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In January 1692, two girls, 9 year old Elizabeth Parris  and Abigail Williams were experienced strange behavior like making odd noises and screaming, contoring there bodies, and throwing objects. Later the two girls said a strange invisible beinging was biting them and pinching them.  The girls later accused three women for doing this to them.Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba went to trial. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good said they where innocent but Tituba admitted doing this to the girls. She was put in jail fir a year and two months.

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A woman could have started the Civil War

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A woman could have started the Civil War

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A Bostonian woman, Sarah Tarrant,  was almost shot by an English soldier after throwing taunts at the English troops passing through Boston. The troop's commander stopped the soldier, but it was close.
http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/04/sarah-tarrant.html

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Before the start of the Civil War,  The original Thirteenth Amendment was proposed, also know as the Corwin  Amendment. It was then altered to the current amendment after the war.

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The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would shield "domestic institutions" of the states (which in 1861 included slavery) from the constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. It passed Congress but was never ratified by the states and never took effect.

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It was a time of economic struggle, racial resentment and increasing xenophobia. Installed in the White House was a president who had never before held elected office. A moderately successful businessman, he promised American jobs for Americans-and made good on that promise by slashing immigration by nearly 90 percent.

He wore his hair parted down the middle, rather than elaborately piled on top, and his name was Herbert Hoover, not Donald Trump. But in the late 1920s and early 1930s, under the president's watch, a wave of illegal and unconstitutional raids and deportations would alter the lives of as many as 1.8 million men, women and children-a threat that would seem to loom just as large in 2017 as it did back in 1929.

What became colloquially known as the "Mexican repatriation" efforts of 1929 to 1936 are a shameful and profoundly illustrative chapter in American history, yet they remain largely unknown-despite their broad and devastating impact. So much so that today, a different president is edging towards similar solutions, with none of the hesitation or concern that basic consciousness would seem to require.

Indeed, in the last several weeks, President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to greatly increase not only the scope of potential deportees, but the speed at which they are being sent out of the country-a bid at "stabilization" borne of many of the same nationalist anxieties that plagued his predecessor nearly a century ago.

In his address to a joint session of Congress last week, the president painted a dark portrait of America's immigrant population: "As we speak tonight," he intoned, "we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens." It was the same foreboding message that Trump has espoused since he announced his candidacy, and yet there remains very little evidence to support it.

Several weeks ago, Trump's White House circulated a draft executive order aimed at " protecting U.S. jobs," one that would shut America's doors to immigrants most likely to require public assistance (including reduced school lunches) as well as tightly control who is able to enter the American workforce. It was very nearly Hoover's rallying cry-American jobs for Americans-heard once again.

In his speech on Tuesday, the president repeated this plan:

Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal immigration. The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers and puts great pressure on taxpayers. Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and many others, have a merit-based immigration system. It's a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially. Yet in America we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon.

Back in Hoover's era, as America hung on the precipice of economic calamity-the Great Depression-the president was under enormous pressure to offer a solution for increasing unemployment, and to devise an emergency plan for the strained social safety net. Though he understood the pressing need to aid a crashing economy, Hoover resisted federal intervention, instead preferring a patchwork of piecemeal solutions, including the targeting of outsiders.

According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, "the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name."

"Getting rid of" America's Mexican population was a random, brutal effort. "For participating cities and counties, they would go through public employee rolls and look for Mexican-sounding names and then go and arrest and deport those people," said Dunn. "And then there was a job opening!"

"We weren't rounding up people who were Canadian," he added. "It was an absolutely racially-motivated program to create jobs by getting rid of people."

Why, specifically, men and women of Mexican heritage? Professor Francisco Balderrama, whose book, A Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s is the most definitive chronicle of the period (and, not coincidentally, one of the only ones), explained: "Mexican immigration was very recent. It goes back to that saying: Last hired, first fired. The attitude of many industrialists and agriculturalists was reflected in larger cities: A Mexican is a Mexican." And that included even those citizens of Mexicans descent who were born in the U.S. "That is sort of key in understanding the psychic of the nation," said Balderrama.

The so-called repatriation effort was, in large part, a misnomer, given the fact that as many as sixty percent of those sent to "home" Mexico were U.S. citizens: American-born children of Mexican-descent who had never before traveled south of the border. (Dunn noted, "I don't know how you can repatriate someone to a country they've not been born or raised in.")

"Individuals who left at 5, 6 and 7 years old found themselves in Mexico dealing with process of socialization, of learning the language, but they maintained an American identity," said Balderrama. "And still had the dream to come back to 'my country.'"

The raids, as detailed in Balderrama's chronicle, were vicious. With national concerns over the supposed burden that outsiders were putting on social welfare agencies, authorities targeted those Mexicans utilizing public resources. "In Los Angeles," explained Balderrama, "they had orderlies who gathered people [in the hospitals] and put them in stretchers on trucks and left them at the border."

The efforts were equally chaotic. "The first raid in Los Angeles was in 1931-they surrounded La Placita Park near downtown L.A.," Dunn recalled. "It was a heavily Latino area. They, literally, on a Sunday afternoon, rounded everyone up in park that day, took them to train station and put them on a train that they had leased. These people were taken to Central Mexico to minimize their chances of crossing the border and coming back to the U.S."

Dunn continued, "It was not like there was a master committee mapping out blocks. It was more fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants. As in, Here's a park where Mexicans go, okay let's go there."
"We are who we are because of what people did in that moment."
Mexicans in the United States-and Americans of Mexican descent-had little understanding of what was happening, and what their rights were. Elena Herrada, one of the founders of the oral history project, "Los Repatriados: Exiles from the Promised Land," is the grandchild of Mexican-Americans who were targeted in the raids. Her grandparents, she recalled, lived in a "mostly Mexican neighborhood" in Detroit, known as Court Town.

"It was the welfare officials who were doing it. A worker came to the door," Herrada said. "My father remembered his father being asked by the worker, Where are you from?"

"My dad was really puzzled," she said. "Because his father didn't want to say 'Mexico'. My father was confused because he had always been a proud Mexican."

The family, Herrada recounted, was "de-patriated" to Mexico.

"My grandfather didn't have work at the time, and they were forcing them to leave. There was no gun put to his to head, but [they said he] wouldn't be eligible to receive assistance-and he would starve."

"Many people didn't believe they had a choice," Herrada explained, "so they didn't resist. My family didn't believe they had a choice."

Herrada's father and uncle would spend two years in Mexico before his parents were able to bring him back to the United States-after her grandfather, a veteran of the U.S. Army, returned to the country and once again found work.

If American deportees made it back to America, according to Dunn, it was often because a friend or family member back in the States managed to obtain a copy of their birth certificate, proof of citizenship. And if they weren't U.S. citizens, by the onset of World War II and the departure of much of the able-bodied workforce to the front, Mexican labor was back in demand: bodies were needed for low-paying agricultural work, and the xenophobia subsided under the auspices of the Bracero Program (a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, the program brought Mexican workers to the states for short-term labor).

But some never made it back to America. "We are who we are because of what people did in that moment," said Herrada.

Each state handled the raids differently-sometimes federal agents were involved, sometimes it was social workers and local law enforcement who targeted people for removal. Hoover's precise role in directing the deportation efforts is unclear, but, according to Professor Kevin Johnson, Dean of the UC Davis School of Law, and a specialist in public interest law and Chicano studies, "There was a lot of correspondence between the different levels of government, and there was logistical support." This support included reimbursing states for the chartering of busses and trains to transport people to Mexico.

Deportations took place across the country: Los Angeles had the largest concentration of Mexicans and Mexican-born Americans, but communities in Detroit were also targeted in large number. "America's most industrial city was in many ways the promise of the age in terms of economic prosperity," according to Balderrama, and because of this, its Mexicans and citizens of Mexicans-descent were not exempt from deportation. "The archival evidence points to a full map, across the nation," said Balderrama. There were deportations in states as far flung as Alaska, Alabama and Mississippi.

And yet, confirming the precise number of people who were deported during this era is difficult, said Balderrama. "Both governments"-Mexico and the United States-"weren't very interested in keeping records about what happened. It was a problem and they wanted to get rid of it. That's why the numbers are very difficult."
Trump is unlikely to willfully deport American citizens, but he appears perilously close to replicating many of the mistakes Hoover did as it concerned the undocumented.
Dunn, however, spent nearly three years doing archival research, enlisting his state senate staff to comb through federal, state and local records in a bid to reconcile California's tortured legacy. He feels confident in his citation of 1.8 million people deported. "That number came out of several documents we got from the federal government," he told me.

Beyond the travesty inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, the Mexican deportations of the 1920s and 1930s are also shocking-and at this moment, particularly enlightening-for the illegalities visited upon non-citizens. Trump is unlikely to willfully deport American citizens, but he appears perilously close to replicating many of the mistakes Hoover did as it concerned the undocumented. And given the number of mixed-status families in the U.S.-as of 2015, 16.6 million Americans lived in residences with at least one undocumented immigrant-these deportations will affect citizens and non-citizens alike.

Johnson said that in hindsight, it is clear Hoover's deportations were a violation of "several constitutional rights," including the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

"Now it's very clear that some of those provisions apply to immigrants in the U.S. The Supreme Court has made very clear that as long as you're in the U.S., you have a right to due process and hearing. That doesn't mean you can't be removed," said Johnson. "But you have the ability to retain counsel."

Johnson said that many immigrants-especially those who have been here for any extended amount of time, may have "deep community ties-to citizens, churches, employers." The longer someone is in the U.S., he explained, "the more of those ties you have, and the deeper your rights are."

He pointed out that this legal reality, "is an issue right now because the White House is making efforts to expedite and expand deportations. But it means no hearing, no judicial review; it could be ready as a summary deportation."

Further, the expedited deportations can now occur beyond one hundred miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and can target people who have been here for as many as two years. "Imagine what can happen in two years," said Johnson. "All kinds of relief you might be eligible for, but you might not even have a hearing. The reason you have hearings is to try and avoid mistakes: If you don't ... you are probably going to have some mistakes tolerated and accepted."

Perhaps more than anything, the humanitarian cost of the Hoover-era deportations are the specter that looms largest over Trump's immigration policy of today. Given the burden mass deportations would have placed on the federal bureaucracy, Hoover's administration outsourced the raids, targeting and deportation to local and state officials-persons not particularly well versed in constitutional law, nor the sensitivities surrounding deportation.

Trump appears ready to do the same: while the administration has directed the hiring of 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to oversee the dramatic increase in deportations, the administration has also revived the controversial 287(g) program, which recruits local law enforcement and sheriff's deputies to assist in deportations.

"It's frightening and terrifying," said Johnson. "We have a recent history-one not limited to the 1930s-of law enforcement engaging in excess in the name of law enforcement."

"I may be suspicious of ICE officials and how they apply the law," he added, "but I do think they are trained to enforce the laws. And it's the job of state and local police to enforce criminal laws-they don't have the training, expertise or sensitivity to enforce accurate immigration decisions."

And yet it's unclear if federal agents are the ones who intend on showing any particular restraint, given the new guidelines. According to the New York Times, ICE agents have already been targeting church shelters, airports and other areas where immigrants are known to convene.

Two officials in Washington said that the shift [in policy]- and the new enthusiasm that has come with it - seems to have encouraged pro-Trump political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or gung-ho, like remarks about their jobs becoming "fun." Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said.

Brazen behavior by those tasked with deportations, Johnson said, "is opening the door to the kinds of excesses that happened ... across the nation during the Depression-when state and local law enforcement made mistakes and rounded up brown people as their way of general relief reduction. I understand why immigrant communities are very frightened about what could happen."
The only thing they knew was that they were Mexicans-and this only happened to Mexicans."
In the meantime, only a limited number of Americans seem to even be aware of the gross mistakes their country made in the name of security. While still a state senator, Dunn successfully sponsored the Apology Act, an official mea culpa from the state of California to its Mexican residents-it passed in 2006. He also led efforts to have a memorial erected in La Placita park, the site of the first raids on L.A.'s Mexican community, where it now stands in memoriam.

And yet, when Dunn took his apology proposal to members of the U.S. Congress, no one was interested. "They would say, 'Immigration is really volatile right now. We're gonna look like we're only fighting for Latinos.' We couldn't convince anyone to pick it up."

As for all the records and material unearthed during his research? Dunn said, "Those documents are still sitting in my garage. Nobody really wanted them."

Those whose families were affected by the deportations-in some cases forever changed-appear no more eager to delve into the sins of the past. "They never talked about it," said Herrada, "there was a lot of shame associated with it ... They didn't know why they got deported. They didn't know what they did to bring that on. The only thing they knew was that they were Mexicans-and this only happened to Mexicans."

She added, "My grandfather still didn't want to say he was deported. And my father, on his deathbed, said to me, You know, I never liked that word. He was really angry that I had used it."

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America's Forgotten History of Illegal Deportations

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It was a time of economic struggle, racial resentment and increasing xenophobia. Installed in the White House was a president who had never before held elected office. A moderately successful businessman, he promised American jobs for Americans-and made good on that promise by slashing immigration by nearly 90 percent.

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During the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, there were around 20 known people accused of witchcraft. 16 were women and 4 were men. One of the men accused was George Burroughs. He was accused by alleged witches of being their mastermind and "leader". People claimed that during his trial he was biting them. They looked at the bite marks and determined that they did belong to Burroughs. People, not just the accusers, said there was the presence of spirits in the room. One girl even said they were the spirits of George's deceased wives, thirsting for justice. The idea soon came to be that George Burroughs was using an invisibility cloak given to him by the devil.

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Margaret Hamilton, The Woman Who Found The Codes To Send Humans To Space.

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Margaret Hamilton, The Woman Who Found The Codes To Send Humans To Space.

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Her Code Got Humans on the Moon—And Invented Software Itself

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Instead of just supporting her husband’s career, Margaret Hamilton invented the modern concept of software.

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The President Who Died After One Month In Office

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The President Who Died After One Month In Office

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https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/william-henry-harrison

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Abraham Lincoln had many times expressed his opinion that both slavery and the law that allowed it are not important.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html

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Do you know what a chautauqua is? If you don't live in a city like Boulder, Colorado, which has a large auditorium and park named after the movement, you might be drawing a blank. But at the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans would have been familiar with the movement-especially those who lived in the Midwest. As Julie R. Nelson writes, chautaquas didn't just educate Americans. They changed the lives of Midwestern women between 1878 and 1900, setting the stage for new gender roles in the twentieth century.

Chautauquas were the brainchild of John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister, and Lewis Miller, a businessman. Together, they reimagined an outdoor Sunday school training program on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York as the Chautauqua Institution-a kind of assembly designed to introduce attendees to new ideas and education. The concept spread throughout the United States as chautauquas in rural locations provided attendees with an ever-changing array of lectures, concerts, and other cultural opportunities.

The majority of Chautauqua participants were women at a time when strict social roles affected their educational opportunities.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, as the movement was called, also provided a four-year correspondence course for attendees. Nelson writes that it was one of the few ways rural people could get a liberal arts education. The curriculum started out as a reading list, then morphed into a formal course that offered a degree. Rooted in both spirituality and art, the courses caught on across the Midwest.

Chautauquas "satisfied an unspoken need" for rural women, writes Nelson. The majority of participants were women at a time when strict social roles affected women's educational opportunities. "There existed a fear in the hearts of many families that education...might jeopardize a daughter's success in marriage and motherhood," Nelson writes. Women were discouraged from pursuing a liberal arts education, and the few opportunities available for education in the 19th century emphasized their "proper" sphere: the home.

But a CLSC education took place in the home-and since it fell within women's sphere, it allowed women to do things like keep house and mother their children while learning. The progressive, student-paced program was ideal for nursing mothers and housewives, and offered women a social outlet during conversations with other participants. This "subtly expanded women's sphere and renegotiated gender interactions" as women adopted active roles within the organization and mixed freely with men.

It was a "subtle revolution," writes Nelson-one that women carried into other areas of their lives. For Nelson, the most lasting legacy of the chautauquas was the way in which it enabled a "bigendered culture," and that culture opened up political and social opportunities that had previously been off-limits to Midwestern women.

