Episodes Nearest to January 1, 1929 to December 31, 1931: 1 through 25 of 25

  1. An Identity is Born
    date 1930map Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniatags Philadelphia, Philadelphia Cheesesteak, Philadelphia Culture

    On a hot, humid, July day in New Jersey, a man lay in his hospital bed, fighting to stay alive despite different heart problems, holding onto what the last moments of life he had left.  On July 22, Harry Olivieri passed away at the age of ninety. He would be remembered mostly by his family and friends, but few people would recognize his name outside that circle.  And yet,  this relatively unknown...

  2. When Will It Ever Change?
    date July 11, 1930map New York, New Yorktags Crime/Violence, African-Americans, Lynching

    News stories relating ‘death by accident,’ ‘murder by one of own’ or even an ‘unsolved mystery’ are just too far-fetched to explain the discovery of so many ‘Negro’ bodies found in the swamps or in uninhabited places in 1930.  It is inconceivable to think that the white tyrannical press believe that we are fooled by their fabrications about the missing southern ‘Negro’ workers,”...

  3. The Education of the Native American Indian
    date May 26, 1930map Robeson, North Carolinatags Education, Native American, Pembroke

    On May 23, 1930, School Board Chairman W.H. Godwin told a graduating class “to have some ambition in life, to beware of bad company, obey the laws of the land and in so doing obey the laws of God. Learn to live and act in a way in which people will respect…remembering always that there is a place for skill.” The graduating class he addressed consisted of fifteen youths who attended an Indian...

  4. Abner Jordan Shares His Life as a Slave
    date March, 1930 to 1930map Durham, North Carolinatags Slavery, plantation, Slave Living Conditions, Runaway Slaves, Slave Life

    Abner Jordan was interviewed by a member of the Work Projects Administration for a Federal Writer’ Project that was documenting North Carolina slave narratives. Jordan has never left North Carolina since he was born there and agreed to the interview despite being the old age of 95. He discussed his birth with hesitance, claiming that he was “bawn about 1832 in Staggsville, Marse Cameron’s...

  5. How Alma College became "The Scots," and the start of the Highland Festival in Alma, Michigan.
    date November 10, 1931map Gratiot, Michigantags Highland Festival, Herbert Estes, Scottish Influence, Mascot, The Scots, Alma College

    The Scottish Influence

     

    The history behind the Alma College mascot began with the student-run newspaper, The Almanian, which ran a series of stories over a three week period in 1931 asking the students of Alma college to participate in a contest to come up with a new school mascot to replace the then current one: the Fighting Presbyterians.

    According to the first...

  6. Jazz Boom!
    date January 1, 1929map Adams, Illinois, Orleans, Louisianatags Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, music, Swing Jazz, The Great Depression, WPA, Billie Holiday, Jazz

    The American country was in turmoil. People were starving for work and relief from the Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was struggling to regain control of the plummeting economy and the people were worn. Any distraction offered to these hard working masses was widely accepted. Music, for many, was seen as brief respite from the difficulties of their daily life. Along with FDR’s fireside chats,...

  7. What do you do when the Klan is after YOU?
    date October 1, 1928 to November 10, 1928map Jefferson, Alabamatags Ku Klux Klan, Politics

    Major Harwell Goodwin Davis is sitting at his desk and he hears the distinctive ring of the telephone. He picks up the receiver only to find out that the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama is the man at the other end. In the 1920s, anybody would listen to what this man had to say, even a man running for Congress.

    Davis was fast-rising politician that just finished a well-known court case...

  8. The complicated life of a Native Alabamian
    date June 1, 1932map Jefferson, Alabamatags Medicine/Health, New South

    The complicated life of a native Alabamian

    By: Brandi Harper

    November 19, 2011

    Life was as normal as it could be during the hot summer of 1906 in Alabama. The poor were getting more poverty stricken while the rich struggled to maintain what they had.  Virginia Foster Durr remembers, “on Saturday mornings, these families would come into Birmingham, walking, there was no paved...

