So, who is Black?

These photographs, taken in 1863, depict children with white features who were once enslaved in New Orleans.

They were the property of their white fathers and their mothers were enslaved women.

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1874

A year which would produce a stellar crop of babies.

And here are six of them, born 150 years ago.

Each left an indelible mark on the world.

Guglielmo Marconi, inventor.

Marconi sent radio waves over long distances, creating the first wireless communication system.

Initially, these wireless communications were in Morse Code.

The value of radio telegraphed messages was proved to the public in 1912 when ship radio operators using Marconi’s system facilitated the rescue of 700 Titanic survivors.

He became a wealthy businessman.

And this technology now lays at the heart of modern television and radio transmission.

Robert Frost, poet.

Ordinary people. Ordinary experiences. Everyday language. Few rules.

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Through failure and defeat.

It is late 1915.

After six months of fighting, the front lines in France have not moved despite heroic efforts.

The stalemate, costing so many lives, had to be broken.

So, British and French war planners devise an audacious military campaign.

They turn their attention to the southeast and plan an attack on Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire, which had seized control of the Dardanelles, the sixty-mile strip of water which divides Europe from Asia.

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The mad hatter who avenged Lincoln’s assassination.

It isn’t a simple story.

And it began years before John Wilkes Booth was cornered in a Virginia tobacco barn.

The man who shot him, Boston Corbett, had his own pack of troubles.

They had begun, probably, when he was a teenage apprentice in a New York City hat-maker’s shop.

Working there exposed Boston to mercuric nitrate, which was used to make felt from rabbit and beaver furs.

Long-term exposure to mercury causes neurological damage, resulting in hallucinations and psychotic symptoms.

It can make you ‘mad as a hatter.’

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A turning point.

It is October 1861.

The Civil War is in its sixth month.

The recent defeat of the Union Army in Manasas, Virginia, just twenty-five miles from Washington, has made it clear that the war will be long and costly.

For the news magazine Harper’s Weekly, the war will become their major story.

So, they hire thirty combat artists to draw images from the war for their 200,000 subscribers.

Among them is twenty-five-year-old Winslow Homer, a free-lance commercial illustrator then living in New York City.

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Rich boys play the same old game.

It’s June 27, 1936.

President Franklin Roosevelt stands before a crowd of one hundred thousand who have gathered in a Philadelphia football stadium to watch him accept the Democratic presidential nomination.

And with millions more listening on radio, FDR vows to finish the battle against the ‘Princes of Privilege’ he had begun four years earlier.

Success would require the common sense efforts of all Americans.

But, as a worker then said, FDR "is the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son of a b***h."

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Sports as metaphor

Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” the pride of Black Americans, versus Max Schmeling, the pride of Nazi Germany.

Their rivalry for the heavyweight boxing title during the late 1930s captivated sports fans across the globe.

And the men became proxies for rival nations.

Their first fight took place in Yankee Stadium in June 1936.

The match pitted the hero of an oppressed people in democratic America against an exemplar of government-enforced white superiority.

And it happened at a time when, everywhere, the seeds of war were taking root.

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Reading the paper on December 10, 1941

Headline: “Roosevelt sees a long, world-wide war.”

“The War Department made public today an incomplete list of casualties in Sunday’s surprise bombardment of Oahu, Hawaii. The list consisted of 37 names of those killed in action… The Navy has not yet announced a casualty list…”

Congressmen charged that the US Navy had been “caught asleep” in the Pearl Harbor raid and demanded more information.

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Still true.

‘Lyin’ Kamala is a far-left bum.’

‘Donald Trump is a perpetrator. I know his type.’

Candidate positions on issues — immigration, abortion, Supreme Court reform — just don’t pack the same punch as a snazzy attack line.

Rally-goers want to taunt and snicker.

And nothing works better than a personal attack.

People were no different 176 years ago, when Congressman Abraham Lincoln rose on this date in 1848 to address the House of Representatives on the coming presidential election.

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Finding your people.

It’s one thing to graduate from law school.

It’s quite another to practice law.

Just ask George Catlin.

For a couple of years, George tried to make his dad happy by following in his legal footsteps.

But he found himself sketching judges and juries rather than listening to courtroom proceedings.

So, he quit, left Wilkes-Barre and moved to Philadelphia in 1823 to study art.

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