Chatauquas, which Theodore Roosevelt called "the most American thing in America," had other legacies, too. Everything from TED talks to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were influenced by chautauquas, and multiple Chautauqua communities and facilities still exist today. The term may be nearly obsolete, but the movement's commitment isn't.

JSTOR Citations

By: Julie R. Nelson

Agricultural History , Vol. 70, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 653-671

Agricultural History Society

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The Forgotten Movement That Changed American Women's Lives | JSTOR Daily

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Do you know what a chautauqua is? If you don't live in a city like Boulder, Colorado, which has a large auditorium and park named after the movement, you might be drawing a blank. But at the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans would have been familiar with the movement-especially those who lived in the Midwest.

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Bridget Mason was a hidden activist in the civil rights movement. http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/05/biddy-mason.html

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_L._Brown this is Mr. Brown.

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https://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/Baker_00/2002_p7/ak_p7/childlabor.html

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Forgotten Women Who Fought In Previous Wars.

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Forgotten Women Who Fought In Previous Wars.

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The word "soldier" may bring to mind a man in uniform but it actually refers to anyone serving in the military, including women.

In recent years, the number of women in the military has steadily increased to more than 200,000, which is about 14.5 percent of those in active duty, according to the Pentagon. However, women have always been part of the war effort, whether directly or indirectly. When men went overseas to war, women often stepped in to fill their vacancies during World War I and II. Women have also been recognized for their medical services to wounded soldiers since Clara Barton nursed soldiers during the Civil War.

What many do not realize is that in the past, women have also served in combat, espionage and resistance roles. Next year marks the 100th anniversary of WWI, which was going to be the "war to end all wars."

As preparations are made to celebrate this event, it is fitting to also recognize women's contributions.

Finding lost history
When Forest Park author Kathryn Atwood was considering writing a book, she turned to her love of history, which began in high school when she viewed "The Hiding Place," a 1975 film about Corrie ten Boom whose family hid Jews in their home.

"I remember thinking about the kind of person who would have the courage to defy authority and save lives," says Atwood, 57. Her fascination with history grew as her own father shared his experiences from his time serving in the Army Air Corps during WWII.

As she recalled the historical accounts of war, she realized something was missing. "All of the stories were only about men. I thought about looking into stories of women. I have always been intrigued by the idea of forgotten history. I want to remember people who have stories that aren't being told. So many women had their lives defined by war and no one remembers who they were," she explains.

She began writing about women in WWII and in 2011 published a collection of 26 stories about brave women involved in that war, "Women Heroes of World War II."

"Then I thought, why not do World War I with the centennial year coming up?" she says.

She started research on the project and published "Woman Heroes of World War I" in 2016.

No recognition
As Atwood dove into researching WWI, she discovered that women were not always treated fairly as shown by the plight of the "Hello Girls." The nickname was given to more than 400 American women who were recruited to be switchboard operators and translators overseas. The women completed Army Signal Corps training and were sworn into the Army Signal Corps.

They followed army regulations and wore army uniforms but "they were not considered as part of the military until 60 years later," notes Atwood. "I was also surprised in the intense support for the war effort during World War I from so many women who didn't have the right to vote, yet were still willing to put their lives on the line," she says.

Women in battle
Atwood explored women involved in WWI from several different countries.

"I think the most exciting story was about Maria Bochkareva who actually fought in the trenches in Russia," she says.

Bochkareva was first told she could not be a soldier but managed to convince the head of the Russian armed forces to let her enter training. When Russian soldiers' morale was failing, she proposed forming an all-female battalion to shame the men into returning to battle. She led the group of women into battle and soon the women became known as the Women's Battalion of Death for their courage. The book chronicles her many brave exploits, which had a very unsatisfying ending.

More than a nurse
Many of the women involved in war efforts serve in medical capacities but some did more than simple nursing tasks. "Elsie Inglis was a surgeon who founded mobile hospital units to treat the wounded," says Atwood.

Inglis was a Scottish surgeon who offered her assistance during WWI but when she approached the Edinburgh Branch of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Atwood says that Inglis reportedly was told, "My good lady, go home and sit still."

Atwood learned that Inglis instead turned to other women who helped raise funds to establish 14 mobile hospitals for wounded soldiers, which saved many lives in France, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Malta, Corsica and Macedonia. Her efforts are explained in the book including a defiant refusal to a request made by the enemy, which branded her a hero to many.

Clever spies
In researching both books, Atwood discovered that since many viewed women as not being involved in the war effort, they were able to be effective spies and members of resistance groups.

Louise de Bettignies was a petite young French woman who ended up delivering several crucial messages to help the WWI effort. Because she did not appear to be a threat, she was able to move about easily. After successfully smuggling information about a German plot to tunnel under British trenches to plant explosives, she was considered a hero. She also became a link for family members separated by war by inscribing their messages in lemon juice on her petticoat. She then traveled to various places, ironed the petticoat revealing the messages, cut it up and distributed them. Her bravery caught the attention of British intelligence who trained her further. Her alias was Alice Dubois and the book describes the formation of the Alice Network, hundreds of people who helped send information using clever methods.

In her first book, Atwood tells the story of Virginia Hall who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and served as a spy for the British and later for the American Office of Strategic Services or OSS during WWII. She was fluent in her native English but also French and German. She pretended to be an elderly cheese peddler in France. As she sold cheese to German soldiers, they spoke freely in front of her because they didn't know she could understand them. She sent reports of all that she heard via radio. She was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross Award, the first civilian and the only woman to be awarded this honor during WWII.

Stories continue
As a result of her research, Atwood has gained insight into women and war.

"One of the things that surprised me is how the efforts of women in World War I paved the way for women to be involved in World War II," she explains.

She has continued researching women in war and is currently working on "Courageous Women of The Vietnam War" scheduled to come out in May 2018. Her books are part of the Women in Action series from Chicago Review Press and can be ordered on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other websites.

One of the many truths that Atwood has learned is the passion behind war.

"When people lose something they value because their country has been overrun, they love the country and those things more than ever. Everyone, including women, wanted to find a way to serve their country."

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Forgotten history: The role of women in war times

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The word "soldier" may bring to mind a man in uniform but it actually refers to anyone serving in the military, including women. In recent years, the number of women in the military has steadily increased to more than 200,000, which is about 14.5 percent of those in active duty, according to the Pentagon.

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The current 50-star flag was designed by a 17-year-old as a school project in 1958. He got a B-.
http://www.usflag.org/flagdesigner.html

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Stuff You Missed in History Class | iHeart

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Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.

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Through the 1950's, Africans, and Native Americans were kept in zoo's as a exhibit. They were put in what looks like a cage and mainly white people went and observed them. They were treated like animals. https://popularresistance.org/deep-racism-the-forgotten-history-of-human-zoos/

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Read about Ziryab, someone who came up with many new ideas that we still use today.

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Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' or Ziryab (789-857; Arabic: أبو الحسن علي ابن نافع, زریاب‎) was a singer, oud player, composer, poet, and teacher who lived and worked in Iraq, Northern Africa, and Andalusia of the medieval Islamic period. He was also known as a polymath, with knowledge in astronomy, geography, meteorology, botanics, cosmetics, culinary art and fashion.

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The Peshtigo fire was the most devastating fire in American history. It was overshadowed, however, by the Great Chicago fire, which began the day after.

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The most devastating fire in United States history burns in Wisconsin on October 8, 1871. Some 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began later that night about 250 miles away.

Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a company lumber and sawmill town owned by William Ogden that was home to what was then one of the largest wood-products factories in the United States. The summer of 1871 was particularly dry across the northern Midwest. Still, settlers continued to set fires, using the "slash and burn" method to create new farmland and, in the process, making the risk of forest fire substantial. In fact, the month before had seen significant fires burn from Canada to Iowa.

Peshtigo, like many Midwestern towns, was highly vulnerable to fire. Nearly every structure in town was a timber-framed building-prime fuel for a fire. In addition, the roads in and out of town were covered with saw dust and a key bridge was made of wood. This would allow a fire from outside the town to easily spread to Peshtigo and make escaping from a fire in the town difficult. On September 23, the town had stockpiled a large supply of water in case a nearby fire headed in Peshtigo's direction. Still, they were not prepared for the size and speed of the October 8 blaze.

The blaze began at an unknown spot in the dense Wisconsin forest. It first spread to the small village of Sugar Bush, where every resident was killed. High winds then sent the 200-foot flames racing northeast toward the neighboring community of Peshtigo. Temperatures reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing trees to literally explode in the flames.

On October 8, the fire reached Peshtigo without warning. Two hundred people died in a single tavern. Others fled to a nearby river, where several people died from drowning. Three people who sought refuge in a water tank boiled to death when the fire heated the tank. A mass grave of nearly 350 people was established because extensive burns made it impossible to identify the bodies.

Despite the fact that this was the worst fire in American history, newspaper headlines on subsequent days were dominated by the story of another devastating, though smaller, blaze: the Great Chicago Fire. Another fire in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that consumed 2 million acres was an even smaller footnote in the next day's papers.

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Massive Peshtigo fire burns in Wisconsin | October 8, 1871 | HISTORY

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The most devastating fire in United States history burns in Wisconsin on October 8, 1871. Some 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began later that night about 250 miles away.

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Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar in 1940. She also became one of the first African American women to preform on radio in the mid 1920s

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There's a Hattie McDaniel biopic in the works, according to the 'Hollywood Reporter.' Born to slave parents, McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award in 1940 for her supporting role as Mammy in 'Gone With the Wind.'

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This is the first of a two-part series. The second part is here.

In the winter of 1647-48, an Iroquois village in the wilds along the Mohawk River, west of what is now Albany, N.Y., was the setting for one of the most remarkable events of the period. In a clearing amidst the snowy forest, a ragtag posse of Dutch colonists dragged the fugitive Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert from a burning longhouse. The Indians could have only watched in despair as van den Bogaert battled with his captors while their precious supplies went up in flames, the smoke reeking of burnt meat, singed wampum shells, and scorched peltries.

Van den Bogaert's tale continued beyond the burning barn, and by the time it was over, the New Netherland court at Manhattan Island referred to his demise as "sad and miserable." How van den Bogaert, who'd risen early in life to become a respected surgeon, commissary of stores for Fort Orange, groundbreaking explorer of the Iroquois hinterlands, and married father of four, came to such an ignominious downfall involved, to one degree or another, sodomy, slavery, jail breaks, exorcism ceremonies, cannibalism, barroom brawls, a Jesuit martyr, privateering, a long-anonymous chronicle of the wilderness frontier, and one pet bear not for sale at any price. All in all, the surgeon's life remains a strange and illuminating early colonial case study.

Only 18 years old when he arrived in New Amsterdam on lower Manhattan Island in 1630, van den Bogaert was listed as "barber-surgeon" and posted to the Hudson River trading post at Fort Orange, now Albany. There he'd have found a settlement more akin to the anarchic liberties of Deadwood than the Puritanical stays of Plymouth. Despite the best efforts of the West India Company and Kiliaen van Rensselaer-patroon and absentee lord of the massive Rensselaerswyck colony bordering Fort Orange-smuggling, drunkenness, and debt plagued the Dutch settlement. That warring Mohawks and Mohicans surrounded the outpost didn't help matters. A bitter lesson had already been learned in 1626, when foolhardy Capt. Daniel van Crieckenbeeck disobeyed direct orders to stay neutral regarding any Indian business and sided with the Mohicans during a raid into Mohawk territory. Traveling west from Fort Orange, the war party was quickly ambushed, and reports soon made their way back to the fort detailing how Crieckenbeeck and three other Dutchman were slaughtered, with one cannibalized by the exultant Mohawks "after having well roasted him."

The young surgeon must already have shown his mettle, otherwise he never would have been allowed on such an important assignment.There's no doubt that legends of the grisly picnic still circulated in 1634, when van den Bogaert was commissioned to investigate rumors of French Indian traders doing business in those same Iroquois territories. The young surgeon must already have shown his mettle, otherwise he never would have been allowed on such an important assignment; always on the verge of financial calamity, the New Netherland settlements couldn't afford any loss of trade whatsoever. Thus, in the dead of winter with nothing positive learned from Criekenbeeck's ill-starred expedition, van den Bogaert and two companions, Jeronimus de la Croix and Willem Thomassen, literally went where no Dutchmen had gone before, passing Crieckenbeeck's furthest exploration and venturing into the uncharted and potentially murderous wilderness of the interior.

Thankfully for history, van den Bogaert kept a daily journal of his trek into Iroquois country. On Dec. 11, 1634, the first day of the journey from Fort Orange, van den Bogaert related the reason for the mission among the Mohawk (sometimes called Maquasen) and Oneida (or Sinnekens) tribes. "The Maquasen and Sinnekens have often come to our Commissary Marten Gerritsen and me, saying that there were French Indians in their country, and that they have called a truce with them...because the Maquasen wanted as much for their furs as the French Indians. Therefore, I asked Sr. Marten Gerritsen's permission to go there and learn the truth of the matter...because trade was going very badly."

The party's troubles started early on the second morning, when van den Bogaert writes that his Mohawk guides "would have left us there if I had not noticed it; and when we intended to eat something, their dogs had eaten up all our meat and cheese so that we had nothing but dry bread to travel on." So much for reliable help, but things turned around later that afternoon. After crossing the flooded and ice-filled Mohawk River, they ran into a party of Indians who were so surprised by the appearance of the Dutchmen that they dropped their packs and hid in a marsh. Van den Bogaert and Co. wasted no time ransacking the goods, finding and devouring "a small loaf of bread baked with beans."

Aside from delays caused by heavy snow, things went smoothly for the next week as the company came upon numerous "castles," as the Dutch called the fortified Iroquois villages. Traveling from village to village, van den Bogaert chronicled incidents great and small and compiled a small dictionary of the Iroquois language, including numerous sexual terms indicating he received special favors among the natives. Feasting on venison and beans, peaceably trading small goods like awls and scissors, often putting on gunpowder displays for the delighted tribes, and confirming that Huron tribesmen, the "French Indians" the party had been dispatched to investigate, had indeed come down from the north to trade French goods in the area, van den Bogaert ran the full gamut of Dutch-Iroquois culture shock. As he was consistently led by his stomach, not least of his observances was an interest in the Iroquois dietary ways. On Dec. 17 he noted at one Iroquois village that "...a bear was being fattened. It had been there almost three years and was so tame that it ate everything given to it."

Traveling from village to village, van den Bogaert chronicled incidents great and small and compiled a small dictionary of the Iroquois language.The next afternoon revealed less savory aspects of life among the Wilden, as the Dutch sometimes referred to the Indians: "Three women came here from the Sinnekens with some dried and fresh salmon, but they smelled very bad." The evening took a turn for surreal when van den Bogaert concludes his entry with the non sequitur, "Jeronimus told me that an Indian was planning to kill him with a knife." Why an Indian had it in for Jeronimus isn't given, nor is the threat mentioned again.

Life among the Iroquois was unpredictable, to say the least. On Dec. 20, van den Bogaert justifiably gripes, "This evening I got a [mountain] lion skin to cover myself with; however, in the morning I had at least 100 lice."

The 22nd offered more discouragement. With stockings and shoes frozen "as hard as armor-plate" after crossing an icy stream, the company came to a small village that had "14 houses and a tame bear." Seeming to desire an exotic pet rather than meat, van den Bogaert mentions, "I wanted to buy the bear, but they would not part with it."

Perhaps the surgeon's most invaluable entries, though, regarded Iroquois healing ceremonies. His log for Christmas Eve includes one of the earliest European descriptions of Iroquois medicine on record:

24 Dec. Since it was Sunday I looked in on a person who was sick. He had invited into his house two of their doctors who were supposed to heal him. They were called SUNACHKOES [meaning "to exorcise the devil"]. As soon as they arrived they began to sing and kindled a large fire, sealing the house all around so that no draft could enter. The both of them put a snakeskin around their heads and washed their hands and faces...Taking a bucket of water in which they had put some medicine, they washed a stick in it [and] stuck it down their throats so that the end could not be seen, and vomited on the patient's head and all over his body. Then they performed many farces with shouting and rapid clapping of hands, as is their custom...

