The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that Congress cannot make law abridging the freedom of speech, but by as early at 1798, Congress was restricting immigration to the country on the basis of the ideological beliefs of the people who wanted to immigrate. While the reasons for restrictions have changed over time, as has the mechanism by which they’re enforced, the basic principle continues to today. Joining me in this episode is  Dr. Julia Rose Kraut, legal historian and author of Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States. 

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode music is “The Mask of Anarchy 1 (Strings)” by Victory Day from Pixabay in accordance with the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is "The Anarchist riot in Chicago: a dynamite bomb exploding among the police," by Thure de Thulstrup and published in the May 15th, 1886, Harper's Weekly 30 (1534): 312-313; image is in the Public Domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Nationality Act of 1790,” Immigration History, The Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
• “Alien and Sedition Acts (1798),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “The Alien Enemies Act: The One Alien and Sedition Act Still on the Books,” by Scott Bomboy, National Constitution Center, March 17, 2025.
• “The Sedition Act of 1798,” History Art, and Archives, United States House of Representatives.
• “Haymarket Affair: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy,” Zinn Education Project.
• “Emma Goldman (1869-1940),” PBS American Experience. 

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Both Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin took trips in England to trace their family histories, and they weren’t alone among 18th century Americans, many of whom took a keen interest in genealogy and family connections. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Karin Wulf, Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, and Professor of History at Brown University and author of Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America. 

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “Nothing like that in our family,” composed by Seymour Furth with lyrics by William A. Heelan and performed by Billy Murray on April 24, 1906; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Sampler,” by Sophia Dyer, 1819; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Additional Sources:

• “Crossings- Abigail Was Here (Devonshire),” KathleenBitetti.com.
• “Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, 6 September 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-08-02-0034. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 8, April 1, 1758, through December 31, 1759, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965, pp. 133–146.]
• “Genealogical Chart of the Franklin Family, [July 1758],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-08-02-0029. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 8, April 1, 1758, through December 31, 1759, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965, p. 120.]
• “Eliot’s Bible,” by Neely Tucker, Library of Congress Blog, August 6, 2024.
• “Isaiah Thomas Folio Bible, 1791,” Houston Christian University Dunham Bible Museum.
• “How Genealogy Became Almost as Popular as Porn,” by Gregory Rodriguez, Time Magazine, May 30, 2014.
• “Why Are Americans Obsessed with Genealogy?” by Libby Copeland, Psychology Today, October 13, 2020.
• “Our Story,” Ancestry.com.

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Before American independence and the Bill of Rights promising religious freedom, the American colonies were English territory governed by English religious law that mandated worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. Even Maryland, which had been founded as a place for Catholics to worship freely, was majority Protestant and intolerant of public Catholicism by the time of the Revolution. Nonetheless, Catholics, including wealthy English landowners, Irish servants, and enslaved Africans, continued to live and worship throughout the American colonies, finding ways to keep their beliefs and customs alive. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Susan Juster, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library and author of A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Ave Maria,” composed by Charles Gounod and sung by Florence Hayward; the recording was made on January 30, 1905, in Philadelphia and is in the public domain and can be accessed via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “The Founding of Maryland, 1634,” painted by Emmanuel Leutze in 1860; the painting is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists,” Library of Congress.
• “10 facts about U.S. Catholics,” byJustin Nortey, Patricia Tevington, and Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, March 4, 2025.
• “Maryland's History,” Maryland Secretary of State.
• “The Catholic church in colonial days : the thirteen colonies, the Ottawa and Illinois country, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, 1521-1763,” by John Gilmary Shea, 1886.
• “American Catholic History Resources,” The Catholic University of America.
• “Catholicism in the Early South,” by Maura Jane Farrelly, Journal of Southern Religion 14 (2012).
• “Descendants of Jesuit Slaveholding and Jesuits of the United States Announce Historic Partnership,” Jesuit Conference of Canada and the U.S.

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In August of 1893, Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her but then had married another woman. By the time of the trial, Pollard and the much-older Breckinridge had been involved in an affair for nearly a decade. Breckinridge’s legal team attempted to paint Pollard as an “adventuress,” going so far as to hire an undercover detective – Jane Tucker – to get dirt on Pollard, but it was Breckinridge’s reputation that suffered as a result of the revelations in the trial, especially with the women of Kentucky. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe, Professor of History at the University of New England in Maine and author of Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Wait until you see my Madeline,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer with lyrics by Lew Brown and performed by Billy Jones; the audio was recorded in Camden, New Jersey, on May 4, 1921 and is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photo of Madeleine Pollard, by C.M. Bell, produced between 1873 and ca. 1916; the image is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and there are no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

