Unsung History

In 1879, a group of Spiritualists purchased 20 acres of land, halfway between Buffalo, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. The gated community they created, now a hamlet of Pomfret, New York, became known as Lily Dale. Each summer, people came to Lily Dale (and still come) to speak with the dead through Lily Dale’s many licensed mediums. In its early years, modern Spiritualism, which began with the young Fox sisters (Maggie and Kate), often intersected with Women’s Suffrage, and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony were frequent visitors to Lily Dale. Joining me in this episode to help us understand more about Lily Dale and Spiritualism more generally is Dr. Averill Earls, Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College, Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast, and one of the authors of Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale.

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 “Night Whisper,” by  by Sergio Prosvirini, Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photograph of “The Lily Dale Museum,” by Plazak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• Lily Dale Assembly
• “In Good Spirits: Lily dale, New York, is a curious little village where the still-quick commune with the once-quick,” by Bil Gilbert, Smithsonian Magazine, May 31, 2001.
• “Lily Dale, the Town That Speaks to the Dead,” by Bess Lovejoy, Mental Floss, August 26, 2015.
• “This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself,” By Anna Kodé, The New York Times, October 27, 2023.
• “The Art of Belief: On Talking to the Dead in Lily Dale,” by Laura Maylene Walter, LitHib, March 23, 2021.
• “In the Joints of Their Toes,” by Edward White, The Paris Review, November 4, 2016.
• “The Mystery of the Three Fox Sisters,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Psychic Science, October 1922.
• “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism,” by Abbott Kahler, Smithsonian Magazine, October 30, 2012.
• National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

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Isabel Truesdell Kelly earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture,” having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. After graduating she led excavations in Mexico and then began a career as an anthropologist with the US State Department, which had a growing interest in assisting the scientific and technological development of countries like Mexico as a way of maintaining a toehold in the region during the growing cold war with the Soviet Union. Joining me this week is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico.

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 “Hermoso Mexico,” composed by R. Herrera, arranged and conducted by Guillermo González and performed by Banda González (Victor Band) on May 16, 1919, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Isabel T. Kelly portrait,” DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. 

Additional Sources:

• “Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive,” Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries.
• “Isabel Truesdell Kelly,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
• “Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas,” compiled and edited by Catherine S. Fowler and Darla Garey-Sage, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
• “Isabel T. Kelly: Pioneer Great Basin Ethnographer,” by Catherine S. Fowler, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2016): 172–76..
• “With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology,” by Nicole M. Herzog and Suzanne Eskenazi, University of Utah Press, 2020. 

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At the end of August 1787, after three long months of debate and deliberation, the Constitutional Convention had neared the end of its work. They were poised at that time to write into the Constitution that the President of the United States would be elected by the legislature, but at the last minute they referred the matter to the Committee on Unfinished Parts to resolve. It was that committee, guided by future president James Madison, that drafted a compromise Electors plan, answering the concerns of the small states and slave states who wanted to keep the advantages they held in the legislature but also, theoretically at least, avoiding the corruption likely in a system where the legislative branch chooses the chief executive. Of course, it didn’t take long for political actors – including some of the founders themselves – to find ways to exploit the system of Electors for their own ends. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Carolyn Renee Dupont, professor in history at Eastern Kentucky University and author of Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College--And Why It Matters Today.

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 “Three Little Drummers from the George Washington Show,” by The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps,” performed by the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps on April 11, 2011; the audio is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode artwork is “Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground),” painting by Howard Chandler Christy; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Constitutional Convention and Ratification, 1787–1789,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “Electoral College History,” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “Article II Executive Branch,” National Constitution Center. 
• “12th Amendment: Election of President and Vice President,” National Constitution Center.
• “10 reasons why America’s first constitution failed,” by NCC Staff, National Constitution Center, November 17, 2022.
• “Why Was the Electoral College Created?” by Dave Roos, History.com, Originally posted July 15, 2019, and updated October 7, 2024.
• “How the Electoral College Became Winner-Take-All,” by Devin Mccarthy, Fair Vote, August 21, 2012.
• “Letter from James Madison to George Hay explaining views on Electoral College,” August 23, 1823.
• “Federalist No. 68,” Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History, Library of Congress.