If the Iroquois doctors were rough, at least they didn't charge exorbitant fees like European physicians, whose standard methods included blisters, leeches, amputation, and astrology. Intrigued and somewhat frightened by this elaborate combination of medicine and exorcism, van den Bogaert witnessed another healing ceremony later in his journey:

Two men came to me and said that I should come and see how they would drive out the devil...When we arrived, the floor of the house was completely covered with tree bark over which the devil-hunters would walk. They were old men who were all colored or painted with red paint on their faces because they were to perform something strange...In the middle of this house was a very sick person who had been languishing for a long time, and there sat an old woman who had an empty turtle shell in her hands, in which were beads that rattled while she sang. Here they attempted to catch the devil and trample him to death, for they stomped all the bark in the house to pieces...After much stomping and running, one of them went to the sick person and took an otter [fur] from his hand, and for a long time sucked on the sick man's neck and back. Then he spit in the otter and threw it to the ground, running away with great excitement. Other men then ran to the otter and performed such antics that it was a wonder to see; indeed, they threw fire, ate fire, and threw around hot ashes and embers in such a way that I ran out of the house.

Van den Bogaert wasn't merely relating wondrous antics; he was documenting early ceremonies later incorporated into the masked False Face societies of Iroquois medicine men. Today's historians should be thankful the surgeon remained in the room of fiery "devil hunters" as long as he did.

Van den Bogaert eventually entered the heart of the Iroquois tribes when he reached Lake Oneida, more than 100 miles from Fort Orange. There, the company faced what could have been its deadliest scare. Obviously wanting to intimidate the Dutchmen, the Iroquois brought them into a longhouse and crowded "so close to us here that we could barely sit." After showing off some French goods, the threats worsened as, "an Indian once again called us scoundrels...he was very malicious so that Willem Tomassen became so angry that the tears ran from his eyes." With Crieckenbeeck in mind and the surgeon reporting, "They could have easily grabbed us with their hands and killed us," it's a safe bet that Willem's tears sprang from terror rather than righteous indignation. Van den Bogaert saved the day, however, when he shouted back at the Indian, calling him a scoundrel in return. The bluff had been called, and tensions eased when the brave turned flatterer, telling the surgeon, "You must not be angry. We are happy that you have come here."

The surgeon's reappearance was surely lauded by the Dutch, especially when they learned of his monopolistic trade agreement.Van den Bogaert was then tested by a tribal elder. The old man put a hand to the surgeon's chest, and feeling a steady heartbeat confirmed that van den Bogaert was not afraid. Mutual respect finally assured, the two groups sat down to business. The Iroquois explained that though they received good prices from the French for their furs, they feared and disliked the Huron agents (despite the traditional enmity between the Huron and Iroquois, the French didn't dare navigate the immense woodlands by themselves) and preferred to work with the Dutch. Prices for wampum and cloth were haggled over, with the sachems so pleased by the resulting handshake deal (made official that summer by the West India Company) that they concluded the meeting with a chant in honor of van den Bogaert: "This white man is a magician. He has leave to go around to all the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, and lie down safely among them. This is a useful thing for the Iroquois League." The transcription of the chant in van den Bogaert's journal is the earliest written documentation of the famed Iroquois Confederacy.

With a slew of accomplishments under his belt, van den Bogaert returned to Fort Orange and concluded his journal with a hearty, "praise and thank God, the 21st of January Anno 1635." The surgeon's reappearance was surely lauded by the Dutch, especially when they learned of his monopolistic trade agreement. As for the journal, it was sent to Kiliaen van Rensselaer and stored with the rest of his voluminous records.

The journal had one crucial omission, however: van den Bogaert's name. Nowhere in the chronicle did van den Bogaert sign his name or otherwise reveal himself. After being shipped back to Europe, the chronicle disappeared completely until 1895, when General James Grant Wilson, a Scottish-born scholar and officer with the 4th U.S. Colored Cavalry, discovered it in Amsterdam among the van Rensselaer family archives. Authorship was then mistakenly assigned to a van Rensselaer agent, though the agent didn't arrive in Rensselaerswyck until 1637. It wasn't until the early 1900s that van den Bogaert began to receive credit thanks to the research of historian A.J.F. van Laer. The delay in recognition is a shame. After the Iroquois expedition, van den Bogaert's career became a tragicomic mix of adventure and infamy, eventually leading to a scandal that burned far brighter in the historical record than his groundbreaking journal.

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The Strange Case of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert - The Morning News

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This is the first of a two-part series. The second part is here. In the winter of 1647-48, an Iroquois village in the wilds along the Mohawk River, west of what is now Albany, N.Y., was the setting for one of the most remarkable events of the period.

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In the 1960's young activists made a change. However, Why did so many young people decide to become activists for social justice? https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/youth-in-the-civil-rights-movement/

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Helen Hunt Jackson a native american civil war activist. ived 1830-1885.

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First Woman Commissoner of Indian Affairs

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was a poet, novelist and essayist who became an advocate for Native American rights, fighting for improved treatment of Natives by the US government. She detailed the adverse effects of previous actions taken against Indian tribes in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona dramatized the in Southern California and attracted considerable attention to her cause.

Helen Maria Fiske was born October 18, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske and Deborah Vinal Fiske, a writer. Nathan Fiske was professor of Language and Philosophy at Amherst College. Helen had a sister Anne and two brothers, both of whom died soon after birth.
Deborah Fiske died of tuberculosis in 1844 when Helen was fourteen. Nathan Fiske died in 1847 in Jerusalem while on a trip to the Holy Land, but he had provided for her education and had arranged for an aunt to care for her.

Helen attended the highly regarded Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school run by Reverend J.S.C. Abbott in New York City, receiving an excellent education for the times. At Abbott, Helen was a classmate of one of America's most distinguished poets Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst. The two remained close and corresponded for the rest of their lives, but few of their letters have survived.

Family
In 1852 at age 22, Helen married Edward Bissell Hunt, a captain in the U.S. Corps of Engineers. For the next 11 years, she and her husband followed the typically mobile life of a career military family. They had two sons, one of whom, Murray Hunt, died as an infant in 1854 of a brain disease.

The Civil War years were not kind to Helen and her family. In 1863 her husband was killed in an accident while experimenting with a one-man submarine he had invented. Her only surviving son, Horsford "Rennie" Hunt, died of diphtheria in 1865 at age nine.

In the winter of 1873-1874 on her doctor's advice Helen visited Colorado Springs, Colorado in search of a cure for a respiratory ailment when she met a wealthy local banker and railroad executive William Sharpless Jackson. She married Jackson on October 22, 1875 and made Colorado her home. They had no children.

Literary Career
After losing all her family members, Helen took up residence in Newport, Rhode Island, where she and her husband had previously been stationed. After meeting Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a soldier, social reformer and author, Jackson decided to seriously pursue a writing career. With Higginson's support, her initial literary efforts were devoted to children's stories, travel sketches, poetry and essays under the pseudonyms "H.H."

Helen Hunt Jackson became perhaps the most prolific woman writer of her era in the country. Many of her pieces appeared in the New York Independent, Nation, Atlantic and other periodicals. Her early work also included a volume of poetry, Verses (1870). Ralph Waldo Emerson admired her poetry and used several of her poems in his public readings. He included five of them in his anthology Parnassus.

From 1875 to 1877, Jackson published three novels, including Hetty's Strange History and Mercy Philbrick's Choice, in which Emily Dickinson was part-model for the heroine. In time, Jackson would produce more than 30 books and hundreds of articles. She most likely would have become better known without the pseudonyms, but popular convention of the time dictated that female writers conceal their true identity.

On a trip back east in 1879 Jackson attended a lecture in Boston by the Ponca Chief Standing Bear, who described the forcible removal of the Ponca Indians from their Nebraska reservation and transfer to the Quapaw Reservation in Indian Territory, where they suffered from disease, climate and poor supplies. This piqued her interest.

Jackson promised to help raise funds for the Ponca People so they could return to their homeland. She wrote a friend, "I have done now, I believe, the last of the things I have said I would never do. I have become what I have said a thousand times was the most odious thing in the world - a woman with a cause."

Social Reform
Although Jackson continued her other writing, the Native Americans became her primary concern. Upset about the mistreatment of American Indians by government agents, Jackson started investigating and publicizing government misconduct, circulating petitions, raising money for lawsuits and writing letters to the New York Times, attempting to arouse public opinion on behalf of the Indians' deteriorating condition.

She engaged in heated exchanges with federal officials over the injustices committed against American Indians. Among her special targets was US Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz, whom she once called "the most adroit liar I ever knew." She exposed the government's violation of treaties with the Indian tribes and documented the corruption of US Indian agents, military officers and settlers who encroached on and stole Indian lands. The book caused a national sensation.

Jackson's political activism won the support of several newspaper editors who published her reports about broken treaties, dishonest deals and unfulfilled promises. Among them were William Hayes Ward of the New York Independent, Richard Watson Guilder of the Century Magazine and publisher Whitelaw Reid of the New York Daily Tribune.

In 1881 she wrote what she considered her most important book, A Century of Dishonor. She sent a copy of the book to each member of Congress with a quote from Benjamin Franklin printed in red on the cover: "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations." The book condemned state and federal Indian policy, detailed the history of broken treaties and called for significant reform in government policy toward Native Americans.

The New York Times later wrote that she:

soon made enemies at Washington by her often unmeasured attacks, and while on general lines she did some good, her case was weakened by her inability, in some cases, to substantiate the charges she had made; hence many who were at first sympathetic fell away.

Jackson went to southern California for rest. Having been interested in the area's mission and the Mission Indians on an earlier visit, she began an in-depth study. Under its original land grants, the Mexican government provided for resident Indians to continue to occupy the mission lands. After taking control of the territory in 1848, US policies led to their removal from mission lands.

In 1882 President Chester A. Arthur appointed Jackson, along with translator Abbott Kinney, Special Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1882 - the first woman to hold that position. Her assignment was to visit the Mission Indians in Southern California, ascertain the location and condition of various bands, and determine what lands should be purchased for their use.

In 1883 Jackson and Kinney published their 56-page report, which recommended extensive government relief for the Mission Indians, including the purchase of new lands for reservations and the establishment of more Indian schools. Jackson's call for "some atonement" for past neglect and injustice was not acted upon by government authorities.

Inspired by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jackson wrote:

I am going to write a novel, in which will be set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people's hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books. If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life.

Although Jackson started an outline in California, she began writing the novel in December 1883 in a New York hotel room, and completed it in about three months. Originally titled In The Name of the Law, she published it as Ramona (1884). The story features Ramona, an orphan girl who was half Indian and half Scots and her Indian husband Alessandro, and their struggles for land of their own.

Ramona dramatized the mistreatment of Indians in Southern California, although its popularity was based on its romantic and picturesque qualities rather than its political content. The characters were based on people known by Jackson and incidents which she had encountered. The book achieved rapid success among a wide audience and was popular for generations; it was estimated to have been reprinted 300 times.

A fall at her Colorado Springs home in June 1884 left Jackson with a severely fractured leg. However, she returned to California to visit friends and continue writing. While there, she was diagnosed with cancer, and never returned to Colorado.

Her last letter was written to President Grover Cleveland:

From my death bed I send you a message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country and righting the wrongs of the Indian race.

Helen Hunt Jackson died of stomach cancer on August 12, 1885 in San Francisco, California. Her husband arranged for her burial on a one-acre plot on a high plateau overlooking Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her grave was later moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. Her estate was valued at $12,642.

One year after her death the North American Review called Ramona "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman" and named it, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of two most ethical novels of the 19th century. Sixty years after its publication, 600,000 copies had been sold. There have been over 300 reissues to date and the book has never been out of print.

Helen was described as "the most brilliant, impetuous and thoroughly individual woman in her time." She rose above personal tragedy and became one of the most successful writers of her day. She included as her friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Through her dedication to Indian reform during the last five years of her life, she wrote herself into American history.

A portion of Jackson's Colorado home has been reconstructed in the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum and furnished with her possessions.

Works by Helen Hunt Jackson:
* Bits of Talk About Home Matters (1873)
* Saxe Holm's Stories (1874)
* Bits of Talk in Verse and Prose for Young Folks (1876)
* Bits of Travel at Home (1878)
* Nelly's Silver Mine: A Story of Colorado Life (1878)
* Letters from a Cat (1879)
* A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States
Government's Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes (1882)
* Ramona (1884)
* Zeph: A Posthumous Story (1885)
* Glimpses of Three Coasts (1886)
* Between Whiles (1888)
* A Calendar of Sonnets (1891)
* Ryan Thomas (1892)
* The Hunter Cats of Connorloa (1894)

From A Century of Dishonor (1881):

There are within the limits of the United States between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska. The names of the different tribes and bands, as entered in the statistical table so the Indian Office Reports, number nearly three hundred.

One of the most careful estimates which have been made of their numbers and localities gives them as follows: In Minnesota and States east of the Mississippi, about 32,500; in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Indian Territory, 70,650; in the Territories of Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, 65,000; in Nevada and the Territories of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, 84,000; and on the Pacific slope, 48,000.

Of these, 130,000 are self-supporting on their own reservations, receiving nothing from the Government except interest on their own moneys, or annuities granted them in consideration of the cession of their lands to the United States. ...Of the remainder, 84,000 are partially supported by the Government - the interest money due them and their annuities, as provided by treaty, being inadequate to their subsistence on the reservations where they are confined....

There are about 55,000 who never visit an agency, over whom the Government does not pretend to have either control or care. These 55,000 subsist by hunting, fishing, on roots, nuts, berries, etc., and by begging and stealing; and this also seems to dispose of the accusation that the Indian will not "work for a living." There remains a small portion, about 31,000, that are entirely subsisted by the Government.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Helen Hunt Jackson
Women's History Biographies: Helen Hunt Jackson

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First Woman Commissoner of Indian Affairs Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was a poet, novelist and essayist who became an advocate for Native American rights, fighting for improved treatment of Natives by the US government. She detailed the adverse effects of previous actions taken against Indian tribes in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881).

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Oregon's history has been tainted with racist laws and views since it became a state.Written in Oregon's constitution was a policy that prohibited people of color from even living in the state.
A law in the 1850's made it so black people had to be lashed yearly, in an attempt to encourage them to leave. Even though Portland is a city in the northwestern United States, it was a hotspot for segregation and Jim Crow laws. According to The Guardian:

Until the late 1950's, Portland real estate brokers abided by an industry code under which they refused to sell houses in white neighborhoods to African Americans.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Catches Fire

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Catches Fire

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Nearly 150 young women died on March 25th, 1911, in New York. The Women working there had been attempting to unionize for betting working conditions and pay. The factory manger responded by locking the doors and lighting the oil and scraps from the clothing on fire. The girls were trapped in and killed

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The First Recorded Victim of Homophobia - Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert

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The First Recorded Victim of Homophobia - Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert

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Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert moved to New Amsterdam in 1630, he was 18 and a successful Barber Surgeon. He stayed there for about fourteen years and then moved to Fort Orange where he caught sleeping with a slave man and was forced to run away to an Iroquois in the winter of 1647 - 1648. The Dutch law enforcers chased him down and dragged him out of a flaming Iroquois hut and locked him up for 3 years.He was there for about three months but he escaped only to drown trying to get the South America. https://themorningnews.org/article/the-strange-case-of-harmen-meyndertsz-van-den-bogaert

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I t all started with a mysterious photograph.

In 2011, Mary Gainer worked as a historic preservationist for NASA, and she stumbled on a 1943 picture of a thousand people standing in a huge building. Gainer figured that the black men posing in the front were probably machinists, and the rest of the group was mostly white men in suits and ties.

But scattered here and there was something unexpected: Women, some white and some black, in conspicuous knee-length skirts and pompadour hairdos.

Gainer, who worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., tasked her new intern, Sarah McLennan, with getting to the bottom of it. There were too many to be the few secretaries employed then, so who were they, she wanted to know.

Unbeknown to Gainer, another person was on a similar hunt - only Margot Lee Shetterly was a step ahead. Shetterly's father was a scientist who worked at Langley, so growing up in the 1970s and '80s, she was aware of the history of black women at NASA.

"There are these women and I knew them, and my dad worked with them and they went to our church and their kids were in my school," she said recently over the phone from her home in Charlottesville. "It was my husband who was like, ' What is this story? How come I've never heard about it?' "

This was a special story, she suddenly realized: black women living in Jim Crow-era Virginia hired by NASA to do math and research that would launch men into space.

