At the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of the United State's African American population was living in the South, where they were constantly tortured by the infamous Jim Crow laws. Even in blacks were technically equal, Jim Crow reminded them of their socially inferior status via "septerate but equal" segregation of waiting rooms, drinking fountains, windows at the bank and even a seperate Bible...
Dr. Hamilton Holt, eighth president of Rollins College, passed away on April 26, 1951 at the age of 78. He died of a heart attack at night in his home, two years after he left his presidency at Rollins. During his earlier life, Holt worked for the Independent, which was a weekly magazine founded by his grandfather and other members of a Congregational Church. Eventually Hamilton Holt would...
On January 28th, 1925, the Tennessee Legislature passed the Butler Act prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. Shortly after the legalization of the act on May 7th, 1925, John Thomas Scopes, a science teacher at Dayton High School, willingly challenged the stance of such a regulation. Consequently, the Tennessee police arrested Scopes and charged him with the...
On September 21, 1925 in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, a family of 8 entered and won a contest. To that family, it was likely a point of pride, something to show that they were of a good, strong, American breed. But this Fitter Families Contest, and many others just like it held throughout the United States, was a far more influential part of American history than it may seem at first...
Many changes and shifts occurred during the early twentieth century. Big shifts such as mass movements from different regions in the U.S., notably African American’s “Great Migration” from the South to the North. Around 6 million black migrants were redistributed among the Northern and Western cities later to die down around the first World War.
A popular destination for these migrants...
One of the main resources for information related to the history of Furman University and Greenville Woman's College and its student body are the yearbooks. There are no surviving yearbooks of the periods of their founding (1851–1854), but catalogs of the 1920s are still mainly intact. These almanacs grant a peek into the lives of students, highlight extracurricular activities, and illustrate...
Lake Martin, located in Central Alabama, was the largest manmade lake in the world at the time of its construction. The 25,000-acre lake was formed by Martin Dam, which was built by Alabama Power in 1923. Project designers promoted the construction of Martin Dam by describing its benefits to both agricultural producers and local residents. Among those benefits was the claim that the presence...
Bessie Coleman unbuckled her seatbelt, she needed to be prepared for tomorrow's big parachute jump over Jacksonville, she wanted to get used to not having it on. Willie had seen these maneuvers before – Bessie loved to push the envelope and keep everyone on the edge of their seats, and that included her manager Willie. Bessie didn't know if she quite trusted this new plane yet. She...
Mary Margaret Walker, a Greenville Woman's College student in South Carolina, collected many documents during her college years and collected them in her scrapbook. Her memory book not only included ticket stubs, but also contains photographs of her and her friends engaging in activities. Walker's scrapbook, as noted by historian Judith Bainbridge, ''speaks volumes about the college...
“I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.”- George Gershwin
“Rhapsody in Blue” was a musical experiment morphed into masterpiece. Paul Whitman asked George Gershwin to write a jazz concerto piece mixing jazz and classical music to shock...