Category Archives: Memory

Remembering V-E Day 75 years on

08 Friday May 2020

Posted by in Harry S. Truman, Memory

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Camera crews record President Harry S. Truman announcing the surrender of Germany, May 8, 1945

I spent a good portion of the evening working reference on my library’s online reference service, answering questions not just from our own students but from those around the world within the consortium to which we belong. I rarely break through the fourth wall but almost always play it completely straight, unless something humorous happens or there is some other reason to break character so to speak. You always know where the person is because they log on from their institution’s website. Today around 5:00 pm I clicked on a query from a school in London. Often the patrons on the other end do not realize they are getting the 24/7 reference service and figure, if they think about it at all, that they have gotten someone from their home site. This happened with the patron from London because they apologized for bothering me on a bank holiday. I broke through the wall immediately and told them that not only were they not bothering me but that it was not even a bank holiday here in Brooklyn, New York. I had understood immediately that their bank holiday remark was in reference to today being V-E Day.

Usually when I field questions from across the pond–and there are always a fair number of them–I like to think they’re sitting in a pub having a pint while doing their schoolwork. It was 5:00 pm here, and so would have been after at least 10:00 London time. Yes, it was a Friday but I doubt given the upside-down nature of our current moment that they were pub crawling, and no I did not ask. While looking into their reference need the two of us had a fair back-and-forth on the V-E Day commemoration, which despite being the 75th such occasion was rather subdued given the pandemic. They patron mentioned a few virtual events being held online for social distancing purposes. There were few, if any, in-person events.

This patron was one of three people (the others not being from virtual reference but people emailing and texting) who mentioned today’s Victory in Europe anniversary. It has been cold and rainy all day here in the Big Apple; anniversaries such as this are not really there for celebration but reflection, and the weather has suited the occasion. Given everything going on in our world today this year’s V-E Day has been that much more poignant. No one knows the future–just ask anyone who remains today who was there in the spring of 1945–but it seems that seventy-five years after the surrender of Germany the world is entering a new era.

(image/Truman Library Institute)

 

a “New Valley Forge”

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Memory

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Here are a few more images from my presentation this past Monday at Federal Hall on Presidents Day. Here we see an announcement for a Washington Birthday Democratic fundraiser held in Fort Worth, Texas on February 23, 1942. This was less than two months after Pearl Harbor in those tense days when the United States was getting up to speed in its war effort. The U.S. had been the “arsenal of democracy,” manufacturing tanks, bullets, jeeps, and whatnot for the Allies long prior to Pearl Harbor. Now American fighting men themselves would join the fray. As we see from the announcement the dinner was held on February 23, not Washington’s actually birthday, because the 22nd fell on a Sunday.

New York Times, February 23, 1942

Roosevelt himself did not attend the dinner, though as we see the Texas Democratic leadership was not hesitant to use his likeness, and on equal footing with President Washington no less. One must remember that Texas in this era was part of the Solid South, comprised, like the rest of the region, of Dixiecrats who since the Civil War eighty years previously had stood against the Party of Lincoln. In the 1930s these leaders, and those who voted for them, were part of the fragile New Deal coalition supporting FDR in cooperation with the Democratic machines of the northern cities. That coalition would hold another three decades until fracturing in the chaos of the Vietnam War and bitterness of the Civil Rights Movement. Roosevelt’s vice-president in his first two terms had been John Nance Garner, a Texan and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The tension and unease in their relationship were representative of the strains within the New Deal coalition itself.

Garner was gone by 1942 and now Roosevelt was facing the war in his unprecedented third term. What we see here is the snippet of an article from the February 23, 1942 New York Times describing the mood on Washington’s birthday in those weeks just after Pearl Harbor. The first public observation of George Washington’s birthday had been at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778. Now America was facing a “new Valley Forge.” Attendees at the Fort Worth soiree did not meet Franklin Roosevelt, but they did hear him. That night he gave one of his fireside chats over the radio outlining the progress and stakes of the war, and the lessons to be learned from the experience and difficulties of Washington and the men of his Continental Army all those years earlier.

 

Sunday morning coffee

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington, Memory

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I spent a portion of this morning putting the final touches on an interpretive talk I’ll be giving tomorrow at Federal Hall. The talk is about the history and evolution of George Washington’s Birthday, which historically, with the Fourth of July, has served as a key part of America’s civic religion. There is a very human need for a usable past. On the federal level there is technically no such thing as President’s Day; the three-day weekend in which we are now in the middle is in commemoration of George Washington.

It will be good to be back at Federal Hall, where I have not been since Labor Day Weekend when it was last open on weekends. Later today I will go over my notes and outlines in preparation. The rotunda is closed for renovation but there will still a lot going on tomorrow if one is looking for something to do. That includes the talk by historian Lawrence Cappello. Come and get your history on.

Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865

12 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Abraham Lincoln, Memory

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Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. My gosh, was the bicentennial of his birth actually eleven years ago now? I remember it so vividly. Lincoln’s birthday, along with Washington’s, used to be a major holiday in the United States. Or more precisely, Lincoln’s was a major holiday in half the United States; in parts of the Old Confederacy they observed the birth of Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807), Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (January 21, 1824), or some combination of the two. If one has followed the news the past several years one knows that they are still sorting out how to deal with that Lost Cause narrative of which Lee and Jackson are the quintessential embodiment. Lincoln’s birthday has itself been used and abused. I did not know until the other day that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, which he delivered seventy years ago this week on February 9, 1950, charging wild insinuations about the State Department, was delivered during a Lincoln birthday commemoration. It is a reminder of the need for public figures to speak carefully and honestly, and what we stand to lose when they do not.

Congressman Joseph Cannon reciting the Gettysburg Address on the House floor, February 12, 1920

Here we see Lincoln’s birthday on the House floor as it was commemorated one hundred years ago today. That’s Congressman Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois reciting the Gettysburg Address. Cannon had been House Speaker from 1903-1911 and by the time it was done would serve forty-six years in Congress. February 1920 was a difficult time in our nation’s history, coming as it did after the Red Summer of 1919 here in the United States and increasingly turbulent situation in Europe as well.

The institution where I work might be the last one which closes on Lincoln’s birthday. It is a nice little respite after the grind that is the first few weeks of the semester. I am determined to get out, and am debating whether to go to either the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan or stay local and hit the Brooklyn Museum.

(image/Library of Congress)

 

Boston Tea Party: December 16, 1773

16 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by in American Revolutionary War, Memory

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Today is the 246th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. As I understand it the name of this pivotal event that helped lead to the American Revolution is a construction of nineteenth century historiography; Americans began using the expression “Boston Tea Party” in the 1820s, shortly after the War of 1812. This Nathaniel Currier lithograph from 1846 does not use the term “Boston Tea Party” at all, but the still common “destruction of tea at Boston harbor.” In the lead-up to the Civil War Americans both North and South used and misused the memory of the Revolution for their own purposes. Those purposes could with be either nefarious or to appeal to people’s better angels. Lincoln in his First Inaugural hoped that “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave” might forestall civil war, which of course is not what happened in 1861. A century and a half later in our own time it remans the same, with people using and misusing the iconography of the Revolution for purposes good and ill.

We are now just two weeks away from the 2020s. As early as next March will come the first big 250th anniversary of the events leading to the American Revolution: the Boston Massacre of March 1770. I know that some communities are in the nascent stages of preparing for various anniversaries. Major League Baseball has already set the 2026 All-Star Game for Philadelphia, just as they did fifty years previously in 1976 during the Bicentennial. It is my understanding that other professional leagues intend to follow suit, but I guess time will tell.

(image/Owensboro Community & Technical College)

The photographers’ Great Depression

12 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory, New Deal

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Okies in Farm Security Administration (FSA) emergency migratory labor camp, Calipatria, Imperial Valley, February 1939. This image was taken by Dorothea Lange, a colleague of Arthur Rothstein whose images are included in the current exhibit at Roosevelt House.

I’m sorry about the lack of posts recently. I have spent much of the past several weeks finishing the draft of a project that proved more difficult and time-involved that I had imagined. I submitted the draft the other day. We’ll see if comes to pass toward the end of the year. People were asking me at work yesterday what I intended to do over the three-day weekend; when they did I answered with a negative: “not writing and editing.”

Last night I went to Roosevelt House on East 65th Street for the opening of the exhibit “A Lens on FDR’s New Deal: Photographs by Arthur Rothstein, 1935-1945.” Rothstein was one of the great visual chroniclers of Depression Era America. It is not going too far to say that he, his friend and colleague Dorothea Lange, and others shaped our awareness and memory and of what the country was enduring in the 1930s and early 1940s. Part of the reason the Roosevelt Administration created the initiative to photograph the severity of the economic crisis to begin with was to press the need for its New Deal programs.

Rothstein was the son of refugees from Eastern Europe. Like so many immigrants and first-generation Americans, he was eager to make his contribution. Born in 1915, Rothstein attended Columbia University at fifteen and in the mid-1930s, just a young man in his early 20s, found himself driving across the country on dirt roads, sleeping in his car, eating off a hot plate, and shooting 80,000 images in migrant camps, farming communities, and elsewhere.

Rothstein’s daughter, Dr. Annie Segan, put the exhibition together in with her husband and the Roosevelt House historian. With over 125 photographs it is the biggest exhibit of Rothstein images to go on display in more than a quarter century. Other photographers are included as well. Many of the images were taken from tiny negatives. Rothstein’s daughter in her talk called them “picture stories.” Incredibly the trove of 175,000 images taken by Rothstein and the nearly twenty other photographers working for the Resettlement Administration (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) were nearly discarded by indifferent bureaucrats in the years after the Second World War. Thankfully they were saved and are available to the public at the Library of Congress and online.