Shetterly started poking around and linked up with Gainer, whose intern was compiling oral histories from former employees and their families. Shetterly's book about those math whizzes, " Hidden Figures," came out earlier this month. In January, a movie version will hit multiplexes with a cast that includes Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.

And just like that, a piece of history that was nearly lost could become common knowledge.

Shetterly and her neighbors all knew the stories of these women. "Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine," Shetterly writes in her book.

But at the very place where these prodigies were employed, the history was fading.

Everyone knows what a computer looks like: the hard drive, the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse. But in the middle of the last century at Langley (which was until 1958 part of NASA's precursor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA), it looked different. Women who used pencils and paper to calculate data from wind tunnel tests, among other research, were called computers. The first of their kind were hired in 1935, and their ranks swelled during the labor shortage of World War II. In other fields, as men trickled back from overseas, women returned to more traditional roles at home, but not at Langley. The female computers became invaluable as the needs for aircraft advancements gave way to a different kind of battle: beating, Russia to the moon.

The women who had these jobs may not have felt remarkable. They were just happy to have work that paid better than the alternatives - teaching and nursing. The jobs were classified as "subprofessional," even though they entailed specialized math skills.

One such woman was Katherine G. Johnson. At 98, she still lives in Hampton, and she has emerged as the most high-profile of the computers. In the past year, she's won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saw a building named after her and had a bench dedicated in her honor. On her birthday, in late August, #HappyBirthdayKatherineJohnson started trending on Twitter. In a few months, Henson, an Oscar nominee, will play her on-screen.

Like a lot of the other computers, Johnson studied math in college. She was also one of three graduate students to desegregate West Virginia University in 1940, but marriage and a family derailed her plans for an advanced degree.At NASA, she worked on the life-or-death task of determining launch timing. Her calculations helped propel Alan Shepard into space and guided him successfully back to Earth; they landed Neil Armstrong on the moon and brought him home.

She never talked about work much, her daughter Joylette Hylick said recently.

"To come home and start talking about complex equations wouldn't go over with teenagers," Hylick explained. Plus, "we had activities - church, sports, music lessons, the whole nine, so it was quite a full life. She was not a stay-at-home but she also was not a workaholic in the sense that everything revolved around that."

When asked about her accomplishments, Johnson, a prodigy who graduated high school at 14, tends to deflect in every interview. Shetterly says Johnson told her again and again, "I was just doing my job." (Johnson was unavailable to comment for this story.)

It wasn't until well into adulthood that Hylick realized the importance of it.

After all, her mother was a trailblazer amid rampant discrimination. The earliest group of black women who worked at NACA were segregated from another computing pool of white women, and they had to use different bathrooms. At lunch in the cafeteria, they were relegated to a table with a white cardboard sign that read "colored computers." One woman, Miriam Daniel Mann, snatched the sign off the table and hid it in her purse, depositing it at home. At first, replacements would materialize, but when Mann kept taking them, they eventually stopped appearing. It was the first of many victories.

Now seems like the right time for this history to reemerge. "There's been a movement in the last couple of decades to diversify the history of computing," said McLennan, the former intern, who is now a visiting assistant professor at Virginia State University. "The earliest histories of that kind of thing were about innovators or big companies, but it didn't necessarily look at the social aspect."

The film's producer, Donna Gigliotti, credits the current interest in encouraging women to pursue science and math for helping get the movie made so quickly. It's rare for a producer to option a book based on only a 55-page proposal, but that's what Gigliotti did.

"Really, you can feel it in the zeitgeist," Gigliotti said, and the rapturous response to the trailer confirms that.

Whatever the reason, Shetterly is happy that people will know not just about the John Glenns of the world, she said, but the whole team that helped him get where he was going.

"We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis," she said. "History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup - it happened 30 seconds ago. It's history."

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The nearly forgotten story of the black women who helped land a man on the moon

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I t all started with a mysterious photograph. In 2011, Mary Gainer worked as a historic preservationist for NASA, and she stumbled on a 1943 picture of a thousand people standing in a huge building. Gainer figured that the black men posing in the front were probably machinists, and the rest of the group was mostly white men in suits and ties.

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When African American children were marching for civil rights in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama Police resorted to using fire hoses to spray African American Children that were marching.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-children-of-birmingham-changed-the-civil-rights-movement

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He was walking near the corner of Wall and William streets - the hub of New York's financial district - when a violent roar made him turn around. Two walls of flames "seemed to envelop the whole width of Wall Street," exporter Elwood M. Louer said, recalling how fire shot as high as the 10th story of nearby buildings. But Louer wasn't there on September 11 or even this century. His close shave came almost a 100 years ago in one of America's earliest terrorist attacks.

On September 16, 1920, a bomb planted on a red horse-drawn wagon exploded into the lunchtime crowd at Wall and Broad streets. This was just outside the House of Morgan (now known as J.P. Morgan), then the world's most powerful financial institution. The force of the explosion, which killed 38 and wounded hundreds, was strong enough to lift people off the ground and fling the mangled horse halfway down the road.

He escaped, white-faced and dazed, along with hundreds of others, as the dead lay flattened "like tenpins."

The wagon carried 100 pounds of TNT, with 500 pounds of cast-iron bolts packed around the explosives that detonated at 12:01 p.m., when the streets were teeming with lunch-hour traffic, according to the anthology Tools of Violence: Guns, Tanks and Dirty Bombs, by Chris McNab and Hunter Keeter. To this day, nobody knows who did it or why. And the mystery has been all but forgotten, apart from the deep gouges left in buildings by the blast.

Louer was lucky. He escaped, white-faced and dazed, as the dead lay flattened "like tenpins," writes Beverly Gage, quoting articles from 1920 for her book, The Day Wall Street Exploded. Gage, a Yale professor, tells OZY that she's amazed such an event has garnered so little attention in the annals of U.S. history. It was the first and deadliest of a spate of mail and suitcase bombs at the time that struck fear among thousands across America. So why was it so underplayed?

Had police taken anyone to court, the scene would've been one of the "great show trials" of its day, says Gage. But authorities were embarrassed because they couldn't find their villain. Rumors of who planted the bomb swirled, with fingers pointing at anarchists, communists, socialists and Bolsheviks, who, many claimed, didn't want to see America's financial empire succeed. The Bureau of Investigation - precursor to the FBI - and the attorney general were quick to find a scapegoat in these "radicals," often stereotyped as bomb-wielding bearded foreigners. At least 25 suspects were arrested, but none were charged. There was very little proof, aside from five copies of a flyer, printed by hand with rubber stamps and riddled with spelling mistakes, found in a mailbox near the explosion site. The note read, "Rimember, We will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoner or it will be sure death is all of you," and was signed by "American Anarchist fighters."

One lead came from an unlikely informant, a Pole named Wolf Lindenfeld (alias: William Linde). He had approached authorities months before the attack, predicting that Wall Street would be bombed, but nobody believed him. It wasn't until after the bombing that he was hired as an informant, given $3,000 and sent to Europe to catch the culprits. But he vanished, along with the cash. His granddaughter, Livia Linden, who lives in California, tells OZY he was always known as a "bad apple" in the family. Newspaper headlines referred to how Linde had double-crossed the government and what a slippery character he was, but that was most obvious with his family: "He abandoned his young wife and children," Linden explains.

Another theory came from historian Paul Avrich, who thought Mario Buda, a Croatian national and a Galleanist (a follower of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani), was responsible. Avrich believed Buda was avenging the imprisonment of his fellow Galleanists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. But police never got a chance to question Buda, who left for Italy, never to return.

The Wall Street attack came to symbolize the postwar social unrest, labor struggles and anti-capitalist sentiment in the U.S. while showcasing the authorities' failures; what started as an investigation transformed into a cover-up. The newspapers stopped writing about it, and folks were encouraged not to egg on the radicals by talking about them.

No memorials commemorate that fateful day, but walk to the corner of Wall Street, and you can run your hands over the deep pockmarks left by the bombing. While the incident seems dated, it hits closer to home than we care to think, serving as a reminder of an early American brush with terror and of the near-daily vehicle bombs spreading mayhem to this day.

Farah Halime , OZY Author

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Wall Street Exploded in 1920 and You Didn't Even Know It

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He was walking near the corner of Wall and William streets - the hub of New York's financial district - when a violent roar made him turn around. Two walls of flames "seemed to envelop the whole width of Wall Street," exporter Elwood M.

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I am pleased to share this fascinating article written by Charles Shaw:

Over the years, I have become aware that in the many volumes of history written on the lives of black Americans there tends to be a focus on slavery, the South, the Civil War, Emancipation, and the Great Migration. It is a familiar narrative repeated in literature, cinema, stage and television. However, I feel such narratives fail to fully present the great dimensions of the African Diaspora and specifically the American black experience.

Having researched my genealogy for more than a quarter century only recently have I come to realize how little is acknowledged of generations of black people who were free born and whose origins in America lay in the North, with little or no connection to the lands below the Mason Dixon line. I am very well aware, however, these people may have been born free but never attained full equality in all areas of American society. Free but unequal was the hard reality of their lives.

A ninth generation native of Massachusetts, I grew up unaware and possessed little interest in my past or how it was my ancestors came to live in New England. I never gave much thought as to why it was on Sundays we attended Episcopal Church, as did four generations before me, or why it was, unlike friends or other relatives, we rarely indulged in genuine southern cooking. On my grandmother's stove New England boiled dinners were common along with steaming seafood chowders or Mother's, made from scratch, salt cod fish cakes on a plate next to a helping of Boston baked beans.

The matriarch of the family was my great grandmother, born in Boston in the 1880's, she was a dignified woman I had known throughout my life and into my early twenties. On the wall of her dining room hung a framed daguerreotype of her mother, a woman I was told had been born in the harbor town of Belfast along the mid coast of Maine some twenty years before the Civil War. On occasion I would hear my mother speak of the Canadian Maritimes and of her great grandparents having migrated to Boston from there in the mid 19 th century. Of all the stories, there was one many had heard, both young and old, and it was the lore of a soldier in the family... a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

Like many researchers, it wasn't until I approached midlife that I felt a need to explore my genealogy. I desired to learn the truth behind the stories and lore, not only for myself but for my children and their children yet to be. I will admit, unlike many families of color, I was fortunate in that previous generations had left a guide, though incomplete, in the form of old letters and photos, names and places. It was a matter of matching information I possessed with that of census and archival data, newspaper articles, city directories, contacts with distant relatives, and journeys to mythic places I'd heard of growing up.

In the late 1980's I traveled north into the Maritimes, crossing the waters of the Gulf of Maine back to places of ancestors past. Like many, I assumed that black people in these Provinces arrived there as runaway slaves via the Underground Railroad. It was only upon arriving did I learn that my ancestors had roots there well before the Civil War.

I was amazed to discover a little known history of a people who fought for their freedom not in the War Between the States but in the War of the Revolution-people of color who took up arms on the side of Great Britain against the American Patriots.

During that conflict a series of proclamations were put forth by British commanders promising protection and freedom to any black whether slave, indentured, or free born in exchange for service to the Crown. It was a move less of altruism than one of military strategy designed to augment British forces and to disrupt and create confusion in the American war effort. Before me lay a fascinating piece of untold black history. People with a plan, not desperate runaways so often portrayed, but people who took their destiny into their own hands.

Thousands of blacks accepted the offer, escaping or simply walking away from plantations, farms, and private homes, making their way to British lines to take up arms against the American rebels. Nonetheless, Britain lost the war, and the fate of thousands who supported the losing side, both black and white, was uncertain. Fear was greatest among blacks who now faced the reality of retribution and being cast into or returned to slavery.

As part of the negotiations of surrender a meeting was held in the town of Tappan, New York between George Washington and British Commander Sir Guy Carlton. Washington demanded the return of the blacks whom he still considered American property, but Carlton refused, stating it was a matter of British honor. A promise had been made which he intended to make good.

In the early days of 1783, a manifest was created, a detailed ledger recording the names, ages, and descriptions of black men and women, whether former slave or free born, who could prove service to the Crown. The list grew to over three thousand names and became known as the Book of Negroes, an historical document, a copy of which is now housed in the National Archives. It was essentially a book of the saved.

From the spring through the fall of 1783, scores of ships set sail from New York harbor, bound for the Canadian Maritimes. A great evacuation that numbered in the thousands, including the British military, white Loyalist refugees, and three thousand free black men, women and children who became known as the Black Loyalists. It was from this group I was able to trace their descendants who made their way from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts in the mid 1800's. Three of whom would become my great, great grandparents.

One, James Butler, became a merchant on Boston's busy waterfront and the father of my great grandmother. The son of a mariner, he had been raised in the Canadian Anglican Church, thus the origins of my family's connection to the Episcopal Church. He married a woman, Phebe Hoyt, from Maine, the same woman in the photo on my great grandmother's dining room wall.

In later years, I discovered she was the great granddaughter of a free black and land owner from Groton, Massachusetts, a soldier of the Revolution whom, in a twist of irony, had fought at Bunker Hill on the side of the Patriots, thus the origin of the soldier story passed down and recited by many in the family. The couple lived and raised a family in the free black community on the North Slope of 19 th century Boston's Beacon Hill.

As we know, with genealogical research, one answer surely begets another question, and my research is far from complete, but I hope to leave behind a clearer path for future generations to follow and the awareness of this untold story .

Charles Shaw: member of Afro American Historical Genealogical Society New England Chapter
Email: bostonbasin@yahoo.com

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A Forgotten History And A Story Untold - The Other Madisons

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I am pleased to share this fascinating article written by Charles Shaw: Over the years, I have become aware that in the many volumes of history written on the lives of black Americans there tends to be a focus on slavery, the South, the Civil War, Emancipation, and the Great Migration.

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Cahokia winter solstice sunrise over Fox Mound and the Cahokia Woodhenge ca. 1000 AD. Artist's concept.

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site ( 11 MS 2) is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed c. 1050-1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km ²), and contains about 80 manmade mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. At its apex around 1100 CE, the city covered about 6 square miles (16 km ²), included about 120 earthworks in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions, and had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people.

Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the Central and the Southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact. Today, the Cahokia Mounds are considered to be the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico.

Cahokia Mounds is a National Historic Landmark and a designated site for state protection. It is also one of the 25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within the United States. The largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas north of Mexico, the site is open to the public and administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Division and supported by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. In celebration of the 2018 Illinois state bicentennial, the Cahokia Mounds were selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component (AIA Illinois). It was recognized by USA Today Travel magazine, as one of the selections for 'Illinois 25 Must See Places'.

Development (9th and 10th centuries)

Although some evidence exists of occupation during the Late Archaic period (around 1200 BCE) in and around the site, Cahokia as it is now defined was settled around 600 CE during the Late Woodland period. Mound building at this location began with the emergent Mississippian cultural period, around the 9th century CE. The inhabitants left no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood, and stone, but the elaborately planned community, woodhenge, mounds, and burials reveal a complex and sophisticated society.

The city's complex construction of earthen mounds required digging, excavation and transportation by hand using woven baskets. Construction made use of 55 million cubic feet (1.6 million cubic meters) of earth, and much of the work was accomplished over decades. Its highly planned large, smoothed-flat, ceremonial plazas, sited around the mounds, with homes for thousands connected by laid out pathways and courtyards, suggest the location served as a central religious pilgrimage city.

The city's original name is unknown. The mounds were later named after the Cahokia tribe, a historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants, the Cahokia tribe was not necessarily descended from the earlier Mississippian-era people. Most likely, multiple indigenous ethnic groups settled in the Cahokia Mounds area during the time of the city's apex.

Historian Daniel Richter notes that the apex of the city occurred during the Medieval Warming Period. This period appears to have fostered an agricultural revolution in upper North America, as the three-fold crops of maize, beans ( legumes), and gourds ( squash) were developed and adapted or bred to the temperate climates of the north from their origins in Mesoamerica. Richter also notes that Cahokia's advanced development coincided with the development in the Southwest of the Chaco Canyon society, which also produced large-scale works in an apparent socially stratified society. The decline of the city coincides with the Little Ice Age, although by then, the three-fold agriculture remained well-established throughout temperate North America.

