Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas this week, and east coast states from Florida to North Carolina are bracing for its impact. In preparation, governors are declaring states of emergency to allow emergency management teams to coordinate and act quickly. But in this segment from BackStory's 2012 show, "Weathering the Storm," host emeritus Peter Onuf learns from Oxford University professor Gareth Davies that responses to disasters are often fraught with politics.

Image: Poseidon by Mark Rain (www.azrainman.com). Source: Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

 

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support

To mark the Labor Day holiday Brian presents a compilation of BackStory’s best stories about work and workers. Why were so many employers keen on hiring children in the 19th century? When was computing considered women’s work? And what happened when almost a million Mexicans were expelled from the US to free up jobs for white workers?

Image: John Vachon photo of a Minneapolis employment agency, 1939. Source: Library of Congress

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support 

On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - a demonstration held by civil rights leaders and attended by approximately 250,000 people – took place. It was during this protest, one of the largest in U.S. history, that Martin Luther King made his now famous speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial where he uttered the words, “I have a dream.”

 

In this segment from BackStory’s 2013 episode “Fierce Urgency of Now: The 1963 March on Washington,” Ed talks with historian David Blight about the continuing impact of the Civil War in shaping the context within which the march took place, and the particular importance of the Emancipation Proclamation in King’s speech, which had been issued 100 years before the march.

Image: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," August 28th, 1963. Source: Library of Congress

 

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support

This month marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to land on what would become British North America. It wasn’t the first time Africans set foot in what became the United States - they’d arrived some 100 years earlier with Spanish colonists. But 1619 looms large in American history because it marks the beginning of slavery’s development in the Virginia colony and later the entire nation. 

Image: "Landing Negroes at Jamestown from Dutch man-of-war, 1619," illustration in Harper's Weekly Magazine, January 1901. Source: Library of Congress

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support

On Friday's episode, BackStory digs into the complicated history of 1619 and the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to the English colonies. 

In this preview, BackStory travels to Hampton, Virginia to meet with members of the Tucker family. Using oral history and official records, they’ve traced their lineage back to William Tucker, the first African American born in British North America in 1624. 

Image: BackStory producer Melissa Gismondi speaks to Walter Jones, Vincent Tucker and Verrandall Tucker, at the Tucker family cemetery in Hampton, VA.

This week, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was fired for his involvement in the 2014 death of Eric Garner. The incident helped to stimulate the Black Lives Matter movement, and sparked public debate about the limits of and accountability for law enforcement.

With these debates once again at the fore, BackStory revisits a segment originally published in 2016. In it, producer Nina Earnest explores how the professionalization of the Los Angeles Police Department ended up putting the department above the law they were supposed to enforce.

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support

Today, Americans generally view Buddhists favorably, according to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, terms like “zen” and “mindfulness” are often used as buzzwords to evoke the religion. However, over the last century, Buddhism wasn’t always viewed as a peaceful practice by a mainstream population. On this episode, Brian, Joanne, and Nathan, explore the ways the religion adapted and evolved throughout the 20th century into a distinctive form of “American Buddhism.”

Image: Lama in meditation, Sikkim, between 1965 and 1979. Source: Library of Congress

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On the heels of what may have been the biggest single-day sweep of undocumented immigrants last week in Mississippi, this week the Trump administration released a new "Public Charge" rule. The idea of a public charge – an individual who isn’t considered capable of self-sufficiency – became a part of U.S. immigration law after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The new rule will make it harder for immigrants who fail the public charge test to obtain a Green Card. 

 

Efforts to curb immigration in the U.S. are nothing new. This episode from BackStory’s archives looks at the origins of illegal immigration and how the government’s deportation powers have grown over time.

 

Image: Detention pen--on roof of main building, Ellis Island, where emigrants held for deportation may go in fine weather. Circa 1902. Source: Library of Congress

 

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support 

It’s an age-old question: What makes a man? Americans have thought about it for generations. So this week on BackStory, we go back into the archives to look at past segments that explore the changing perceptions of American manhood. We’ll look at why so many men started growing beards in 19th century America, and we’ll explore how ideas about the perfect male body used to be very different from what you might think of today.

Image: The “Manly art of self-defense” Newsboys’ Protective Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 1908. Source: Library of Congress

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support 

At least 31 people were killed this past weekend in mass shootings in the U.S. The violence that took place during the early morning hours of August 4 in Dayton, Ohio was the nation’s 251st mass shooting of 2019. 

 

As the U.S. and its leaders once again debate gun control, BackStory revisits a segment originally published in 2013. In it, UCLA legal scholar Adam Winkler talks to Brian about the day in 1967 that 30 Black Panthers walked into the California State House in Sacramento carrying loaded guns. They were protesting a gun control bill that they said deprived them of their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, but ended up being the target of early gun control laws.

 

Image: “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality ...” from a Black Panther Party poster featuring Huey P. Newton, approximately 1965. Source: Yanker Poster Collection, Library of Congress.

 

BackStory is funded in part by our listeners. You can help keep the episodes coming by supporting the show: https://www.backstoryradio.org/support