The exhibit runs into January 2020.

(image/Library of Congress)

 

 

Talking Hart Island podcast

17 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by in Historiography, Interpretation, Media and Web 2.0, Memory, New York City

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I received an email recently from author and podcaster Michael T. Keene, who introduced himself and told me of his exciting new project: the Talking Hart Island podcast. For those who may not know, Hart Island is located in Long Island Sound near the Bronx and since 1869 has served as New York City’s potters field. It is the largest public burial ground in the United States. Approximately one million souls rest there today. Hart Island is still very much a working cemetery; officials estimate it has about another decade to go before reaching full capacity. One hundred and fifty years of burials dating back the days of Tammany offer many exciting interpretive possibilities for a podcast.

Today is an exciting time in the long history of Hart Island. Currently run by the NYC Department of Correction and tended by inmates from Rikers, Hart Island may soon open as a public park if the city council votes to change the island’s jurisdiction to the Parks Department. DNA is now making it possible to identify some of the unknown. These are the stories Mike Keene and his team are telling. Today I listened to the segment one featuring Russell Shorto, To start at the very beginning was a great move. Too often when the public thinks of the history of New York they think it begins with the British. In reality it was the Dutch who set the tone and character of what they called New Netherland. Much of that Dutch ethos remains with us today.

There are already three episodes of Talking Hart Island available for listening, with a new episode coming weekly. Give it a listen by clicking on the image above.

Searching for one’s Revolutionary War ancestors

31 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by in American Revolutionary War, Genealogy, Libraries, Memory, Museums, Washington, D.C.

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These genealogy pamphlets produced by the Daughters of the American Revolution are testament to the ethnic complexity of the American Revolution.

I went today as a tourist to the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters in Washington. The museum and library are in Memorial Continental Hall, which are connected by a hallway to Constitution Hall, which I did not see. The museum is really something, as is the library. There were many things to see; among the things that struck me the most were these genealogy pamphlets about how to research one’s Revolutionary War ancestor by ethnicity. It’s a small reminder of how complicated the Revolutionary War period was. There are handouts for French, Jewish, Native American, and Spanish ancestry. And this is just touching the surface. The Dutch, for instance, are another category all their own. Then there are the Portuguese, and so on and so forth. New York City alone was a babel of languages and dialects.

I had a great talk with several young staffers during my excursion about the museum and its historical mission and memory. If you are ever in D.C. and are looking for something to see right near the mall, the DAR headquarters is not a bad choice.

 

Juneteenth 2019

19 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Abraham Lincoln, Baseball, Federal Hall National Memorial, Memory

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Citizens of Austin, TX observe Juneteenth, June 19, 1900. One would imagine these individuals remembered General Granger’s 1865 proclamation.

I was off today and spent a big chunk of the hours preparing for an event that will probably come to pass next month. If/when it does, I will write about it in this space. One of the best things about being off on a Wednesday is that this middle day of the work week is getaway day in Major League Baseball. What that means is that teams often play day games on this third day (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) of a series before quickly “getting away” to the next town for a weekend series. While working today I had the Astros/Reds game on. During the broadcast they mentioned that today is Juneteenth. I lived in Texas for many years and know what a big holiday this is in the Lone Star and neighboring states. Unfortunately it remained an exclusively regional affair for much of the next century; there is no mention of Juneteenth in the New York Times until 1933, and after that not until 1981. Over the past several decades Juneteenth has become more significant nationally. Awareness was aided by the 1999 publication of Ralph Ellison’s posthumous novel Juneteenth. Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1914.

Gordon Granger, circa 1861-65

Juneteenth began in 1865 and marked the moment when on June 19th of that year Brevet Major General sailed into Galveston Bay and read his General Order #3, which began with the announcement that “The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” One must remember that Lincoln’s January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves within jurisdictions under Federal (Union) control. General Granger spent much of the next six weeks traveling within Texas to spread the news.

Holidays have a funny way of disappearing and coming back. Here in New York we used to have Evacuation Day every November 25. Evacuation Day marked the moment in 1783 when the British, acknowledging defeat, packed up and sailed from New York Harbor back to England. Evacuation Day petered out eventually, presumably because it fell so close to Thanksgiving. It was for Evacuation Day 1883 that they dedicated the John Quincy Adams Ward statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall, then still the New York Sub-Treasury. I would argue that Juneteenth should become a national holiday, or at least a national observance. It is already officially commemorated in forty-five states.

(top image/Austin History Center and the Portal to Texas History; bottom/LOC)