Rise and peak (11th and 12th centuries)

Cahokia became the most important center for the Mississippian culture. This culture was expressed in settlements that ranged along major waterways across what is now the Midwest, Eastern, and Southeastern United States. Cahokia was located in a strategic position near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers. It maintained trade links with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south, trading in such exotic items as copper, Mill Creek chert, and whelk shells.

Mill Creek chert, most notably, was used in the production of hoes, a high demand tool for farmers around Cahokia and other Mississippian centers. Cahokia's control of the manufacture and distribution of these hand tools was an important economic activity that allowed the city to thrive. Mississippian culture pottery and stone tools in the Cahokian style were found at the Silvernale site near Red Wing, Minnesota, and materials and trade goods from Pennsylvania, the Gulf Coast, and Lake Superior have been excavated at Cahokia.

At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great Mesoamerican cities in Mexico and Central America. Home to about 1,000 people before circa 1050, its population grew rapidly after that date. According to a 2007 study in Quaternary Science Reviews, "Between AD 1050 and 1100, Cahokia's population increased from between 1,400 and 2,800 people to between 10,200 and 15,300 people", an estimate that applies only to a 1.8-square-kilometre (0.69 sq mi) high-density central occupation area. Studies of Cahokia's rise see large-scale immigration as an essential contributor to the city's initial rapid growth. Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 6,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.

As a result of archeological excavations in the early 21st century, new residential areas were found to the west of Cahokia; this discovery increased estimates of historic area population. If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until the 1780s, when Philadelphia's population grew beyond 40,000. Its population may have been larger than contemporaneous London and Paris.

One of the major problems that large centers like Cahokia faced was keeping a steady supply of food. A related problem was waste disposal for the dense population, and Cahokia is believed to have become unhealthy from polluted waterways. Because it was such an unhealthy place to live, Snow believes that the town had to rely on social and political attractions to bring in a steady supply of new immigrants; otherwise, the town's death rate would have caused it to be abandoned earlier.

Decline (13th and 14th centuries)

The population of Cahokia began to decline during the 13th century, and the site was abandoned by around 1350. Scholars have proposed environmental factors, such as environmental degradation through overhunting, deforestation and pollution, and climatic changes, such as increased flooding and droughts, as explanations for abandonment of the site. However, more recent research suggests that there is no evidence of human-caused erosion or flooding at Cahokia.

Political, economic, or cultural problems may also have contributed to the community's decline. Thomas Emerson and Kristin Hedman argue that Cahokia's large immigrant population was a factor in the city's ultimate fragmentation, as differing languages, customs, and religions obstructed the creation of a cohesive Cahokian cultural identity. Analyses of Cahokian burial sites and the associated remains have also shown that many Cahokians were not native to the city or its immediate surrounding region. These immigrants were sometimes buried separately from native residents, a possible indicator of weak integration along ethnic lines. It is likely that social and environmental factors combined to produce the conditions that led people to leave Cahokia.

Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples. Many theories since the late 20th century propose conquest-induced political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokia's abandonment. The only evidence of warfare found is defensive wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct. However, the palisade may have been more for ritual or formal separation than for military purposes. As Cahokia's population shrank over the 13th century, Cahokia's palisade was rebuilt several times to encompass increasingly-smaller portions of the city.

Diseases transmitted among the large, dense urban population are another possible cause of decline. Similarly, health issues are known to arise through maize-intense diets like Cahokia's. Isotope analysis of burial remains at Cahokia has revealed iron-deficiency anemia and enamel defects potentially stemming from Cahokia's reliance on maize. However, evidence tying nutritional deficiencies to a broader societal collapse has not been conclusively identified.

Together with these factors, researchers found evidence in 2015 of major floods at Cahokia, so severe as to flood dwelling places. Analysis of sediment from beneath Horseshoe Lake has revealed that two major floods occurred in the period of settlement at Cahokia, in roughly 1100-1260 and 1340-1460. While flooding may have occurred early in the rise of the city, it seems not to have deterred the city builders; to the contrary, it appears they took steps such as creating channels, dikes, and levees that protected at least the central city throughout its inhabited history. In another indication of flood mitigation efforts, Cahokians dispersed their agricultural lands among both lowland and upland fields, thereby reducing the chances that a single cataclysmic flood would wipe out the city's food supply.

Archeologists discovered evidence in 2020 that there was a population rebound following Cahokia's population minimum in 1400, with the population reaching a population maximum in 1650 and then declining again in 1700.

Cahokia was surrounded by rich agricultural lands. The city has been traditionally thought to have been a maize-centric civilization, the crop having been introduced to the region around AD 900. While maize is often credited with enabling Cahokia's early population growth, more recent research has suggested that Cahokian diets were quite varied, especially in the city's early period of existence. Thomas Emerson and Kristin Hedman attribute the discovery of Cahokian individuals with low-maize diets to the existence of hunter-gatherer immigrant communities who had not yet adopted maize as a staple food source.

Residents of outlying areas relied heavily on maize for subsistence, while residents of Cahokia's city center enjoyed more diverse diets. One interpretation is that higher levels of maize consumption may be correlated with a lower social status among Cahokian residents.

The impact that Cahokian agriculture had on the environment, and its relationship to the city's ultimate collapse, is hotly debated. The depletion of farming soil surrounding Cahokia may have led to a decline in food resources that doomed the city. Jane Mt. Pleasant, however, argues that these models of Cahokia's soil longevity are flawed, because it is based on modern understandings of crop yields that assume the use of plows. Cahokians' exclusive use of hand tools was less damaging to the soil and thus may have maintained soil quality far longer than is typical today, making a rapid collapse of agricultural productivity in Cahokia less likely.

The original site contained 120 earthen mounds over an area of 6 square miles (16 km ²), of which 80 remain today. To achieve that, thousands of workers over decades moved more than an estimated 55 million cubic feet (1,600,000 m ³) of earth in woven baskets to create this network of mounds and community plazas. Monks Mound, for example, covers 14 acres (5.7 ha), rises 100 ft (30 m), and was topped by a massive 5,000 sq ft (460 m ²) building another 50 ft (15 m) high.

Artist's recreation of central Cahokia. Cahokia's east-west baseline transects the Woodhenge, Monk's Mound, and several other large mounds.

Early in its history, Cahokia underwent a massive construction boom. Along with the early phase of Monks Mound, an overarching urban layout was established at the site. It was built with a symbolic quadripartite worldview and oriented toward the four cardinal directions with the main east-west and north-south axes defined with Monks Mound near its center point. Four large plazas were established to the east, west, north, and south of Monks Mound.

To the south of Monks Mound is the Grand Plaza, a large area that covered roughly 50 acres (20 ha) and measured over 1,600 ft (490 m) in length by over 900 ft (270 m) in width. Researchers originally thought the flat, open terrain in this area reflected Cahokia's location on the Mississippi's alluvial flood plain, but instead soil studies have shown that the landscape was originally undulating ridge and swale topography. In one of the earliest large-scale construction projects, the site had been expertly and deliberately leveled and filled by the city's inhabitants. It is part of the sophisticated engineering displayed throughout the site. It was used for large ceremonies and gatherings, as well as for ritual games, such as chunkey. The game was played by rolling a disc-shaped chunky stone across the field. The players would throw spears where they thought the chunky stone would land. The game required a great deal of judgment and aim.

The major ceremonial north-south 'axis' connects the main precinct with the large ridgetop mortuary mound to its south now known as the Rattlesnake Mound (Mound 66). The feature, named the Rattlesnake Causeway by archaeologists, was an elevated embankment about 18 metres (59 ft) wide, roughly 800 metres (2,600 ft) in length and varies in height from 0.5 metres (1.6 ft) to almost 1.3 metres (4.3 ft) as it traverses a low swampy area to the south of the Grand Plaza. It is aligned 5° east of north, a direction thought to mimic the maximum southern moon rise of 5° west of north, albeit in reverse. This is thought to have had symbolic associations to the builders in connection with their lunar maize goddess of the underworld. This is further strengthened by its close proximity to the ridgetop mortuary Mound 72, the underworld connotations of the low water-filled area the causeway traversed, and its terminus at the mortuary complex at the Rattlesnake Mound. The causeway itself may have been seen as a symbolic "Path of Souls".

The high-status central district of Cahokia was surrounded by a 2-mi-long palisade that was equipped with protective bastions. A later addition to the site, when the palisade was constructed, it cut through and separated some pre-existing neighborhoods. Archaeologists found evidence of the stockade during excavation of the area and indications that it was rebuilt several times. Its bastions showed that it was mainly built for defensive purposes.

Beyond Monks Mound, as many as 120 more mounds stood at varying distances from the city center. To date, 109 mounds have been located, 68 of which are in the park area. The mounds are divided into three different types: platform, conical, and ridge-top. Each appeared to have had its own meaning and function. In general terms, the city center seems to have been laid out in a diamond-shaped pattern about 1 mi (1.6 km) from end to end, while the entire city is 5 mi (8.0 km) across from east to west.

Cahokian residential zones were arranged into carefully planned clusters around plazas and mounds. Specific delineations and functions have been hard to determine, but many of these clusters may have been designed to accommodate religious or ethnic segregations. Cahokia's neighborhoods possessed a standardized suite of building types, including steam baths, council houses, and temples.

Cahokian domestic structures were generally of pole-and-thatch construction and followed rectangular footprints. Wall trenches were often used instead of posts for building construction.

Alleen Betzenhauser and Timothy Pauketat argue that upwards of 20 percent of Cahokia's neighborhood structures did not serve domestic functions, but were rather intended to facilitate engagement with non-human spiritual beings as part of an animistic religion. These beings may have resided in the building itself or inhabited large marker posts, similar to the posts used to build the Cahokia Woodhenge. Betzenhauser and Pauketat compare their theorized Cahokian buildings to similar historical examples such as shaking tents or medicine lodges.

Monks Mound is the largest structure and central focus of the city: a massive platform mound with four terraces, 10 stories tall, it is the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico. Facing south, it is 100 ft (30 m) high, 951 ft (290 m) long, 836 ft (255 m) wide and covers 13.8 acres (5.6 ha). It contains about 814,000 cu yd (622,000 m ³) of earth. The mound was built higher and wider over the course of several centuries, through as many as 10 separate construction episodes, as the mound was built taller and the terraces and apron were added.

Monks Mounds was named for the community of Trappist monks who resided there for a short time, after Euroamericans settled in the area. Excavation on the top of Monks Mound has revealed evidence of a large building, likely a temple or the residence of the paramount chief, which would have been seen throughout the city. This building was about 105 ft (32 m) long and 48 feet (15 m) wide, and could have been as much as 50 ft (15 m) high. It was about 5,000 sq ft (460 m ²).

The east and northwest sides of Monks Mound were twice excavated in August 2007 during an attempt to avoid erosion due to slumping. These areas were repaired to preserve the mound.

During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of main urban precinct, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the bird's head appearing beneath and beside the man's head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs.

The falcon warrior or " birdman" is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance. In addition, a cache of sophisticated, finely worked arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia's extensive trade links in North America.

Archeologists recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62% of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution, method of burial, and other factors. The skeletons include:

Four young males, missing their hands and skulls

A mass grave of more than 50 women around 21 years old, with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting

A mass burial containing 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed, some of these may have been buried alive: "From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred - that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies."

The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. They were unlikely to have all deposited at the same time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 CE.

Excavations have indicated that Mound 72 was not constructed as a single mound, but rather as a series of smaller mounds. These mounds were reshaped and covered over to give Mound 72 its final ridge-top shape.

Mississippian culture repoussé copper plates

Excavations near Mound 34 from 2002 to 2010 revealed a copper workshop. This unique find was originally discovered in the 1950s by archaeologist Gregory Perino, but its exact location was lost for 60 years. It is the only known copper workshop to be found at a Mississippian culture site. The area contains the remains of three tree stumps thought to have been used to hold anvil stones. Analysis of copper found during excavations showed that it had been annealed, a technique involving repeatedly heating and cooling the metal as it is worked, as blacksmiths do with iron.

Artisans produced religious items, such as long-nosed god maskettes, ceremonial earrings with a symbolic shape, thought to have been used in fictive kinship rituals. Many of the stylistically related Mississippian copper plates, such as the Wulfing cache from southeastern Missouri, some of the Etowah plates from Georgia, and many of the Spiro plates from Oklahoma, are associated with the Greater Braden style and are thought to have been made in Cahokia in the 13th century.[better source needed ]

The Cahokia Woodhenge was a series of large timber circles located roughly 850 m (2,790 ft) to the west of Monks Mound. They are thought to have been constructed between 900 and 1100 CE, with each one being larger and having 12 more posts than its predecessor. The site was discovered during salvage archaeology undertaken by Dr. Warren Wittry in the early 1960s interstate highway construction boom. Although the majority of the site contained village house features, a number of unusually shaped, large post holes were also discovered. When the holes were plotted out, they formed several arcs of equally spaced holes. Detailed analytical work supported the hypothesis that the placement of these posts was by design, and Wittry hypothesized that the arcs could be whole circles. He began referring to the circles as "woodhenges", comparing the structures to England's well-known circles at Woodhenge and Stonehenge.

The post holes found by Wittry are an example of how soil retains the memory of organic materials that decayed in the soil from thousands of years ago. Many soils have a naturally acidic component that breaks down most organic material pretty quickly, but leaves behind dark discoloration in the soil. The original posts of Cahokia Woodhenge left behind this same discoloration, allowing researchers to easily identify the soil as having once contained wooden posts.

Additional excavations in the 1960s-1980s used predictions based on verified posthole locations and spacing to locate other postholes and confirm the existence of five separate timber circles in the general vicinity. The circles are now designated Woodhenges I through V in Roman numerals. In 1985, a reconstruction of Woodhenge III was built with the posts being placed into the original excavated post positions. The circle, which has 48 posts in the circle and a 49th central post, has been used to investigate archaeoastronomy at Cahokia.[better source needed ] The Illinois Historic Preservation Division that oversees the Cahokia site hosts public sunrise observations at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices. Out of respect for Native American beliefs, these events do not feature ceremonies or rituals of any kind.

Until the 19th century, a series of similar mounds was documented as existing in what is now the city of St. Louis, some 8 mi (13 km) to the west of Cahokia. Most of these mounds were leveled during the development of St. Louis, and much of their material was reused in construction projects.

The lone survivor of these mounds is Sugarloaf Mound. Located on the west bank of the Mississippi, it marked the initial border between St. Louis and the once autonomous city of Carondelet.

One of the largest Mississippian sites is Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site, located in Massac and Polk counties in southern Illinois. It is 140 mi (230 km) southeast of Cahokia, located in the floodplain of the Ohio River. With a total of 19 mounds at the complex, it is considered the fifth-largest Mississippian site in terms of the number of monuments. It is believed to have been a chiefdom, as an elite burial mound was among those found. The site is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

The Cahokia Museum and Interpretive Center, which receives up to a million visitors a year, was designed by AAIC Inc. The building, which opened in 1989, received the Thomas H. Madigan Award, the St. Louis Construction News & Reviews Readers Choice Award, the Merit Award from the Metal Construction Association, and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Brick Manufacturer Association.

Cahokia has long been a point of interest in the academic community. As early as the 1960s, universities across the Midwest have gone to the site to conduct research in fields ranging from geology to archaeology. One of the most prominent archaeological researchers of Cahokia is Timothy Pauketat. He has been writing about and researching Cahokia for the majority of his professional career. Other prominent Cahokia academics include Warren Wittry, who was instrumental in the recovery of Cahokia Woodhenge.

Cahokia Mounds was first protected by the state of Illinois in 1923 when its legislature authorized purchase of a state park. Later designation as a state historic site offered additional protection, but the site came under significant threat from the federal highway building program in the 1950s. The highway program reduced the site's integrity; however, it increased funding for emergency archeological investigations. These investigations became intensive, and today continue. They have resulted in the present understanding of the national and international significance of the site. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark on July 19, 1964, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.

In 1982, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) designated the site a World Heritage Site. This is the only such self-contained site in Illinois and among 24 World Heritage Sites in the United States in 2009.

