Capturing America’s Imagination with the Railroad

Guest: Ashlee Whitaker, Curator, BYU Museum of Art, “After Promontory” 

50 years ago, today, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met in the Utah desert to drive the final spike on the country’s first transcontinental line. “It transformed America,” says Ashlee Whitaker, a curator of the BYU Museum of Art’s current photography exhibit ‘After Promontory. “Some scholars have compared (the transcontinental railroad) to the internet. It changed how people traveled. It unified American from East to West. It changed communication and commerce and it because it enabled people to come West, it began to dramatically shape the Western landscape.”

 

How the Railroad Changed the West

Guests: Jay Buckley, PhD, Professor of History, BYU, Director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies; Brenden Rensink, PhD, Professor of History, BYU

Today we’re marking the 150th anniversary of the completion of America’s first railroad spanning the entire continent. The final spike was driven into the rail out in the desert – about an hour’s drive northwest of Salt Lake City.

 

Zotshi -Powerful Mothering in a Turbulent Time

Guests: Leslie Hadfield, PhD, Professor of History, BYU; Zotshi Mcako, Nurse, Mother, Mayor

We’re meeting one particular mother who nurtured so many women and children in her poor South African township that they elected her mayor. A black woman mayor leading her town during the tumultuous final years of apartheid. Being a mother figure –and a community nurse –wasn’t a disadvantage in her career. It was the reason she succeeded in her career. People trusted her, whereas other elected officials in the town were seen as “sell outs,” puppets for the white supremacist national government.