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In the 1870s, 120 Chinese boys came to New England as part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The boys studied at prep schools and colleges, and while they continued their lessons in Chinese language and culture, they also learned about the culture of their adopted homeland, including the local sports, like baseball. By the mid-1870s, some of the Chinese students had formed a semi-pro baseball team called the Celestials that competed on the regional circuit. With growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, though, the Chinese government recalled the students. On their trip home, the Celestials had one last chance to play as a team, when an Oakland, California, team, challenged them to a game. This week I’m joined by Dr. Ben Railton, Professor of American Studies at Fitchburg State University and host of The Celestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for 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 “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, and recorded by Edward Meeker in September 1908; the recording is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is “The baseball players of the Chinese Education Mission,” from 1878, via the Thomas La Fargue Papers, MASC, Washington State University Libraries; the image is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868,” Office of the Historian, United States of America Department of State.
• “Considering History: Baseball, Chinese Americans, and the Worst and Best of America,” by Ben Railton, The Saturday Evening Post, May 11, 2020.
• “Yung Wing, the Chinese Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut,” by Ben Railton, Connecticut History, May 1, 2022.
• “Yung Wing’s Dream: The Chinese Educational Mission, 1872-1881,” by Barbara Austen, Connecticut History, October 26, 2021.
• “My Life in China and America,” by Yung Wing, via Project Gutenberg
• CEM Connections.
• “Chinese Educational Mission at MIT,” from an 2017 exhibit at MIT's Maihaugen Gallery.
• “Journeys 旅途: Boys of the Chinese Educational Mission,” Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.
• “Historical Context /历史背景/歷史背景: The Chinese Educational Mission (1872-1881),” Phillips Andover Academy.
• “Chinese Educational Mission, 1870s-1880s,” Phillips Exeter Academy.
• “The Workingmen’s Party & The Denis Kearney Agitation: Historical Essay,” by Chris Carlsson, FoundSF, 1995.
• “140 years ago, San Francisco was set ablaze during the city's deadliest race riots,” by Katie Dowd, SF Gate, July 23, 2017.
• “Chinese Exclusion Act (1882),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
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Shortly after he was born in 1971, Ryan White was diagnosed with severe hemophilia. Ryan was able to reduce his hospitalizations from the disease through the use of in-home injections of Factor VIII concentrate, something he and other people with hemophilia saw as a lifeline. The downside of this lifeline was that it pooled blood and plasma from thousands of donors, increasing the user’s risk of exposure to diseases like HIV. In 1984, Ryan was diagnosed with AIDS. His fight to be allowed to attend school and live as normal a life as possible made him a household name and helped humanize the HIV/AIDS epidemic for many Americans, culminating in the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act months after Ryan’s death in 1990. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Paul Renfro, Associate Professor of History at Florida State University and author of The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in 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 a clip from “Episode 259: Alyssa Milano,” Two Broads Talking Politics, July 23, 2019, used with permission of the original podcast. The mid-episode music is “The Beat of Nature” by folk_acoustic; the audio is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo of Ryan White taken at a fundraising event in the spring of 1989 in INdianapolis, Indiana; it is available via Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Additional sources:

• “Who Was Ryan White?” The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, Health Resources & Services Administration.
• “Remembering Ryan White, the teen who fought against the stigma of AIDS,” by Dr. Howard Markel, PBS Health, April 8, 2016.
• “Ryan White, Teen Who Contracted AIDS, Shifted Narrative Around the Disease,” By Paul Renfro, Teen Vogue, December 6, 2021.
• “Elton John credits Ryan White’s family with saving his life,” by Associated Press, PBS, April 3, 2022.
• “S.2240 - Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990,” 101st Congress (1989-1990), Congress.gov.
• “Celebrating 30 Years of the Ryan White CARE Act,” HIV.gov, August 18, 2020.
• “U.S. Statistics,” HIV.gov.