State Senator Evelyn M. Bowles wrote about the Cahokia Mounds site:

Through the years my friends and I made occasional Sunday afternoon trips to the Mounds. When I became the State Senator, it afforded me the opportunity to secure funds for the acquisition of additional acreage in which there are smaller Mounds. Many of these have contained additional artifacts.

The designation has helped protect the property and attract funds to conduct research on this significant civilization.

A Mississippian-era priest, in the 13th century, Cahokia metropolis, holding a ceremonial flint mace and severed sacrificial head

Tamarois et Caouquias on a French map of Illinois in 1718, south of the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers (approximate modern state area highlighted) from Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi by Guillaume de L'Isle

The Rattlesnake Causeway leading from Monks Mound to Mound 66 is the city's ceremonial north-south axis.

The "Chunkey Player" statuette, made of Missouri flint clay, depicts the ancient Native American game of chunkey. The statuette is believed to have been originally crafted at or near Cahokia Mounds; it was excavated at a Mississippian site in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, revealing the reach of the trade network of this culture.

Clay statuette excavated at Cahokia site

Incised sandstone tablet of a Birdman found in 1971 during excavations into the east side of Monks Mound

1. ^ "Cahokia Mounds". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on March 3, 2008.

2. ^ Munoz, Samuel E.; Schroeder, Sissel; Fike, David A.; Williams, John W. (2014). "A record of sustained prehistoric and historic land use from the Cahokia region, Illinois, USA". Geology. 42 (6): 499-502. Bibcode:2014Geo....42..499M. doi:10.1130/g35541.1.

3. ^ "Nomination - Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Illinois", US World Heritage Sites, National Park Service, accessed 2012-05-03

4. James M. Collins, ^ The archaeology of the Cahokia Mounds ICT-II, Springfield IL: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (1990) ISBN 0-942579-10-0

5. ^ Bey, Lee (August 17, 2016). "Lost cities #8: mystery of Cahokia - why did North America's largest city vanish?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.

6. ^ White, A.J.; Munoz, Samuel E.; Schroeder, Sissel; Stevens, Lora R. (January 24, 2020). "After Cahokia: Indigenous Repopulation and Depopulation of the Horseshoe Lake Watershed AD 1400-1900". American Antiquity. 85 (2): 263-278. doi:10.1017/aaq.2019.103. ISSN 0002-7316. S2CID 213864803.

7. ^ "12th-Century Cahokia Was a "Melting Pot"". Archaeology Magazine. Archaeology.org. March 6, 2014.

8. ^ Richter, Daniel K. (2011). Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts. Cambridge, MA: Belknap - Harvard University Press. pp. 20-21. ISBN 9780674055803.

9. ^ Snow, Dean (2010). Archaeology of Native North Americas. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. pp. 201-203.

10. ^ Benson, L. V.; Pauketat, T. R.; Cook, E. R. (2009). "Cahokia's Boom and Bust in the Context of Climate Change". American Antiquity. 74 (3): 467-483. doi:10.1017/S000273160004871X. S2CID 160679096.

11. ^ Emerson, Thomas E.; Hedman, Kristin M. (2015), "The dangers of diversity: The consolidation and dissolution of Cahokia, native North America's first urban polity", Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper, SIU Press, pp. 147-178, ISBN 978-0-8093-3400-1

12. Glenn Hodges, "America's Forgotten City", National Geographic, January 2011.

13. Henderson, Harold. "The Rise and Fall of the Mound People". Chicago Reader. 2000-06-29. Retrieved 2016-05-28.

14. White, A. J.; Stevens, Lora R.; Lorenzi, Varenka; Munoz, Samuel E.; Schroeder, Sissel; Cao, Angelica; Bogdanovich, Taylor (March 19, 2019). "Fecal stanols show simultaneous flooding and seasonal precipitation change correlate with Cahokia's population decline". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (12): 5461-5466. Bibcode:2019PNAS..116.5461W. doi:10.1073/pnas.1809400116. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC . PMID 30804191.

15. ^ Elbein, Asher (April 24, 2021). "What Doomed a Sprawling City Near St. Louis 1,000 Years Ago?". The New York Times.

16. ^ Milner, George (1998). The Cahokia chiefdom: the archaeology of a Mississippian society. Smithsonian Inst Press.

17. ^ Kelly, John (2009). Contemplating Cahokia's collapse. In: Global Perspectives on the Collapse of Complex Systems. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. pp. 147-168.

18. ^ Shackelford, Alan G. (2007). "The Frontier in Pre-Columbian Illinois". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 100 (3): 182-206. ISSN 1522-1067.

19. Mailer, Gideon A.; Hale, Nicola E. (2018). Decolonizing the Diet: Nutrition, Immunity, and the Warning from Early America. Anthem Press. ISBN 978-1-78308-714-3.

20. ^ "Cahokia's rise and fall linked to river flooding", Popular Archaeology, Spring 2015

21. ^ White, A.J.; Munoz, Samuel E.; Schroeder, Sissel; Stevens, Lora R. (January 2020). "After Cahokia: Indigenous Repopulation and Depopulation of the Horseshoe Lake Watershed AD 1400-1900". American Antiquity. 85 (2): 263-278. doi:10.1017/aaq.2019.103.

22. ^ Emerson, Thomas E. (2002). "An Introduction to Cahokia 2002: Diversity, Complexity, and History". Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. 27 (2): 127-148. ISSN 0146-1109.

23. ^ Mt.Pleasant, Jane (2015). "A New Paradigm for Pre-Columbian Agriculture in North America". Early American Studies. 13 (2): 374-412. ISSN 1543-4273.

24. ^ Steadman, Sharon R. (2009). Archaeology of Religion: Cultures and their Beliefs in Worldwide Context. Routledge. ISBN 978-1598741544.

25. ^ Timothy R., Pauketat (2009). Cahokia : Ancient Americas Great City on the Mississippi. Viking Press. pp. 23-34. ISBN 978-0-670-02090-4. Pg 23 "Cahokia was so large-covering three to five square miles-that archaeologists have yet to probe many portions of it. Its centerpiece was an open 50-acre Grand Plaza, surrounded by packed-clay pyramids. The size of 35 football fields, the Grand Plaza was at the time the biggest public space ever conceived and executed north of Mexico."...Pg 34 "a flat public square 1,600-plus feet in length and 900-plus feet in width

26. Baires, Sarah E. (2014). "Cahokia's Rattlesnake Causeway". Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. 39 (2): 145-162. doi:10.1179/2327427113Y.0000000005. S2CID 128744049.

27. ^ Romain, William F. (2015). "Moonwatchers of Cahokia". In Pauketat, Timothy R.; Alt, Susan M. (eds.). Medieval Mississippians : The Cahokian World. School for Advanced Research Press. pp. 33-41. ISBN 978-1938645327.

28. Betzenhauser, Alleen; Pauketat, Timothy R. (July 2019). "9 Elements of Cahokian Neighborhoods". Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association. 30 (1): 133-147. doi:10.1111/apaa.12118. ISSN 1551-823X - via Wiley.

29. ^ Barrier, Casey R. (2021), "The persistence of sedentism throughout Cahokia's urban moment: Historical materialism and insights into the dominant built form", Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change, Routledge, doi:10.4324/9781003109365-11/persistence-sedentism-throughout-cahokia-urban-moment-casey-barrier, ISBN 978-1-003-10936-5

30. Skele, Mike (1988). "The Great Knob". Studies in Illinois Archaeology (4). Springfield, Illinois: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. ISBN 0-942579-03-8.

31. Pawlaczyk, George (February 16, 2010). "Copper men: Archaeologists uncover Stone Age copper workshop near Monks Mound". Science. Archived from the original on March 9, 2012.

32. ^ Robb, Matthew H. (March 2010). "Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum-Spotlight Series March 2010" (PDF). Saint Louis Art Museum.

33. ^ Friedlander, Michael W. (2007). "The Cahokia Sun Circles". The Wisconsin Archeologist. 88 (1): 78-90.

34. ^ Wittry, Warren L. (1964). "An American Woodhenge". Cranbrook Institute of Science Newsletter. 33 (9): 102-107 - via Explorations into Cahokia Archaeology, Bulletin 7, Illinois Archaeological Survey, 1969.

35. ^ Wittry, Warren L. "Discovering and Interpreting the Cahokia Woodhenges". The Wisconsin Archaeologist. 77 (3/4): 26-35.

36. ^ Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul (November 26, 2018). Archaeology Essentials: Theories, Methods, and Practice (4th ed.). Thames & Hudson. p. 49. ISBN 978-0500841389.

37. ^ Thomas, Mary (2005). American Woodhenge: Archaeoastronomy at Cahokia (BA thesis). Northern Illinois University.

38. ^ Iseminger, William. "Welcome the Fall Equinox at Cahokia Mounds". Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017.

39. ^ "Cahokia Mounds Mark Spring Equinox : The keepers of Cahokia Mounds will host a spring gathering to celebrate the vernal equinox". Indian Country Today. Indian Country Media Network. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017.

40. ^ Grimley, David A., Phillips, Andrew C., Lepley, Scott W. Surficial Geology of Monks Mound Quadrangle. 2007. https://chf.isgs.illinois.edu/maps/quad/monks-mound-sg-report.pdf

Bolfing, Christopher (May 2010). The Paradigm of the Periphery in Native North America (Undergraduate honors thesis). Texas State University-San Marcos. pp. 67-68. hdl:10877/3288.

Chappell, Sally A. Kitt (2002). Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10136-1.

Emerson, Thomas E. (1997). Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. ISBN 0-8173-0888-1. Archived from the original on February 24, 2007.

Emerson, Thomas E.; Lewis, R. Barry (1991). Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois. ISBN 0-252-06878-5. Archived from the original on September 5, 2006.

Kelly, John E.; Brown, James A.; Hamlin, Jenn M.; Kelly, Lucretia S.; Kozuch, Laura; Parker, Kathryn; Van Nest, Julieann (August 26, 2007). "Mound 34 : The Context for the Early Evidence of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex at Cahokia". In King, Adam (ed.). Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context. University of Alabama Press. pp. 57-87. ISBN 978-0-8173-5409-1.

Knight, Vernon James; Steponaitis, Vincas P. (January 15, 2011). "A Redefinition of the Hemphill Style in Mississippian Art". In Lankford, George E.; Reilly, F. Kent; Garber, James (eds.). Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World (PDF). University of Texas Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0292723085. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 23, 2013.

Pauketat, Timothy R. (2009). Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi. New York: Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-670-02090-4.

Pursell, Corin (2004). Geographic distribution and symbolism of colored mound architecture in the Mississippian Southeast (MA thesis). Southern Illinois University Carbondale. p. 205.

Townsend, Richard F; Sharp, Robert V; Bailey, Garrick Alan (2000). Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10601-7.

Young, Biloine; Fowler, Melvin L. (2000). Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois. ISBN 0-252-06821-1. Archived from the original on September 5, 2006. full text available at [1]

Introductory Bibliography of Published Sources on Cahokia Archeology

Scholarly Bibliography of Published Sources on Cahokia Archaeology

Emerson, Iseminger; Nance, L. Michael; Winslow, Madeline; Gass, Marilyn (2001). Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site Nature / Culture Hike Guidebook, 4th revised edition. Collinsville, Illinois: Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. pp. 79 pp.

Fowler, Melvin L.; Rose, Jerome; Leest, Barbara Vander; Ahler, Steven R. (1999). The Mound 72 Area: Dedicated and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia. Illinois State Museum Society. ISBN 978-0-89792-157-2.

Milner, George R. (2004). The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.

Mink, Claudia Gellman (1992). Cahokia, City of the Sun: Prehistoric Urban Center in the American Bottom. Collinsville, IL: Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. ISBN 1-881563-00-6.

Pauketat, Timothy (1994). The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. ISBN 0-8173-0728-1. Archived from the original on September 4, 2006.

Price, Douglas T.; Feinman, Gary M. (2008). Images of the Past (5 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 280-285. ISBN 978-0-07-340520-9.

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The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site ( 11 MS 2) is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed c. 1050-1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville.

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A few months back, we asked you guys to submit your article ideas to us on Pinterest and then we asked you to vote for the winning idea. The overwhelming winner of the popular vote was Marilyn Terrell, who came up with the idea of Forgotten Heroes and Villains Who Changed American History. In putting together the article, I found way too many heroes, so there are no villains here, but I'm sure you'll all agree that these men and women certainly made an impact on history.

Joseph Warren

While during his time he was regarded as the architect of the American Revolution and at least fourteen US states have a Warren County named after him, few people recognize the name Joseph Warren.

Dr. Joseph Warren wrote a series of resolves that helped serve as the blueprints for the first American government, he sent Paul Revere on his famous ride, he fought in the battles of Lexington and Concord, and he was a close associate with other leading revolutionaries such as John Hancock, John Adams and Samuel Addams. So why haven't you heard of him?

Likely because most of the patriots we're taught about since elementary school went on to do great things after the war, but Warren actually died in the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, where he chose to serve as a private although he was ranked as a Major General. Even after he ran out of ammo, he chose to stay on the front lines so the militia could make its escape.

While it might be the very reason he's not widely remembered today, Warren's death did help the revolutionary cause by providing them with a martyr who helped inspired even more patriots to fight the British.

Sources: National Parks Service, The American Revolution, NCBI, Forest Hills Trust and MW Site

Sybil Ludington

Speaking of the famous midnight ride, there are a lot of people who deserve a lot more credit than Paul Revere, who didn't even finish his ride before being captured by the British. One particularly notable rider was Sybil Ludington, a sixteen year old girl who rode sidesaddle, alone, in the rain for forty miles (twice the distance Revere covered) to alert her father's troops that they needed to meet at the Ludington farm to fight back against British raiders in Danbury, Connecticut. During the trip, she used a long stick to not only knock on the doors of the troops, but also to fight off a highwayman she encountered on her route.

Thanks to Sybil's actions, 400 troops were ready to fight the next day and the group was able to join the Continental Army and chase the British out of Connecticut. For those wondering why we remember Paul Revere's name above all the other successful riders from the Revolution, the simple reason is because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow found that Revere rhymes with a lot of things, including "listen my children and you shall hear."

Sources: The Smithsonian, Historic Patterson, About.com

James Armistead Lafayette

During the Revolutionary War, some aristocrats sent their slaves to battle in their place, but James Armistead Lafayette actually asked his master for permission to fight on the side of the patriots. That isn't what made him so notable, instead it's the fact that he was the first African American double agent.

First, he was assigned to spy on the recent defector, General Benedict Arnold, who trusted him so much that he asked Armistead to guide British troops through the local roads. After Arnold went north in 1781, James went to serve General Cornwallis. While spending time in the camp, he relayed vital information to the Americans regarding the British troop and arms deployment. His reports were considered critical in the defeat of the British in the Battle of Yorktown and the capture of General Cornwallis.

After the war ended, James returned to his life of servitude as a 1783 law that freed slaves who served in placed of their masters didn't apply to him since he was technically a volunteer. With the help of his master, William Armistead, and General Lafayette, whom he served under the war, James was granted his freedom in 1787. Thereafter, he continued to live in New Kent County as a farmer.

Sources: Lafayette College, Black Past, Time and History Tube

Henry Shoemaker

On a hot afternoon in 1842, Henry Shoemaker was working as a farmhand in Indiana when he remembered it was Election Day. He quickly rode to his local polling place and cast his ballot for state representative, Madison Marsh.

Marsh won the election by one vote and Shoemaker's forgetting the ballot box could have made all the difference between his getting elected. That wouldn't have been a huge deal if it weren't for the fact that state legislators elected senators at the time and the Indiana election of 1842 was a close contest. In fact, the results kept ended up a tie and on the sixth ballot, Marsh finally changed his vote, which allowed Edward Hannegan to win his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Again, all that may not have made a huge impact if it weren't for the fact that a few years later, the U.S. Senate was voting on whether or not to go to war with Mexico. Hannegan was absent in the voting and was finally called in to break the deadlock between those for and those against the war. As a result, America went to war with Mexico and California became part of the U.S. And it's possible that the entire chain of events never would have occurred if Henry Shoemaker didn't remember or care to head off to the polls on that fateful day in 1842.