  9. The Bonus Army
    date July 28, 1932map Columbia, Washingtontags Bonus March, Bonus Army, General MacArthur, Bonus Check, WWI Veterans

    Four-thirty in the afternoon on July, 28, 1932, Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., was embalmed with tear gas.  Herbert Hoover instructed General MacArthur to lead 600 troops from the 16th Brigade into the streets to diffuse the “Bonus Army” riots.  The first riot resulted in the death of one Bonus Marcher killed by police gunfire.  After catching wind of the incident, President...

  10. Racial identity and the American Experience
    date May 7, 1928map Orange, Floridatags Segregation, Slavery, racial identity

    A person’s racial identity is the “global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.”[1] Segregation has been deeply rooted within American culture for the past two centuries. It has forced people to become more aware of their racial identity and moreover, it has been taken to the extent of violence as well as less extreme...

  11. Second Lieutenant Hurst Fears Communist Invasion
    date October 19, 1932map Montgomery, Alabamatags Race Relations, Government, Crime/Violence, african americans

    The Communist Party was infiltrating Birmingham, Alabama and the National Guard was beginning to worry. On October 19, 1932, Second Lieutenant Ralph Hurst wrote to his commanding officer Brigadier General J.C. Parsons about the “Communist Agitation” in Birmingham. The International Labor Defense had recently moved its Southern headquarters to Birmingham and there had been trouble ever since....

  12. How one woman helped to valut African American culture into the spotlight
    date October 29, 1932map Orange, Florida, New York, New Yorktags Harlem Renaissance, Arts/Leisure, Race-Relations

    Born in 1891 in rural Alabama, Zora Neale Hurston spent her childhood in the first incorporated black town in the nation, Eatonville, Florida. Zora attended school in Eatonville until only 13 years old, when she traveled to New York City with a traveling theatre company. In the city that never sleeps, Zora would develop her creative mind and make her mark on history. Hurston seized the tremendous...

  13. Zora Neale Hurston performs "From Sun to Sun" at Rollins College
    date February 11, 1933map Orange, Floridatags Rollins College, Zora Neale Hurston, florida slave history

    On Friday, February 11, 1933 Zora Neale Hurston’s program “From Sun to Sun” was shown at the Recreation Hall of Rollins College at 8:15 in the evening. At the performance Hurston led her company of Negroes in songs of African folklore, originating from various places around the state. Such songs included “Shack Rouser,” “East Coast Blues,” and “Alabama Bound”.  The scenery for...

  14. Grand Jury Probes Shooting
    date April 24, 1933map Davie, North Carolinatags African American death, White violence

    The death of John “Red Shirt” Davis, an African American from Georgia, seemed to be a very routine shooting for the Coolemee police. Though the death of Davis was not something the police were happy about, it seemed to be necessary because Davis had resisted arrest, according to the Raleigh Observer. The police officer who shot him was Special Officer Jess Saunders. According to Officer...

  15. Comforting a Nation
    date May 7, 1933map Dist Columbia, District of Columbiatags Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat

    Franklin D. Roosevelt had a great challenge ahead of him as our nation’s 32nd President. The United States was in a period of unemployment and extreme poverty. The people were losing faith and it was F. D. R.’s responsibility to fix the problem. On May 7, 1933, F.D.R. entered American homes through their radios. Hoping to restore hope to the public, Roosevelt assured them that Congress...

  16. Information Passed On: A German Attempt to Curb anti-Nazi sentiment
    date August 8, 1933map New York, New Yorktags War, Foreign Politics, League of Nations

    Over seventy-seven years ago, on the eighth of August, 1933, Dr. Daniel Mulvihill (a New Yorker) was assaulted by a German citizen while he was visiting Berlin, apparently because he had failed to “salute a Nazi detachment.” A few weeks later, on the twenty-fourth of that month, Dr. Mulvihill’s assailant was taken into custody by Nazi authorities, and was then deposited into a concentration...