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When she was just fifteen years old, in 1830, Sarah Martha Sanders was sold to Richard Walpole Cogdell of Charleston, South Carolina. Within a year she was pregnant with his child, and just after she turned 17, Sarah Martha gave birth to Robert Sanders, the first of nine children she would bear to then 45-year-old Richard Cogdell. Because the legal status of the children followed that of the mother, these nine children were also Richard’s property. None of this was unusual for the time. The unusual turn happened in 1857 when Richard Cogdell, for unknown reasons, purchased a property in Philadelphia and immediately signed it over to his five living children with Sarah Martha, immediately moving there with them for good. Joining me to discuss this story is Dr. Lori Ginzberg, Professor Emeritus of History and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Tangled Journeys: One Family's Story and the Making of American History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Cordelia Sanders (1841-1879), age 15, Charleston,” P.2014.51.2, Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. The mid-episode music is “Satisfied Blues,” composed and performed by Lemuel Fowler, recorded in New York City on July 19, 1923; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.

Additional Sources:

• Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia.
• “Tracing Charleston’s History of Slavery, From a Burial Ground to a DNA Swab,” by Caroline Gutman and Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Old Slave Mart,” Charleston, South Carolina, National Park Service.
• “The Charleston Slave Badges,” National Museum of African American History & Culture.
• “Telling the complicated history of Charleston, South Carolina,” CBS News,” February 24, 2020.
• “Abolitionism,” by Richard S. Newman, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.
• “Philadelphia and the Birth of the Nation’s First Abolitionist Society,” by Fidan Baycora, Historic America, April 14, 2021.
• “First American abolition society founded in Philadelphia,” History.com.
• “Big Idea 5: The Forten Family: Abolitionists and Reformers,” Museum of the American Revolution.

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At the dedication for a school for African American students in Manassas, Virginia, in 1894, Frederick Douglass said: “no greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earnestly this day endeavoring to do, the means of an education.” In the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South, and especially in the Washington, DC, region, formerly enslaved people fought for educational opportunities. Even as other advances of Reconstruction were clawed back by the forces of white supremacy by the late 19th century, much of the educational progress remained, so that Douglass in 1894 could still see “encouraging signs in the moral skies.” I’m joined in this episode by my son Teddy as co-host and by Dr. Kate Masur, the Board of Visitors Professor of History at Northwestern University and author of Freedom Was in Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region.

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 “I Want to Be Ready,” performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and recorded in New York City on December 22, 1920; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph from 1864 of the Jacobs Free School, founded by Harriet Jacobs; the photograph was distributed to Northern abolitionists who had helped fund the school and is now in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Blessings of Liberty and Education,” by Frederick Douglass, delivered in Manassas, Virginia, on September 3, 1894, The Frederick Douglass Papers Project.
• “How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery,” by Colette Coleman, History.com, Originally posted on June 17, 2020, and updated on July 11, 2023.
• “An Act to amend the act concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes (April 7, 1831),” Encyclopedia of Virginia.
• “Margaret Douglass,” Shaping the Constitution, Resources from the Library of Virginia and the Library of Congress. 
• “Harriet Jacobs: Working for Freedpeople in Civil War Alexandria,” by Paula Tarnapol Whitacre, Journal of the Civil War Era, July 16, 2019.
• “Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen,” by Harriet A. Jacobs and Louisa Jacobs, National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 16, 1864, in Documenting the American South.
• “Lost Capitol Hill: The Little Ebenezer Church School,” by Robert Pohl, The Hill is Home, February 9, 2015.
• “The Freedmen's Bureau,” National Archives.
• “History,” Howard University.
• “General Oliver Otis Howard House,” National Park Service.
• “Jennie Dean and the Manassas Industrial School,” Manassas Museum.

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In his bestselling childcare manual American pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock advised new moms:“If you begin to feel at all depressed, go to a movie, or to the beauty parlor, or to get yourself a new hat or dress.” Although puerperal insanity had been a recognized diagnosis at the end of the 19th Century, doctors in the early 20th century dismissed the postpartum onset of psychiatric symptoms as “pure coincidence.” It would take decades of activism by both parent groups and clinicians for the effects of postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis to be recognized and studied, with limited federal funding for programming finally being approved in late 2016. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Rachel Louise Moran, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas and author of Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in 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 “Alone with the Darkness,” by NaturesEye; the music is available via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Additional Sources:

• The International Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health
• Postpartum Support International
• “Postpartum Depression Support Groups in the U.S. & Canada,” Postpartum Progress.
• “Perinatal Depression,” National Institute for Mental Health.
• “Shedding More Light on Postpartum Depression,” by Rachel Ewing, Penn Medicine News, January 4, 2016.
• “New treatment for postpartum depression offers hope, but the stigma attached to the condition still lingers,” by Nicole Lynch and Shannon Pickett, The Conversation, October 19, 2023.
• “The Neurobiology of Postpartum Anxiety and Depression,” by Jodi S Pawluski, Joseph S Lonstein, and Alison S Fleming, Trends in Neurosciences, 2017, 40 (2), pp.106-120. ff10.1016/j.tins.2016.11.009ff. Ffhal01452985f.
• “Exploring predictors and prevalence of postpartum depression among mothers: Multinational study,” by Amer, S.A., Zaitoun, N.A., Abdelsalam, H.A. et al.,  BMC Public Health 24, 1308 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18502-0.
• “Federal Legislative History,” Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance (MMHLA).

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Between 1921 and 1948, every Southern and border state, except Delaware, set up scholarship programs to send Black students out of state for graduate study rather than admit them to historically white public colleges or build graduate programs in the public HBCUs. While the individual Black students often benefited from graduate education at top-tier universities, the segregation scholarships created hardships for those same students and took money that could have been used to build up the public HBCUs. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies, at Emory University and author of A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs.

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 “He’s a College Boy,” composed by Theodore F. Morse, with lyrics by Jack Mahoney, and performed by the American Quartet on September 3, 1910, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “As University of Oklahoma dean of admissions J.E. Fellows, Thurgood Marshall, ad Amos T. Hall look on, Ada Sipuel again applies for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School in 1948;” Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Additional Sources:

• “Segregation Scholarships,” PBS Chasing the Dream.
• “Major Landmarks in the Progress of African Americans in Higher Education,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
• “History of HBCUs,” Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
• “Reconstruction-Era Politics Shaped Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” by Leigh Soares, Progress: A Blog for American History.
• “STATE OF MISSOURI et rel. GAINES v. CANADA et al.,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.
• “Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel (1924-1995),” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma State HIstorical Society.
• “4 decades of desegregation in American colleges, charted,” by Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, December 17, 2014.

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In 1946, the National Football League began the process of reintegration after a “gentleman’s agreement” had stopped teams from hiring Black players for over a decade. Even as the NFL began to re-integrate, though, racist stereotypes kept teams from drafting Black players into so-called “thinking” positions like quarterback. Black players who started at quarterback in college would be drafted into the NFL, only to be converted into running backs or wide receivers. On September 30, 1979, for the first time in NFL history, two Black quarterbacks (Doug WIlliams of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Vince Evans of the Chicago Bear) faced off against each other. In this episode, we look at Williams, Evans, and the history of Black quarterbacks in the NFL. I’m joined in this episode by historian Dr. Louis Moore, Professor of History at Grand Valley State University and author of The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback.

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 “American Football Game (Drum Corps Percussion Action) Bumper,” by FlorewsMusic, used under the Pond5's Content License Agreement. The episode image is “Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams preparing to throw the ball during an offensive play in 1987,” published in 1988 for the Redskins Police football card set; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “NFL founded in Canton on Sept. 17, 1920,” Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• “The Reintegration of the NFL,” NFL Football Operations. 
• “How the media helped overturn the NFL’s unwritten ban on black players,” by Nathan Fenno, Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2017.
• “Meet Four Men Who Broke The NFL's Color Line,” NFL Players Association.
• “Bucs Edge Bears,” by Dave Brady, The Washington Post, September 30, 1979.
• “Doug Williams,” Washington Commanders.
• “QB Evans Made History Before Joining Raiders,” by Tom LaMarre, Sports Illustrated, June 23, 2023.
• “Why It Took So Long for Two Black Quarterbacks to Face Off in the Super Bowl,” by Robert Silverman, Rolling Stone, February 12, 2023.
• “No matter who wins, the first Super Bowl with 2 Black quarterbacks will make history,” by Becky Sullivan, NPR Morning Edition, February 8, 2023.
• “Nine Decades After NFL Banned Black Players, Super Bowl LVII Is The First To Feature Two Black Starting Quarterbacks,” National Urban League, February 3, 2023.

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