Sources: Indiana Public Media and The Greatest Stories Never Told

Elizabeth Jennings Graham

Many consider her the nineteenth century's Rosa Parks, and Elizabeth Jennings Graham may well have influenced Ms. Parks and other Civil Rights crusaders throughout the years. In fact, Ms. Graham's heroic act against racism even took place before the Civil War, when slavery was still legal in fifteen states.

In the 1850s, the horse-drawn street cars were an increasingly popular mode of transportation, especially in large cities like New York. These privately-owned vehicles were allowed to deny service to anyone for any reason and they chose to take advantage of that right regularly. On Sunday, July 16, 1854, Elizabeth was running late to church and boarded a streetcar. The conductor ordered her to get off, but she refused. When he tried to remove her by force, she struggled to stay onboard. Eventually, it took a police officer to remove her from the streetcar.

Graham's story inspired African American New Yorkers to stand up for their rights and fight against racial discrimination in public transportation. The story received national attention -especially when Elizabeth filed a lawsuit against the driver and the Third Avenue Railroad Company. Her lawyer, Chester A. Arthur, would later go on to be the president of the US.

In 1855, Graham won her case and the court declared that African American persons should have the same rights as other persons. The public transit system in New York was desegregated by 1861 as a result -all about 100 years before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on the bus.

Sources: New York Times, Columbia University and New York City Transit

Edmund G. Ross

While now considered little more than a footnote in history, Edmund Ross made history by serving as the deciding factor in the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. As one of only seven Republican senators to break with his party (and the last to do so), it was his vote that allowed Johnson to stay in office after he was accused of "high crimes and misdemeanors," for breaking the senate's Tenure of Office Act.

Historians disagree about what impact Johnson's removal of office would have had on the country, but many believe that Ross' vote saved the South from being punished by radical Republicans who wished to see the area controlled by a military dictatorship.

Ross lost his senate seat as a result of his vote and was ostracized by those in his party and the public at large although he was vindicated when the Supreme Court ruled the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional.

Sources: U.S. Senate, Teaching American History and the L.A. Times

Frank Wills

When it comes to government scandals in America, the most famous is pretty much undoubtedly Watergate. What you might not know though is that the entire issue may never have been uncovered if it weren't for one security guard. While doing his rounds at Watergate office building where the Democratic National Headquarters were located, Frank Wills noticed a strip of duct tape preventing a door latch from closing all the way. He removed the tape and continued his rounds.

Thirty minutes later, he passed the doors again and noticed someone put tape on the latch again. At this point, he figured something weird was going on and called the cops, who found and arrested five men in the DNC offices. This sparked off the entire Watergate Scandal, eventually leading to Nixon's resignation.

As for Frank, he got attention for his discovery immediately after the affair, but quickly faded into obscurity. He eventually left his job as it didn't provide him with enough money to pay his living expenses. Frank had difficulty finding and keeping work anywhere else and was even told by Howard University that they couldn't hire him because they didn't want the government to withhold their funds in retribution. Eventually, he was caught shoplifting a pair of $12 shoes, which resulted in his going to prison for a year -even worse, he never even left the store with the shoes and, according to Frank, was only hiding them in the store so he could surprise a friend with them at the register.

Wills passed away in poverty and obscurity in 2000.

Sources: It's About Time, Spy Busters, Workers and the L.A. Times

Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick

All four of these men, and the other passengers of United Flight 93, helped save countless lives and further tragedy on September 11, 2001 by fighting back against the terrorists that hijacked their plane. These four men used their cell phones and in-flight phones to call their loved ones and authorities after hijackers took over their plane. It was then that they learned of the two prior attacks on the World Trade Center. After assessing the situation, the four men rallied the other passengers to fight back against the terrorists, resulting in the plane coming down in a field in Shanksville, PA.

While everyone aboard died, their sacrifice undoubtedly saved others and prevented another American icon from being destroyed -though no one knows for sure, experts believe the plane was likely intended to be flown into the White House or the Capitol Building.

Note: I'm sure a lot of people will claim these heroes have not been forgotten, but the sad truth is that the heroics of Flight 93 has already been largely overshadowed by the larger tragedies of September 11 and will likely grow to be a footnote in the greater narrative of the day. That's why we should take every opportunity to remember the brave men and women who fought back.

Sources: Yahoo, ESPN, Mercury News, The Guardian, Minnesota Public Radio, High Beam and United Heroes

Obviously, everyone plays some small role in history, so there are a lot of people who have changed the course of history and not gotten enough credit. If you know of any of them, feel free to write about them in the comments section.

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Profile for - Member Since Dec 31st, 1969

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Forgotten Heroes Who Changed the Course of American History

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A few months back, we asked you guys to submit your article ideas to us on Pinterest and then we asked you to vote for the winning idea. The overwhelming winner of the popular vote was Marilyn Terrell, who came up with the idea of Forgotten Heroes and Villains Who Changed American History.

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Elizabeth Jennings Graham won a lawsuit against New York's Third Avenue Railway Company for ejecting her from a streetcar in 1854 because she was African American.

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Bessie Coleman Biography - life, family, children, story, death, school, mother, old, information, born, siblings

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Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892, in a one-room, dirt-floored cabin in Atlanta, Texas, to George and Susan Coleman, the illiterate (unable to read and write) children of slaves. When Bessie was two years old, her father, a day laborer, moved his family to Waxahachie, Texas, where he bought a quarter-acre of land and built a three-room house in which two more daughters were born.

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Claudette Colvin was a civil rights activist in Alabama during the 1950s. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest.

Who Was Claudette Colvin?

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Colvin moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. She retired in 2004.

Background: Forerunner to Rosa Parks

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Months before Rosa Parks, Colvin stood up against segregation in Alabama in 1955, when she was only 15 years old. She also served as a plaintiff in the landmark legal case Browder v. Gayle, which helped end the practice of segregation on Montgomery public buses.

Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard at school. She earned mostly As in her classes and even aspired to become president one day. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other-saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek.

Arrested for Violating Segregation Laws

Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. For several hours, she sat in jail, completely terrified. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. She also had became pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956.

In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. The court, however, ruled against her, and put her on probation. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job.

Plaintiff in 'Browder v. Gayle'

Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith (Jeanatta Reese, who was initially named a plaintiff in the case, withdrew early on due to outside pressure). The decision in the 1956 case, which had been filed by Fred Gray and Charles D. Langford on behalf of aforementioned African-American women, ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional.

Two years later, Colvin moved to New York City, where she had her second son, Randy, and worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home. She retired in 2004.

Legacy

Much of the writing on civil rights history in Montgomery has focused on the arrest of Rosa Parks, another woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus, nine months after Colvin. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, the story of Claudette Colvin has received little notice. Some have tried to change that. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek.

Fact Check

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Visit Biography.com and learn about civil rights activist Claudette Colvin who refused to bow to bus segregation laws months before Rosa Parks' protest.

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It's no secret. Modern historians have revised, re-written, and even deleted entire chapters of American history. So what are we missing? Join Historian David Barton, Tim Barton, and special guests as they uncover the stories some historians don't what you to know.

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Yiddish is actually a combination of Germanic grammar, vocabulary is mixed with Hebrew and Aramaic, with very few words from Slavic and ancient Romance languages and very sadly a lot people who spoke Yiddish died in the Holocaust.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/29/science/scholars-debate-roots-of-yiddish-migration-of-jews.html

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner%27s_slave_rebellion

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http://www.pressroomvip.com/g/18-most-shameful-moments-in-u-s-history/3/?ipp=3

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James was one of the spy's for america and he had the perfect cover and he was a slave.

he is number nine.

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Many people shaped US history, yet only a few make their way into textbooks. What of the people who were left out? Some were spies. Some were slaves. All of them worked to create a better country, the present-day United States.

10Elizabeth Jennings Graham

In 1854, 101 years before Rosa Parks made her historic stand in Montgomery, Elizabeth Jennings Graham made one of her own in New York City. Graham and a friend were on their way to church. They were running late, so Graham didn't wait for a horse-drawn car designated for colored people.

She hailed the first one she saw and got in. The white driver balked and refused to drive her. Graham stood her ground, so the driver finally continued on. However, when he stopped to pick up white passengers, Graham still refused to move. The driver finally hauled Graham from the car and tossed her onto the sidewalk.

Graham, furious at the way she had been treated, wrote a letter detailing the incident. It was read to her church family and sent to Fredrick Douglass' Paper and the editor at The New York Daily Tribune. Graham's father hired Chester Arthur to take his daughter's case to court. Arthur won the case, and in another year, New York City transportation was fully integrated. None of it would've happened if Elizabeth Jennings Graham hadn't refused to give up her seat.

9James Armistead Lafayette

Sometimes, to win a war, all a commander needs is a perfectly placed spy. James Armistead Lafayette, a Virginian slave, had the perfect cover. He served under the Marquis de Lafayette, the commander of the French forces allied with the American Continental Army. Armistead managed to convince British General Charles Cornwallis that he was a runaway slave hired to spy on the American army. He gained the confidence of Benedict Arnold and Cornwallis, and he relayed vital information to Lafayette and Washington about the British army's movements and supplies.

In the summer of 1781, Armistead's reports helped Washington win the battle at Yorktown, which resulted in the surrender of the British. Despite his heroic acts in the American Revolution, Armistead returned to his master after the war and continued to live as a slave. When the Marquis de Lafayette discovered this, he testified on behalf or Armistead, and two years later, the Virginia Grand Assembly emancipated Armistead, who changed his last name to Lafayette in honor of the general.

8Elizabeth Freeman

Elizabeth Freeman's courage and determination to face her master created a court case that forever changed Massachusetts. Freeman was born a slave in 1742 in New York. In the 1770s, she was sold to Colonel John Ashley. In Ashley's household, Freeman suffered abuse from the colonel's wife, so she fled the home and refused to return.

Freeman had often heard Ashley and his friends discuss the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and she began to wonder why the statutes set forth in those documents couldn't apply to her. She enlisted the help of Ashley's friend, attorney Theodore Sedgwick, who listened to Freeman's case for freedom.

In 1781, Sedgwick initiated the case Brom and Bett v. Ashley, in which he argued for Freeman's freedom using the Massachusetts Constitution, which stated that all individuals were born free and equal. The jury agreed with the argument, and the case set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

7Roger Sherman

The atmosphere was tense in the meeting room that housed the Constitutional Convention on July 16, 1787. The future of America's fledgling government was at stake, and the delegates couldn't decide how to proceed. The main sticking point was representation in the newly proposed Senate. Naturally, delegates from the larger, Southern states wanted representation to be based proportionally on the amount of financial and economic contribution states made to the federal government. Smaller states opposed this plan and wanted representation to be equal between all states.

Enter Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, the main promoter of the Connecticut Compromise. He and fellow Connecticut delegate Oliver Ellsworth proposed creating one house in which representation was based on each state's population and one in which each state received equal representation. The Constitutional Convention voted five to four to adopt Sherman's plan.

Despite his crucial role in America's founding and the fact that he's the only person to sign all four documents from the American Revolution (the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the 1774 Continental Association), Roger Sherman is largely forgotten today.

6Mary Bowser

Though she never saw combat, Mary Bowser was a spy whose efforts were crucial for her side. Born into slavery in Virginia in 1840, Bowser resided in the Van Lew household. She was sent north to be educated when she was a child, and she returned to the Van Lews after her education was complete. Bowser helped Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union supporter, relay information to Generals Benjamin Butler, Ulysses Grant, and George Sharpe.

Bowser was the most important figure in the Richmond underground, Van Lew's spy ring. She served in the Confederate White House, where she reported what she read, observed, and heard. Because she could read, Bowser was especially useful in her position. In 1995, to honor her contribution to the Union's war effort, Bowser was inducted into the US Army Intelligence Hall of Fame.

5Annie Turner Wittenmeyer

Annie Turner Wittenmyer was a social and political activist, and her work has helped shaped American history. She started her career as a social worker in Civil War army camps in Iowa, but she resigned her post in 1864. Wittenmeyer, intent on making life better for soldiers, started special kitchens at army hospitals. In these kitchens, two women were responsible for properly preparing food that doctors ordered specifically for each patient. This change ensured that patients received only nutritious food that would help their recovery.

With the help of the United States Christian Commission, Wittenmeyer opened her first kitchen in Nashville, Tennessee. By the end of the Civil War, her idea had been adopted by most of the army medical department.

Wittenmeyer became active in the "Women's Crusade," an unorganized anti-alcohol movement. In 1874, she attended a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where the national Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed. She was elected the union's first president, an office she held until 1879. During her years as WCTU president, Wittenmeyer traveled across America, visiting local and state branches of the organization.

4Edmund G. Ross

In 1866, the United States Government was in shambles in the wake of the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson couldn't agree with Congress on the question of how to treat the South. Into this strained situation came Edmund G. Ross, a greenhorn senator from Kansas. The radical Republicans who opposed Johnson couldn't have been happier. Ross had a political track record of opposing the Southern states and their beliefs.

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives formally impeached Andrew Johnson for failing to follow the Tenure of Office Act. On March 4, Johnson's case went to the Senate for trial. His opponents needed to secure 36 guilty votes to remove Johnson from office. Most senators would cast a guilty vote, but Ross wasn't sure of his. When voting started, each senator stood up and declared his vote.

By the time it was Ross's turn to vote, 24 senators had declared Johnson guilty. 11 more "guilty" votes were certain. Ross's vote was all the Senate needed to remove Johnson from office. Ross cast a not guilty vote, and Andrew Johnson was able to finish his presidential term.

3Myra Colby Bradwell

Myra Colby Bradwell spent much of her life working to better women's lives. Her far-reaching influence started in 1868, when she founded the Chicago Legal News, the first Midwestern weekly law journal. She served as business manager and editor of the News, often attacking lawyers and judges for their lack of morals.

Bradwell wielded her extensive legal knowledge and financial influence by securing the passage of two bills she helped write: the Married Woman's Property Act of 1861 and the Earnings Act of 1869. The bills aimed to give married women more control over their property and earnings.

Despite Bradwell's desire to be a lawyer and the practical experience she had gained in her husband's law office, the Illinois state court denied her a license to practice law. She appealed to the Supreme Court, but the court upheld the state's decision. Though she made no more requests to practice law in Illinois, the Supreme Court relented and approved her application in 1890. Bradwell was finally able to realize her dreams.

2Percy Julian

Although he was limited to an eighth-grade education as a result of racial tensions in Alabama, Percy Julian would eventually become a giant in the chemical industry. His first major breakthrough happened between 1932 and 1935. Julian worked closely with one of his fellow students, Josef Pikl, to synthesize physostigmine, a compound that only existed in nature and was crucial in the treatment of glaucoma. In 1935, Julian had the proof he needed to claim that he had, in fact, made the compound in a lab. He had effectively made a way to mass-produce glaucoma treatment.

However, Julian's biggest breakthrough came when he created a method for inexpensive production of cortisone, an important steroid for treating arthritis. The increased production of cortisone resulted in a decrease in price, making the steroid accessible to a wider population. Though Julian's contributions to science and medicine have enabled us to enjoy increased access to steroids, he isn't widely known, most likely as a result of racist attitudes during his lifetime.

1Frank Wills

Frank Wills's vigilance as a night watchman led to one of the most infamous political scandals in American history. On the night of June 17, 1972, 24-year-old Wills was making his rounds at the Watergate office building. He happened to notice a piece of tape placed over the lock of a basement door. Wills removed it, reasoning that an employee probably left the tape over the lock to make it easier for him to come and go. However, on one of his later rounds, he noticed that a piece of tape had again been put over the lock.

Wills called the police, who promptly arrived and locked all the doors, turned off power to the elevators, and conducted a sweep of the entire building. They eventually found five burglars on the sixth floor in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Upon further investigation, police found that the men were acting on orders from Richard Nixon's campaign committee. From there, the Watergate scandal exploded, and Nixon was forced to resign.

And what of the vigilant night watchman Frank Wills? Sadly, he left his job at Watergate soon after the burglary and struggled with employment until his death in 2000.

Ardelia Lee is a freelance writer and blogger who uses her blog, The Unplumbed Sea, and her literary wit to encourage readers everywhere to dive deeper into their books. You can find her on Twitter.

