thousands of notes and sketches that had been made during the scientist’s lifetime. After their assessment, the notes were locked away, leading to a persistent conspiracy theory that there had been a death ray, and that the US government was covering it all up. The notes had belonged to a man who in many ways embodied the American dream, the golden age of science, and the modern image of eccentric inventor. He had been one of the most famous men not only in America, but in the world. He laid the groundwork for many of the technologies that we take for granted today and contributed to many more. In the decades that followed his death in a room of the Hotel New Yorker on January 7, 1943, the scientist has gone from virtual obscurity to international celebrity, the namesake of high powered electric sportscars and a major international airport. Today on American History Too!, we explore the life, times, and legacy of the man who supposedly invented the electrical age: Nikola Tesla.

Reading

W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013)

Robert Lomas, The man who invented the twentieth century: Nikola Tesla, forgotten genius of electricity (London: Headline, 2000)

Paul Lucier, ‘The Origins of Pure and Applied Science in Gilded Age America’, Isis, 103:3 (September 2012), 527-536

Marc J. Seifer, Wizard : The life and times of Nikola Tesla ; biography of a genius (Secaucus: Carol Pub., 1996)

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‘On the 25th of September 1984, in one of the hardest-hitting speeches of his long Presidential campaign against Ronald Reagan, former Vice-President Walter F. Mondale spoke powerfully at George Washington University about the contemporary political landscape:

This election is not about jellybeans and pens pals. It is about toxic dumps that give cancer to our children. This election is not about country music and birthday cakes. It is about old people who can’t pay for medicine. This election is not about the Olympic torch. It is about the civil-rights laws that opened athletics to women and minorities who won those gold medals… This election is not about my standing in the polls. It is about my stand against the illegal war in Nicaragua. This election is not about slogans, like “standing tall.” It is about specifics, like the nuclear freeze – because if those weapons go off, no one will be left standing tall. This election is about values. I refuse to cut loose from my history and desert the beliefs I have always fought for. I would rather lose a race about decency than win one about self-interest.

Despite his best efforts, he did lose. The country, according to Mondale, was getting another four years of jellybeans and cowboy boots.’ So, today on American History Too!, we’ll be discussing the complex and often contested intersections between liberalism and conservatism in Ronald Reagan’s America.

Reading List

Doug Rossinow, The Reagan Era (2015)

Randall Rothenberg, The Neoliberals (1984)

Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties (2011)

Kenneth Baer, Reinventing Democrats (2000)

It was a midterm election year, the economy was beginning tolook a bit shaky again, and the Democrats were in danger of losing their majoritiesin Congress. The Democratic President, gathering his congressional troopsin the White House to rally them ahead of a tough campaign, knew just the rightnote to strike.  He acknowledged that the economy was a problem, but thePresident reminded his fellow Democrats that whatever happened their partywould never let the economic burden fall upon the American people as HerbertHoover had during the Great Depression.

The President in question was not Hoover’s successor,Franklin Roosevelt, nor was it Harry Truman or even John F. Kennedy.  ThePresident was Lyndon Johnson, the year was 1966 and Herbert Hoover, had, bynow, been out of office for 33 long years.

Hoover, who had been known as the Great Humanitarian beforehe assumed the office of the presidency in the 1929, was, for the rest of hislife, the symbol of an uncaring and aloof government, and the noose around theRepublican party’s electoral chances for over three decades.

Historians, most of whom lived through the Great Depressionand admired FDR’s New Deal initially played a key role in making sure that thisnegative image of Hoover stuck, but since his death in 1964, America’s firstQuaker President has gone through a reassessment that has attempted torehabilitate Hoover in the eyes of the American people.  

Today on American History Too! we ask the simplequestion, does Hoover deserve this reassessment, or does he deserve to beremembered as one of the worst presidents to ever occupy 1600 PennsylvaniaAvenue?  To help us with this task, we're joined once again by the University of Edinburgh's Alastair Duthie (@d_alastair)

We also discuss our favourite and least favourite campaign slogans - thanks to Dafydd Townley for the question! 

Cheers again for listening,

Mark and Malcolm

Reading List

-       Faushold, Martin L. The Presidency ofHerbert Hoover (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1985)

-       Jeansonne, Glen, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker, 1928-1933 (NewYork:  Palgrave MacMillan, 2012)

-       Hoover, Herbert. The Memoirs of HerbertHoover. 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1951)

-       Kennedy, David, Freedom from Fear (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

-       Leuchtenburg, William E. The Perils ofProsperity, 1914-1932. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)

-       Rauchway, Eric, The Great Depression and New Deal: A very short introduction (New York: Oxofrd University Press, 2008)

-       Wilson, Joan Hoff. Herbert Hoover:Forgotten Progressive, (Boston:Little, Brown & Co., 1975)