Episodes Nearest to January 1, 1939 to January 31, 1939: 1 through 25 of 25

  1. Don't Sit under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)
    date January, 1939 to 1939map New York, New Yorktags Kay Kyser, the Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller

    Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me

    Anyone else but me, anyone but me,no,no,no

    Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me

    'Til I come marchin' home

    "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree(With Anyone Else But Me)" is a popular song that was made famous by Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters during World...

  2. Zora Hurston and the Turpentine Camp
    date March, 1939 to 1939map Collier, Floridatags african americans, Zora Hurston, Turpentine, Black Labor

    Zora Neale Hurston’s expedition to a Turpentine camp in Cross City, Florida was much more exciting and informative than it sounds. Hurston described the start of her trip in an essay she wrote on her experience there as, “going up some roads and down some others to see what Negroes do for a living.” 1  Hurston exclaimed that to an outsider, these African Americans worked at a Turpentine still,...

  3. Zora Neale Hurston: Impact on Music Folklore
    date 1939map Seminole, Floridatags Zora Neale Hurston, African American Folklore, music

    Music belongs to all humans. Race, size, or color does not matter. When it comes to music, all cultures come together, one voice is heard. Folklore music is a prime example of this, and Zora Neale Hurston played an extremely important role in it. Not many African Americans had the opportunity to publish any type of works, or even to express their opinions on music, but Hurston was able to and represented...

  4. Lynching: A Descriptive View in Song
    date 1939map Washington, New Yorktags Fruit, Billie Holiday, Lynching, Song, Crime, Café Society, Strange

    America’s need for change during the horrific time of lynching is suggested in “Blood at the Root: “Strange Fruit” as Historical Document and Pedagogical Tool” [1]. In 1930, a high school teacher named Abel Meeropol and also known as “Lewis Allen”-his two sons died in infancy- , wrote a poem after seeing a picture of the lynching of Tom Shipp and Abe Smith in Marion, Indiana. To hear...

  5. Hattie McDaniel wins for more than just Gone with the Wind
    date February 29, 1940map Los Angeles, Californiatags African American Women, Academy Awards, Film

    At the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony held in 2010, Mo’Nique received her Academy Award for outstanding performance of an Actress in a Supporting Role. During her acceptance speech, Mo’Nique gave recognition to a woman who had won the same award seventy years earlier. She expressed her deepest admiration for this woman in these words: “I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring...

  6. Study Shows Rates of Syphilis Higher for Poor Individuals
    date October 11, 1937map Kanawha, West Virginiatags Health/Death, Minority, poverty, Investigation, Study, Syphilis

    The Charleston Gazette reported that poor individuals have higher instances of acquiring syphilis. The author Westbrook Pegler states the syphilis death rate for unskilled workers is double that of professional people. The writer of the article expresses that the greatest single cause of death is poverty. The article conveys the results of a survey of 700,000 families made up of 3,500,000 individuals....

  7. Killer Disease Fighter
    date September, 1937 to 1937map Charlottesville, Virginiatags Medicine, Medicine/Health

    "But to realize that six human beings, all of them my patients, one of them my best friend, are dead because they took medicine that I prescribed for them innocently… well, that realization has given me such days and nights of mental and spiritual agony as I did not believe a human being could undergo and survive.” In a letter written by Dr. A.S. Calhoun in 1937 he describes his feelings toward...

  8. Immigration and Settlement Patterns, New Orleans, 1940
    date 1940map Orleans, Louisianatags Migration/Transportation, Immigration

    Although the second wave of immigration was a trickle by the 1940s, there were more immigrants than ever in New Orleans. The places immigrants settled were dictated by shifting physical and social geographies, conjunctures of the past, and the unique qualities of New Orleans. The distribution of settlers also reflected old settlement patterns as well as transformations the city underwent with growth....

  9. Despite the Odds, William Neal Brown overcomes discrimination through equal opportunity.
    date December 7, 1941map Newport News, Virginiatags Tuskegee Airmen, Equal Opportunity, Blacks in the military

    All was quiet at the home of William Neal Brown until a broadcaster came over the radio shouting Pearl Harbor has been attacked, Pearl Harbor has been attacked! It was at that moment on December 7, 1941 he decided to volunteer his services for the armed forces of the United States. Brown was living in Newport News, which was a shipyard that built battleships and aircraft carriers to supply the pacific...

  10. A Campaign for Freedom
    date February 7, 1942 to February 14, 1942map Allegheny, Pennsylvaniatags World War II, Civil Rights, Double V Campaign, Freedom

                February 7, 1942, was a day that changed America. Segregation and discrimination had reached a point that was no longer tolerable, and according to the Pittsburgh Courier, it was time for a campaign. The “Double V Campaign,” as it was called, stood for two victories for black Americans: a victory at home and a victory abroad. 

                This...

  11. No Blacks in New County Jury Lists
    date July 12, 1935map Richmond, North Carolinatags African-Americans, Law, Juries

    “Negroes have not served on juries in North Carolina since the White Supremacy Campaign in 1898,” noted the Richmond County Journal.  Yet In 1935, commissioners faced a decision of the United States Supreme Court that African Americans could not be systematically excluded from jury lists. African Americans were excluded anyway. The Richmond County Journal stated that the Register...