• “The Celebrated Trial, Madeline Pollard vs. Breckinridge, The Most Noted Breach of Promise Suit in the History of Court Records,” American Printing and Binding Company, 1894, via the Internet Archive.
• “The Court Case That Inspired the Gilded Age’s #MeToo Moment,” by Annie Diamond, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2018.
• “Sex, politics and broken promises grabbed headlines in Lexington in 1893,” by Liz Carey, The Lexington Herald-Leader, April 23, 2025.
• "“Not Ruined, but Hindered”: Rethinking Scandal, Re-examining Transatlantic Sources, and Recovering Madeleine Pollard," by Elizabeth DeWolfe, in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 31 no. 2, 2014, p. 300-310. 
• “BRECKINRIDGE, William Campbell Preston,” United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives.
• “W.C.P. BRECKINRIDGE DEAD.; Ex-Congressman's Public Career Ended After the Pollard Suit,” The New York Times, November 20, 1904.

Related Episode:

• Sophonisba Breckinridge

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On the slave ships that sailed between Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the West Coast of Africa from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, the crews included not just white sailors but also Black mariners, including a significant number of crewmen who were themselves enslaved. These enslaved mariners were not just a source of inexpensive labor but were also valued for their geographic, linguistic, and cultural skills, and they, in turn, could use the opportunity of labor on slave ships as a means of social mobility and eventually legal emancipation, or sometimes the chance for flight. Joining me in this episode to discuss these mariners is Dr. Mary E. Hicks, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Bahia Sunrise,” used under the Envato Market License - Music Standard License. The episode image is “Night Chase of the Brigantine Slaver Windward by HM Steam-Sloop Alecto,” Illustration for The Illustrated London News, by Frederick James Smyth, May 1, 1858; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “A Brief History of Brazil,” by José Fonseca, The New York Times 2006.
• “A Chronology of Brazilian History,” The Atlantic,” February 1956.
• “2.3 The African Slave Trade and Slave Life,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “4.2 Slavery and Abolition in the 19th Century,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “The Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831-1845,” by Robert Conrad, Hispanic American Historical Review 1 November 1969; 49 (4): 617–638. 
• “‘We need to tell people everything’: Portugal grapples with legacy of colonial past,” by Sam Jones, Gonçalo Fonseca, and Philip Oltermann, The Guardian, October 5, 2020.

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Ruth Reynolds, born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1916 to a strict Methodist family, may have seemed an unlikely ally to the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but she devoted her life to what she saw as her “sacred and patriotic duty” as an American to convincing her country to withdraw from Puerto Rico “so that our nation may stand before the world free from any suggestion of imperialist ambition.” Facing surveillance by the FBI and insular police and even incarceration for her views, Reynolds never backed down from her solidarity, but she was always careful to listen to the people of Puerto Rico and never to impose her view on them. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lisa G. Materson, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence. 

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is the original mid-19th century fast-tempo arrangement of “La Borinqueña,” which later as a slower arrangement became the regional anthem of Puerto Rico; the performance is by the United States Navy and is in the public domain; it is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is from the arrest of Carmen María Pérez González, Olga Viscal and Ruth Reynolds, January 4, 1951, taken by Benjamin Torres, and archived at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Puerto Rico; the photograph is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Ruth M. Reynolds Papers,” Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Centro Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.
• “Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives,” Library of Congress.
• “Puerto Rican Independence Movement [video],” American History TV, C-Span, April 13, 2018.
• “Remembering Don Pedro: An Online History of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.” 
• “Puerto Rico’s Independence Movement: What Americans need to know about the PIP and Puerto Rico's Independence,” by Javier A. Hernandez, LA Progressive, Originally posted January 27, 2025 and updated February 12, 2025.
• “How the U.S. silenced calls for Puerto Rico's independence [video],” by Bianca Gralau, August 26, 2021.
• “The Case for Puerto Rican Independence,” by Alberto C. Medina, Current Affairs, April 5, 2024.

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In March 1972, Selma James distributed a pamphlet that declared: “If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage. . . WE DEMAND WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK. All housekeepers are entitled to wages. (Men too).” Soon it was a global movement, with Wages for Housework branches in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and several other countries, and autonomous groups like Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Callaci, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Get yourself a broom and sweep your troubles away,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, with lyrics by James Brockman and Billy Rose, and performed by Frank Crumit and Frank E. Banta, in New York on December 19, 1924; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a Wages for Housework poster drawn by Jacquie Ursula Caldwell in 1974, From the collection of Silvia Federici copyright Creative Commons, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “A Woman’s Place,” Selma James, 1953.
• “Women and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader,” by Mariarosa Della Costa, 2019.
• “Statement of the International Feminist Collective,” July 1972.
• “Wages Against Housework,” by Silvia Federici, 1975.
• “All Work and No Pay [video],” Made by the Wages for Housework Campaign with the BBC TV's Open Door series, 1976, posted by Global Women’s Strike, January 15, 2023.
• “The women who demanded wages for housework - Witness History, BBC World Service [video],” Witness History, BBC World Service, February 12, 2014.
• “Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued,” by Kevin Sapere, The Washington Post, April 8, 2021.
• “Wages for Housework is 50. This is the change it has inspired,” by Leila Hawkins, Nadja.co, April 16, 2022.
• “‘They say it is love, we say it is unwaged work’ – 50 years of fighting to be paid for housework,” by Rosa Campbell, Gloria Media, December 19, 2022.
• “The ‘true value of women’s work,’” by Kristina García, Penn Today, July 26, 2023.
• Care Income Now

