“Separate but equal” is one of the most infamous lines in American legal history. At the end of the 1800s a nearly unanimous Supreme Court defended segregation as long as Blacks and Whites theoretically had equal treatment. It would take more than half a century to undo this decision in “Plessy v. Ferguson.”

With Joe Biden's upcoming inauguration, we want to unpack a larger history of the Supreme Court and American government. Politicians, lawyers and plaintiffs spend years building up precedent, and Plessy was no exception. For this episode we sit down with former Judge and Podcaster Craig Estlinbaum to discuss the "Road to Plessy vs. Ferguson”. How were landmark Civil Rights overturned and undermined at the end of the 1800s? How can this help us understand our modern legal system?

Craig Estlinbaum was judge of the 130th District Court of Texas from 2001 through December 2020 and has been adjunct professor of law at South Texas College of Law since 2004. He regularly speaks before bar associations and law school programs and his work has been published in law journals at St. Mary's Law School, at South Texas College of Law and elsewhere. He also co-hosts the podcast Hooks & Runs, a podcast about baseball, music and culture

Produced by Joseph Hawthorne

Dill Pickles Rag by Charles L Johnson
The Entertainer by Scott Joplin

Benjamin Kitchens, host of the History Voyager podcast, re-joins the show to discuss the end of the Spanish Flu and its consequences for our modern world.

In many ways, the “Spanish Flu” represented the beginning of modern medicine. So how did such a deadly and mysterious disease shape public health for over a century? What tools did the government and hospitals use to make sure this kind of crisis never happened again? And what similar lessons might we learn from the Covid crisis? The History Voyager delivers a mix of hope and realism.

Hosted and produced by Joseph Hawthorne
Edited by Jordan Hawthorne (surprisingly unrelated)

You can find The History Voyager at
The History Voyager Facebook Group

@BensCharlie on Twitter

and email at [email protected]

The “Spanish Flu” spread during World War I, right at the end of our time period. However, this is a perfect story for our podcast because it shows how violently 19th century civilization clashed with our industrial age.

Benjamin Kitchens, host of the History Voyager podcast, joins the show to explain how Victorian-era medicine and science helped spread a deadly disease. The Spanish Flu was a turning point for researchers and doctors, who helped change sanitation and hospitalization strategies. So in a way, this pandemic can be seen as the END of 1800s medicine and the BEGINNING of Modern epidemiology.

Living through the Covid-19 pandemic, you may have heard parallels to the supposed 1918 Influenza. In this episode Kitchens is going to explain what we THINK the Spanish Flu was and how it wracked the world. Crisis gives us a window into politics, economics and culture from the past. Let’s step through and learn about a deadly end to the 1800s…

Hosted and produced by Joseph Hawthorne
Edited by Jordan Hawthorne (surprisingly unrelated)

You can find The History Voyager at
The History Voyager Facebook Group

@BensCharlie on Twitter

and email at [email protected]

Professor Paul Kramer re-joins the show to explain how the years-long  Philippine-American war influenced racial attitudes. As the conflict continued, soldiers and civilians became more intolerant and violent. From letters to songs to government policy, Kramer demonstrates the war's cultural impact.

Paul Kramer writes and teaches U. S. history from transnational, imperial and global perspectives as an associate professor at Vanderbilt University.

He is the author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines, and co-editor of Cornell University Press’ series The United States in the World.  He is currently writing books on the practice of transnational history, and on connections between American foreign relations and U. S. immigration policy across the 20th century.

The Philippine-American war is often overlooked in US History books, but it was bloody turning point at the edge of the 20th century. The United States military had never traveled so far to invade a country it knew so little about. 

The war itself was brutal for both sides. Americans demolished the Filipino army early, and then local revolutionaries turned to Guerrilla warfare. Professor Paul Kramer joins the show to explain how the years-long war influenced ideas of race and nation. Soldiers, Reporters and civilians adopted harsh views the 'enemy.'  This would have long lasting reverberations; over a hundred years later our languages are still affected by this war.

Paul Kramer writes and teaches U. S. history from transnational, imperial and global perspectives as an associate professor at Vanderbilt University.

He is the author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines, and co-editor of Cornell University Press’ series The United States in the World.  He is currently writing books on the practice of transnational history, and on connections between American foreign relations and U. S. immigration policy across the 20th century.

Speak softly and carry a big mic! Theodore Roosevelt gives advice for imperialists and history podcasts.

In this episode, H.W. Brands turns back the clock to the 1890s and draws parallels to our biggest issues today. This is part TWO of a two part conversation about the end of the 19th century, where we focus on "Expansionism" and the United States' rise on the world stage.  Professor Brands melds presidential history with the messy politics of the era to explain WHY Americans seemed so eager to invade other countries. Let's return to the Reckless Decade!

Dr. H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. After graduating he became a traveling salesman, with a territory that spanned the West from the Pacific to Colorado. His wanderlust diminished after several trips across the Great Basin, and he turned to sales of a different sort, namely teaching.

For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History.

He has written thirty books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic Monthly, the Smithsonian, the National Interest, the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, the Political Science Quarterly, American History, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals. His writings have received critical and popular acclaim. The First American and Traitor to His Class were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.