  12. The Ford Company
    date July 8, 1935map Cumberland, North Carolinatags Fordism, Ford Company

    The new Ford engine gave drivers the “Power To Go And Power To Stop,” proclaimed the Fayetteville Observer.  This was a slogan for the Ford Company in July 1935.  The advertisement in the Fayetteville Observer promoted the performance of the Ford V-8 engine.  “The Ford thus gives you double safety.  The way it drives helps you to avoid danger.  The way it is built provides...

  13. The Wagner Act
    date July 5, 1935map Dist Columbia, District of Columbiatags Labor Unions, labor relations, Wagner Act, National Labor Relations

    The Wagner Act had great impact on industrial relations as the first part of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The National Labor Relations Act was created out of the necessity and demand for new foundations of authority and new forms of participation in the political dimension and legalization of industrial life [1]. This statement supports the idea that people are the key to industry and...

  14. The Great Jack-Rabbit Roundup
    date 1935map Seward, Kansastags The Great Depression, Rabbit Drives, Jack Rabbit Roundup, Kansas, Dust Bowl

    When one thinks of the Dust Bowl one normally envisions the swirling dust, the storms, the poverty, and the despair. A little discussed consequence of the Dust Bowl was the effect that it had on the wildlife. An ever decreasing food supply was driving the jack-rabbits out of their native habitats and forcing them onto the plains in rapidly increasing numbers. Once on the plains these rabbits began...

  15. Baer Clowns, Braddock Downs
    date June 13, 1935map New York, New Yorktags Depression Entertainment, Cinderella Man, Baer, Braddock, Max Baer, James Braddock, Boxing

    “From rags to riches.

    Strive and succeed.

    A man may be down but he’s never out.”[1]

    -John Kieran

    Max Baer taunted his opponent.  A barrage of “boos” rained down from the audience, voicing their antipathy and intolerance for Baer’s lack of sportsmanship and detachment from the struggles of ordinary Americans.  In response to the jeering onlookers, Baer began...

  16. Black Men in Baseball
    date April 10, 1935map Wilson, North Carolinatags African-Americans, Segregation, Baseball

    A pair of “big league” Negro baseball teams, the Homestead Grays of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Newark, New Jersey, Dodgers played in Wilson, North Carolina, in 1935.  The teams were members of the Negro National League.  Buck Leonard, a Rocky Mount, N.C. native, was first baseman and captain of the Grays.  Leonard stated, “this league is the only way for ‘us’ to play baseball. ...

  17. A Daughter Learns of Anti-Semitism and Heroism in Nazi Occupied Tunisia
    date November, 1942 to May, 1943map Africa, Outside UStags Anti-Semitism, historical memory, Holocaust, Tunisia

    Over 70 years ago, Faiza Abdul-Wahab’s father, Khaled, rescued several Jewish families from German troops occupying the town of Mahdia, Tunisia. After the occupation commenced in November 1942, Nazi and Vichy leaders in Tunisia enacted a set of anti-Semitic laws similar to those in Europe. According to the sources found in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum International Archive, these...

  18. Anti-Semitic Laws and Lawbreakers in Nazi Occupied Tunisia
    date November, 1942 to May, 1943map Africa, Outside UStags Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, Tunisia, historical memory, Africa

    On November 23, 1942, German soldiers arrested prominent Jewish leaders across Tunisia. When Moises Burgel, the President of the Tunisian Jewish community, was arrested, it marked the beginning of the Holocaust in North Africa. By the end of November, Nazi Germany had occupied all of Tunisia and enacted anti-Semitic laws in addition to the Vichy laws already in place. According to the sources found...

  19. Spencers Supports, Supporting Working Women
    date February, 1943map New York, New Yorktags corsets, fashion, working women

    The strong, modern women of the 1940's no longer desired the wasp waist corsets of previous generations.  The new breed of woman wanted practicality.  Hence, the advertisements of the time did not dwell heavily on waist reduction or social expectations, rather, the emphasis focused more on health issues.  An example from Ladies Home Journal published in the February 1943 issue for Spencer Supports...

  20. Zora Neal Hurston's trials and tribulations through the Harlem Renaissance
    date December 13, 1934map Orange, Floridatags Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, Rollins College

    Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. Soon after her birth she moved to Eatonville, Florida which always remained her home throughout her life. Eatonville was the United States first incorporated black township, her father and many other African Americans were involved in the towns governance. Hurston was a very famous black author of short stories, novels and plays....

  21. “The Baby Faced Mad Man of Highway 12”
    date August, 1934 to November 27, 1934map Cook, Illinoistags Gangsters, The Great Depression

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) named 1934 “The Year of the Gangster” as the agency had killed John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter, Bonnie and Clyde, and Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. The FBI now had its eye set on Baby Faced Nelson. Nelson had killed FBI agent W. Carter Baum at the Little Bohemia shootout as a member of the 2nd Dillinger gang. By August 23, 1934, FBI...

  22. 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...

  23. 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...

  24. 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...

  25. “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...