  17. Penders Advertisment
    date December 20, 1933map Wake, North Carolinatags African American Women, employment, African-Americans

    The Pender’s grocery advertisement from the Raleigh Observer depicted a wealthy and very happy white family enjoying a lovely Christmas dinner. The family is being served dinner by a maid, that also appeared to be in a good mood in the advertisement. This advertisement was an illustration of the menial work black women had to do in the 1930s. Domestic jobs were usually the most common...

  18. The Folklore and Dance behind Zora Hurston
    date January, 1934 to 1934map Orange, Floridatags Zora Neale Hurston, African-Americans, African American Folklore, Dance

    “Anyone wishing to get a real glimpse into negro life in Florida should not miss the performance to be given in Recreation Hall.” 1 This praise, given to the anthropologist, writer, poet, dancer and singer Zora Neale Hurston, came from R. W. France about her 1934 production of All De Live Long Day. Zora lived her life in an attempt to revitalize and find the truth...

  19. THE TEAPOT DOME SCANADAL
    date November 22, 1926map Dist Columbia, District of Columbiatags Corruption, Scandal

    In 1923, one of the biggest political scandals of the first-half of the 20th Century became the subject of a court case in a District of Columbia courtroom. The news magazine, The Nation, wrote an article covering the details that led up to the scandal and it's aftermath. The Teapot Dome scandal took center stage in the United States with some very influential key players. U.S....

  20. Ma Ferguson against the Texas Ku Klux Klan
    date August 16, 1926map Austin, Texastags Ku Klux Klan, Texas Politics, Governor "Ma" Ferguson

    Summer 1926, Clemente Nicasio Idar, a Latino civil-rights activist in San Antonio, received a formal letter from James Edward Ferguson, the husband of then Governor Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson, noting the importance of voting for the re-election of Governor Ferguson in the upcoming election later that year. The letter began, “I think that when the people understand the issue in this campaign...

  21. An English Woman Writes About American Prisons
    date 1934map Hartford, Connecticut, Cayuga, New Yorktags prison, prison reform

    Should prison be a place of punishment or reform?  American society was debating this question when Harriet Martineau, a famous writer from England, visited in 1934.  Martineau later wrote about her two year trip to America in a book called “Retrospect of Western Travels”, Volumes 1 and 2, which was published in 1938.   In a chapter titled “"Prison", Martineau describes her visit to Auburn...

  22. “Fight to Win!” Communists Fight for Workers
    date 1934map Jefferson, Alabamatags Race Relations, Government

    “Fight To Win!”The Communist Party in Birmingham, Alabama spread many fliers with this message throughout the 1930s. Communists urged miners and steel workers to fight for higher wages. The communists proclaimed to be “giving leadership to the workers and raising real demands for them.” They urged white and black workers to band together and claimed that the unity of the two races on this...

  23. Lydia Mendoza sings “Mal Hombre”
    date 1934map Bexar, Texastags Tejano Music, Mexican American Women

    On a hot sunny day in a plaza on the streets of San Antonio, a young girl and her family set up a few chairs and arrange themselves with their instruments. The plaza is full of people selling and eating food, going about talking, and small groups of men strumming on their guitars in the background. Then suddenly the small voice of a young girl starts to sing amidst the crowd. She sings songs known...

  24. Death of America's First Public Enemy #1
    date July 22, 1934map Cook, Illinoistags John Dillinger, FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, Biograph Theater, Public Enemy #1

         America’s first Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger, was an idolized gangster who robbed and killed during the Great Depression. Considered a Robin Hood character by the public, in reality he was a prosaic gangster and a cold hearted killer. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents C.B. Winstead and C. O. Hurt gunned down John Dillinger on July 22, 1934, outside the Biograph...

  25. United Textile Workers Ready to Strike
    date September 1, 1934map Montgomery, Alabamatags Politics, Government

    The textile workers had had enough. On September 1, 1934 at 11:30 p.m. they went on strike. Francis J. Gorman, Chairman of the National Special Strike Committee of the United Textile Workers of America, sent a telegraph to Alabama Governor Benjamin Miller to make him aware of the strike and the reasons behind it. Gorman reasoned that the workers themselves provided the authority for the strike and...