Object Project

Come along with Aiden Gent while he discusses how one restaurant helped fuel the fight for equal rights! Paschal's Bar and Restaurant provided the space for organizing and the sustenance to keep going against all odds.

Bella Hrivnak recounts how the choices made by an angry mother to display her son's murdered body contributed to the Civil RIghts Movement. Emmett Till's casket, and the ways in which his body was moved and represented in death are all material factors in the fight for racial equality.

Arianna Hilbert breaks down the important role in the Civil Rights Movement of a simple household object: a television set. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as civil rights protests accelerated, this new technology helped spread the message to living rooms across the nation.

Rachel Lowell explores a vital part of a vital first day of school--the outfit worn by fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls in Little Rock, Arkansas, ain 1957 s she bravely led the way for school desegregation. What can a girl's outfit tell us about social lives in a pivotal moment of history? Tune in!

Katelin Staton takes us along the story of a New Year's Eve tradition in Cherryville, North Carolina--firing off a reproduction Civil War musket. Come along to hear about tipsy mummers and nineteenth-century firearms.

In this season's second episode about St. Patrick's Day, Nick Shelley shares a family recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage. This classic holiday nosh tells us more about the resilience of immigrants in America than the rolling hills of Éire.

With a small souvenir coin, Madeline Rorie takes us back to the early days of America's most libertine holiday: Mardi Gras!

Matthew Parker unpacks the story and meaning behind a rather dark holiday object--a small pin shaped like a a gallows, created in support of those unfairly convinced in the Haymarket Affair of 1886. In doing so, he introduces us to the once-radical history of Labor Day.

Patrick McGovern's episode taps into the feeling of Christmas. . .and then historicizes it! He connects the creation of a now-kitsch item--the snow globe--to the hobby of collecting and the honing of a Gilded-Age Christmas aesthetic still resonant in our lives.

John Keyser's contribution to the "Holidays" season offers a story of human perception of time in the service of technology rife with fascinating material details of a very familiar object: the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. Tune in to find out why we drop the ball to celebrate a passing year!