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Amelia Jenks Bloomer was many things: writer and publisher, public speaker, temperance reformer, advocate for women’s rights and dress reform, and adoptive mother. She was not the inventor of the trousers for women that came to bear her name – bloomers – although she wore them and wrote about them for many years. Throughout her life, even as poor health often stood in her way, Amelia Bloomer took action, never waiting for someone else to do what was needed. I’m joined in this episode by writer Sara Catterall, author of Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-Fashion Icon.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Lily of the prairie,” composed and with lyrics by Kerry Mills, performed by Billy MMurray and the Haydn Quartet on July 7, 1907, in Camden, New Jersey; this recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is an illustration of Amelia Bloomer from Illustrated London News with the description: "Amelia Bloomer , Originator Of The New Dress. — From A Daguerreotype By T. W. Brown,” published August 27, 1851; the illustration is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Amelia Bloomer Didn’t Mean to Start a Fashion Revolution, But Her Name Became Synonymous With Trousers,” by Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine, May 24, 2018.
• “Amelia Bloomer – Publisher and Advocate for Woman’s Rights,” VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project.
• “Amelia Bloomer: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894),” by Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow, National Women’s History Museum, 2017.
• “Amelia Bloomer,” National Park Service.
• “Petition of Amelia Bloomer Regarding Suffrage in the West,” by Linda Simmons, National Archives.
• “Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer,” by D. C. Bloomer, United States: Arena Publishing Company, 1895. Via Project Guternberg.

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My guest today is Dr. Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history, and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University and author of The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. In this book, Prof. Jones researches her family’s past to understand how each generation encountered and negotiated the color line, beginning with her great-great-great-grandmother who survived enslavement and raised a free family. 

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode audio is “Family trouble blues,” composed by Olman J. Cobb, and performed in New York on May 5, 1923, with Lizzie Miles on vocals and Clarence Johnson on piano; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is Jennie Holley Jones and family, from the cover of The Trouble of Color. 

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The Universal Negro Improvement Association is often most closely associated with Marcus Garvey, but from the beginning, the work of women was essential to the development of the organization. Amy Ashwood co-founded the UNIA with Garvey, and it was her connections and capital that launched the Negro World newspaper, but after her brief marriage to and divorce from Garvey, she was removed from the UNIA and the newspaper. Other women, like Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, and actress Henrietta Vinton Davis, played important and public roles in the UNIA, especially during Garvey’s incarceration, but their contributions aren’t as widely remembered as Garvey’s. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Natanya Duncan, associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at Queens College CUNY, and author of An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is "Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association," a studio recording made by African-American leader Marcus Garvey in New York in July 1921, and adapted from his longer speech "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York;" it is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is a photograph of Henrietta Vinton Davis, published in Women of distinction: remarkable in works and invincible in character by L. A. Scruggs in 1893; the image is in the public domain and is available via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

Additional Sources:

• “Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” by Dr. Melissa Brown, BlackFeminisms.com.
• “Uncovering the Silences of Black Women’s Voices in the Age of Garvey,” by Keisha N. Blain, Black Perspectives, November 29, 2015.
• “Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind,” PBS.
• “Theorizing (with) Amy Ashwood Garvey,” by Robbie Shilliam, Chapter in Women’s International Thought: A New History, edited by Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, 158–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• ""Negro Women Are Great Thinkers as Well as Doers": Amy Jacques-Garvey and Community Feminism, 1924-1927," by Ula Y. Taylor, Journal of Women's History 12, no. 2 (2000): 104-126. 
• ”Black History Month: Amy Jacques Garvey,” by Emily Claessen, King’s College London, October 20, 2023.
• “The inside story of the pardon of Marcus Garvey,” by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, February 1, 2025.
• “Henrietta Vinton Davis: Lady Commander Order of the Nile,” by Meserette Kentake, Kentake Page, August 15, 2015.
• "“If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward”: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York," by Natanya Duncan, New York History, vol. 95 no. 4, 2014, p. 558-583. 
• “Laura Adorkor Kofey research collection,” New York Public Library.
• “After 85 years, slain minister's Jacksonville legacy lingers,” by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville.com, March 7, 2013.

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