Editing by Jordan Hawthorne

Hosted and produced by Joseph Eden Hawthorne (not related!)

Economic upheaval, job losses, extremist politics and paranoia, racial conflict and vicious debates about America's role in the world. Oh my! 

H.W. Brands turns back the clock to the 1890s and draws parallels to our biggest issues today. 'The Reckless Decade' was a period of violent tension between rich, and poor, white and black, East and West and capital vs. labor. The 1890s included the closing of the American frontier and the rise of US Imperialism. Populists and muckrakering journalists faced off with robber barons. Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and other black leaders clashed over the post-Reconstruction era. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan—created vast empires of wealth, while the poor labored for nickels and dimes.

This is part ONE of a two part conversation about the end of the 19th century.  Dr. H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. After graduating he became a traveling salesman, with a territory that spanned the West from the Pacific to Colorado. His wanderlust diminished after several trips across the Great Basin, and he turned to sales of a different sort, namely teaching.

For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History.

He has written thirty books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic Monthly, the Smithsonian, the National Interest, the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, the Political Science Quarterly, American History, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals. His writings have received critical and popular acclaim. The First American and Traitor to His Class were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.

Remember to subscribe and review 'Turn of the Century' on the podcast player of your choice. It really helps other people find our show, which in turn helps us make more content! 

"For six terrifying months in 1911-1912, Parisians were gripped by a violent crime wave. A group known as the Bonnot Gang began robbing banks and killed anyone who got in their way. These weren't just bank robbers; they were anarchists."

Professor John Merriman retells the hunt for Anarchist Bandits on the eve of World War I through the perspective of two lovers: Victor Kibaltchiche (later the famed Russian revolutionary and writer Victor Serge) and Rirette Maitrejean. The pair reporrted on the Bonnot crime spree in the radical newspaper L'Anarchie. While wealthy  urbanites enjoyed luxuries during the so-called Belle Epoque, Victor and Rirette protested state AND criminal violence.  Ultimately, though, police would target both the bank robbers and revolutionary writers.

John Merriman teaches, researches, and teaches French and Modern European history. His books include Dynamite Club: How A Café Bombing Ignited the Age of Modern Terror was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2009, by JR Books in London, and in French translation by Tallandier as Dynamite Club: L’Invention du Terrorisme à Paris, and in Chinese translation, as well. Yale University Press published a second edition in 2016, with a new preface discussing several of the recent terrorist attacks in France and the United States. He recently published Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree that Gripped Belle Époque Paris (Nation Books, 2017). Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune appeared with Basic Books in New York in 2014 and by Yale University Press in Great Britain. It has been translated into Portuguese in Brazil and in Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese. In 2019 the University of Nebraska Press published a collection of his essays: History on the Margins: People and Places in the Evolution of Modern France.

Merriman’s other books include The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848-1851 (1978); The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (1985), published in French as Limoges, la Ville Rouge (1990); The Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier(1991), French edition, Aux marges de la ville; faubourgs et banlieues en France 1815-1870  (1994);  and The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (2002, was published in Chinese translation in 2015), in French as Mêmoires de pierres: Balazuc, village ardéchois (Paris, 2005), and in Dutch; and Police Stories: Making the French State, 1815-1851 (Oxford University Press, 2005). 

When did the 'Turn of the Century' actually begin? The 1871 Paris Commune marked a turning point for socialists, anarchists and revolutionaries around the world. It also ended in a brutal crackdown, with consequences for the working class. Yale Professor John Merriman explains how the Paris Commune began as a social experiment, and ended in bloody massacre.  We dive into individual stories of the commune and consider whether this chapter in European history marks the beginning of the 1900s.

John Merriman teaches, researches, and teaches French and Modern European history. His books include Dynamite Club: How A Café Bombing Ignited the Age of Modern Terror was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2009, by JR Books in London, and in French translation by Tallandier as Dynamite Club: L’Invention du Terrorisme à Paris, and in Chinese translation, as well. Yale University Press published a second edition in 2016, with a new preface discussing several of the recent terrorist attacks in France and the United States. He recently published Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree that Gripped Belle Époque Paris (Nation Books, 2017). Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune appeared with Basic Books in New York in 2014 and by Yale University Press in Great Britain. It has been translated into Portuguese in Brazil and in Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese. In 2019 the University of Nebraska Press published a collection of his essays: History on the Margins: People and Places in the Evolution of Modern France.

Merriman’s other books include The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848-1851 (1978); The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (1985), published in French as Limoges, la Ville Rouge (1990); The Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier(1991), French edition, Aux marges de la ville; faubourgs et banlieues en France 1815-1870  (1994);  and The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (2002, was published in Chinese translation in 2015), in French as Mêmoires de pierres: Balazuc, village ardéchois (Paris, 2005), and in Dutch; and Police Stories: Making the French State, 1815-1851 (Oxford University Press, 2005). 

After a contentious race and victory in our current election, we are now looking back on the events surrounding the 1900s election. Steven dives into the narrow ratification of the treaty of Paris, the politics of imperial and non-imperialist, and the beginning of the loss of innocence in the American culture. We are pleased to have you join us for part 2 of our interview with Steven Kinzer.  

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire.

In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. In 2017 Kinzer published The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire. It describes America’s first great debate over military intervention abroad.