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10 Forgotten Americans Who Made History - Listverse

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Many people shaped US history, yet only a few make their way into textbooks. What of the people who were left out? Some were spies. Some were slaves. All of them worked to create a better country, the present-day United States.

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William Howard Taft served as the 27th President of the United States America. Taft served in office from 1909-1913. Taft was also known for serving as a U.S. chief justice of the Supreme Court. Another thing Taft was known for had nothing to do with politics, but Taft was the heaviest U.S. President ever, on average Taft weighed around 335-340 pounds, he was also only 5'11'' 1/2. Taft was  so fat that in the White House a new bath tub was installed because he couldn't fit in the original one in the White House.
William Howard Taft died on March 8th, 1930, at the age of 72.

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The Nation is very accommodated to the more popular founding fathers but who has history forgot?

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The Nation is very accommodated to the more popular founding fathers but who has history forgot?

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There are many famous founding fathers, some becoming more famous, but who is in the background in these stories?who has time forgot?
http://www.reenactmag.com/john-jay-profile/

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Shays' Rebellion: Definition and Significance | HISTORY.com

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Shays' Rebellion was a series of violent tax protests in Massachusetts from 1786 to 1787. The rebels were mostly ex-Revolutionary War soldiers, including Daniel Shays, who was one of several leaders of the insurrection. Learn more about Shays' Rebellion on HISTORY.com.

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When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon's founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.

Waddles Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon was a popular restaurant in the 1950s for both locals and travelers alike. The drive-in catered to America's postwar obsession with car culture, allowing people to get coffee and a slice of pie without even leaving their vehicle. But if you happened to be black, the owners of Waddles implored you to keep on driving. The restaurant had a sign outside with a very clear message: " White Trade Only - Please."

It's the kind of scene from the 1950s that's so hard for many Americans to imagine happening outside of the Jim Crow South. How could a progressive, northern city like Portland have allowed a restaurant to exclude non-white patrons? This had to be an anomaly, right? In reality it was far too common in Oregon, a state that was explicitly founded as a kind of white utopia.

America's history of racial discrimination is most commonly taught as a southern issue. That's certainly how I learned about it while going to Minnesota public schools in the 1980s and 90s. White people outside of the South seem to learn about the Civil War and civil rights movements from an incredibly safe (and often judgmental) distance.

Racism was generally framed as something that happened in the past and almost always "down there." We learned about the struggles for racial equality in cities like Birmingham and Selma and Montgomery. But what about the racism of Portland, Oregon, a city that is still overwhelmingly white? The struggles there were just as intense - though they are rarely identified in the history books.

According to Oregon's founding constitution, black people were not permitted to live in the state. And that held true until 1926. The small number of black people already living in the state in 1859, when it was admitted to the Union, were sometimes allowed to stay, but the next century of segregation and terrorism at the hands of angry racists made it clear that they were not welcome.

Oregon's Trail to Whitopia
Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon photographed by Carleton Watkins in 1867 (Getty's Open Content Program)
Oregon has had more than its fair share of utopia community experiments. The definitive book on the topic is Eden Within Eden: Oregon's Utopia Heritage, where you'll find plenty of those utopian communities catalogued. But the book kind of misses the forest for the trees in not recognizing the fact that the entire state of Oregon was founded as a kind of racist's utopia. Race isn't explored in the otherwise excellent book.

Thousands would travel to Oregon in the 19th and 20th centuries, looking for their own versions of utopia. Some brave and noble people made the journey that would become cartoonishly immortalized for at least three generations now in the computer game Oregon Trail. But unfortunately for people of color, that pixelated utopia and vision of the promise land was explicitly designed to exclude them in real life.

This is not to pick on Oregon in particular as being particularly racist and terrible. The de facto exclusion of any non-white people from a number of businesses, institutions, and communities occurred throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Oregon seems to have been just a bit more vocal and straightforward about it.

I spoke over the phone with Walidah Imarisha, an educator and expert on black history in Oregon and she was quick to explain that the state is only really exceptional in that it bothered to proclaim its goals of white supremacy so openly.

"What's useful about Oregon as a case study is that Oregon was bold enough to write it down," Imarisha told me. "But the same ideology, policies, and practices that shaped Oregon shaped every state in the Union, as well as this nation as a whole."

Today, while 13 percent of Americans are black, just 2 percent of Oregon's population is black. This is not some accident of history. It's a product of oppressive laws and everyday actions that deliberately excluded non-white people from a fair shot at living a life without additional obstacles being put in their way.

Life's hard enough as it is. But life as a person of color in Oregon would prove to be like trying to play Oregon Trail in a roomful of Klansmen while the computer lab is on fire.

The Messy Birth of Oregon
Oregon territorial map from 1840 (David Rumsey) Joseph Lane, the first territorial governor of Oregon (Wikipedia)
The question of whether Oregon should allow slavery dates back to at least the 1840s. The majority of Oregonians (which is to say the territory's new white residents who were systematically and sometimes violently oppressing its Native peoples) opposed slavery. But they also didn't want to live anywhere near anyone who wasn't white.

Even before it was a state, those in power in Oregon were trying to keep out non-white people. In the summer of 1844, for example, the Legislative Committee passed a provision that said any free black people who were in the state would be subject to flogging if they didn't leave within two years. The floggings were supposed to continue every six months until they left the territory. That provision was revised in December of 1845 to remove the flogging part. Instead, free black people who remained would be offered up "publicly for hire" to any white person who would remove them from the territory.

It seems to me unclear if that provision meant that free blacks would be auctioned off as slaves to people who were on their way out of Oregon. But one thing is clear: the territorial statutes would become irrelevant the following decade when Oregon would formally write its constitution. And that document was no more generous to the tiny black population.

The legislative founders of Oregon weren't exactly the cream of the crop as statesmen. Many of the sixty men who drafted the state's constitution loved to ramble on for hours making bold speeches about minor points of order. One significant subject of debate was how long members of the new government should be allowed to debate for. One particularly long-winded gentleman complained that he was just getting warmed up after 45 minutes.

These guys had plenty to say, but when it came to actually writing a constitution, they were pretty damn lazy. In fact, 172 of the document's 185 sections were directly plagiarized from the constitutions of other states like Ohio and Indiana.

The original parts? As David Schuman explains in his 1995 paper The Creation of the Oregon Constitution, they fell into two camps: limits on state spending and forms of racial exclusion. Somewhat ironically, the racial exclusion sections were included in an article called the Bill of Rights.

The constitution was put to a popular vote in the state in 1857 and included two referendums that were to be voted on independently. The first was whether they should reject slavery. Roughly 75 percent of voters opted to reject the adoption of slavery. The second measure was whether or not to exclude black people from the state. About 89 percent of voters cast their vote in favor of excluding black and mixed race people from the state. And thus, the exclusionary aspects of the state constitution were adopted.

The resulting Article 1, Section 35 of the Oregon state constitution:

No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such negroes, and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them.

The voters who overwhelmingly embraced this exclusion rationalized it not as blind hate, but as a progressive move that was simply keeping their new land "pure." Utopia often means starting from scratch, and just as often it means excluding undesirables.

As one "pioneer" voter who would later become a Republican state senator and a member of the U.S. House explained at a reunion in 1898:

Some believers in the doctrine of abstract human rights interpret this vote against admission of free negroes as an exhibition of prejudices which prevailed agains the African who was not a slave, but I have never so regarded it. It was largely an expression against any mingling of the white with any of the other races, and upon a theory that as we had yet no considerable representation of other races in our midst, we should do nothing to encourage their introduction. We were building a new state on virgin ground; it's people believed it should encourage only the best elements to come to us, and discourage others.

This language about virgin ground and "the best elements," burned into law in the new state, was used as a recruitment tool for other white Americans in the latter half of the 19th century - many of whom were white "refugees" from the south who were fleeing the dissolution of slavery.

"If you look at some of the recruiting materials, in essence they're saying come and build the kind of white homeland, the kind of white utopia that you dream of," Imarisha said. "Other communities of color were also controlled, not with exclusion laws, but the populations were kept purposefully small because the idea behind it was about creating explicitly a white homeland."

Technically the state's exclusion laws were superseded by federal law after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. But Oregon had a rather complicated relationship with that particular Amendment. Having ratified it in 1866, the state then rescinded its ratification when a more racist state government took control in 1868. The move was more symbolic than anything, but Oregon gave the sign that it wasn't on board with racial equality. Astoundingly, it wouldn't be until 1973 (and with very little fanfare) that activists would get the state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment yet again.

Naturally, the state's quest for an all-white utopia also included the oppression of other groups - especially those of Chinese and Japanese descent. Though Asian people were not specifically called out in Oregon's constitutional exclusion laws, the white people of many towns large and small did their best to drive out non-white people any time they got the chance.

As just one example, the white people of La Grande burned that city's Chinatown to the ground in 1893. The Chinese residents fled, with some people getting on the first train out. But some Chinese residents weren't about to be intimidated and set up camp nearby. This wasn't enough for the hateful mobs of La Grande, who broke up the camp and forced anyone remaining to get on trains out of town.

These efforts were decentralized and not officially sanctioned by the state. But as the 1910s and 20s would roll around, a new domestic terror group would re-emerge to expel, harass, and brutalize anyone who wasn't "100 percent American." Some pioneers of the era weren't going to stand for it.

The Golden West and a Place to Belong
Golden West soda fountain circa 1920s (Oregon Encyclopedia)
As rare as the presence of non-white faces were in the 19th and early 20th century, Oregonians of color found sanctuary in the few places that they were welcome.

The Golden West Hotel was unique in that it was owned, operated, and exclusively patronized by black people in Oregon. It was the only place that black people from out of town could rent a room, and it was the central hub of black entertainment, recreation, and dining in Portland.

First opened in 1906, Portland authorities continually tried to shut down the place on trumped up charges of prostitution, gambling, and later for not having the "proper licenses."

When the owners of the Golden West were forced to plea for their license back in 1921 they "pointed out that the hotel and club was practically the only place in the city where negroes could congregate."

Renting a room or patronizing the Golden West's many businesses on the first floor didn't mean that you would live without harassment from Portland's white population. But it did prove to be one of the few places in the city outside of church where black people could find a sense of community.

Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle in Oregon
Cannady in a 1922 newspaper article with a rather cryptic note about her possible death (Oregon Daily Journal) Beatrice Morrow Cannady in an undated photo (Oregonian Archives)
"The way this history gets framed often shows people of color as passive victims," Imarisha tells me. "I think it's important to frame it that people of color are actually active change makers. The changes that would've moved Oregon forward, especially racially, would not have happened without the determination, fortitude, and sheer stubbornness of people of color."

One of those people was Beatrice Morrow Cannady. Born in Texas in 1889, Cannady hopped around the country a bit, attending schools in New Orleans and Houston before moving to the Portland in 1912 and before long she was writing for The Advocate, Oregon's largest black newspaper. By 1914 Cannady was helping to found the Portland chapter of the NAACP and the following year was speaking out against D.W. Griffith's feature length film The Birth of a Nation - a movie filled with hateful stereotypes and glorified the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Cannady's life was filled with personal and professional struggles that seemed neverending. She and her children were refused entry to the main floor of the Oriental Theatre in 1928. And it wasn't even illegal. The Oregon Supreme Court had decided in the 1906 case Taylor v. Cohn that black people could be legally segregated from whites in public places. That particular ruling wasn't struck down in the state until 1953, and even then limits on segregation in the state were only loosely enforced.

Kimberley Mangun's 2010 biography of Cannady, A Force For Change, is both inspiring and depressing. Cannady's story is one of tiny victories hard fought over an incredibly long period of time. Frankly, that's the overwhelming thing about all social and political change. Virtually nothing happens overnight.

But if Cannady's story teaches us anything it's that if you work your ass off and foster a community where people can be a force for good, you too can eventually (one day, maybe, possibly) see minor improvements in the world.

It was in small victories that Oregonians of color had to take solace in the first few decades of the 20th century. Because once the early 1920s hit, the battle for the future of Oregon would involve a group of terrorist cowards who liked to dress up in their bedsheets and burn shit.

The Kowards of the Klavern Arrive
Frederick Louis Gifford, head of the Oregon KKK (1921-24) and a Klan pamphlet (Oregon History Project)
The arrival of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon was swift and terrifying. In 1922 the Klan in Oregon boasted membership of over 14,000 men, with 9,000 of them living in Portland. And they were setting the state aflame. There were frequent cross burnings on the hills outside Portland and around greater Oregon.

The Klan held meetings, openly participated in parades, and held enormous gatherings for initiation ceremonies. One such gathering in 1923 at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem attracted over 1,500 hooded klansmen. They reportedly burned an enormous cross, of course.

As David A. Horowitz explains in his book Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, the entire state was being terrorized. And politicians at every level of government from the state to county to city officials were involved. In 1923, Oregon governor, Walter M. Pierce, and Portland mayor George L. Baker, attended and spoke at a dinner in honor of Grand Dragon Frederick L. Gifford's birthday.

Both the governor and mayor would later claim that they didn't know the event was sponsored by the Klan. Which, if true, is perhaps less vindication for the politicians and more an indictment of just how far the Klan had seeped into mainstream culture in Oregon. But there's almost certainly no way that they were ignorant of what they were celebrating.

One reason to be skeptical? High ranking members of the Klan would meet with high ranking politicians in the state on matters of public policy. And we have the photos to prove it.
Members of the Klan meeting with Portland officials in 1921 (North Coast Oregon)
The August 2, 1921 issue of the Portland Telegram included a photo of Portland city and Multnomah county officials with two Klan members. The mayor of Portland, George L. Baker, is third from the right and the police chief, L.V. Jenkins, is third from the left.

The Telegram was one of the few newspapers in Oregon to openly oppose the Klan at the height of its power in the state. Despite being owned by white Protestant men, the newspaper's adversarial stance against the Klan's terrorism brought concerted campaigns to boycott businesses that advertised in the paper. The paper hemorrhaged thousands of readers and when it folded in 1933 many reportedly blamed the Klan's efforts.

The Klan themselves counted men like Governor Pierce as members in secret minutes obtained in 1968 from the estate of a former state legislator. Colon R. Eberhard died at the age of 86 and while his personal papers were being processed, a folder of over 200 pages of KKK meetings in Oregon was discovered, dating from 1922 until 1924. Those pages weren't handed over to the Oregon Historical Society until 1980. Public mention of their existence wouldn't happen until an article in The Observer newspaper in 1985. Klan membership lists were highly secretive, but politicians like Pierce were discussed in the minutes as being loyal KKK members.

But the Klan's presence in Oregon was far from a secret, even in the 1920s. Not only were the hooded cowards meeting with law enforcement, they were advising them on what they'd like to accomplish - all while getting their picture in the newspaper. As the Telegram would report, the Portland police department was "full to the brink with Klansmen."
Portland Klan meeting in the early 1920s (Oregon History Project)
The warped thing about the Klan's presence in Oregon is just how few people of color were actually living there in the 1920s. The town of La Grande as just one example, which as you'll recall had burned its Chinatown to the ground back in the 1890s, had about 7,000 people in 1920 and just forty-six people of Chinese descent. The town had a mere 15 black people.

People of color were naturally a target for the Klan during this period, but with so few people to irrationally hate for the color of their skin, they turned to campaigns against other groups like Catholics. The Klan, being for American-born Protestants, hated the Roman Catholic church and any of its followers.

Hate is a fickle game when there are so few "others" upon which to focus your gaze. The homogenous state of Oregon was fertile ground to whip young white men into a frenzy. But almost as quickly as it was whipped up, men who were surrounded by so many men like themselves quickly lost interest. People stopped paying dues, leading to a financial crisis within the quickly built organization. By 1926 the Klan in Oregon was a shadow of its former self.

White Oregon After the Klan
Sign in the window of a Portland restaurant circa 1943 (Oregon Historical Society)
Of course, the discrimination didn't stop after the decline of the Klan. White restaurants still wouldn't serve black people in Portland, black people weren't allowed in the city's swimming pools, and the local skating rink set aside a day for black people. This was as late as the early 1960s.

"I do remember the signs downtown: 'We don't serve Negroes, Jews or dogs'," one man recounts in a 1999 documentary from Oregon Public TV titled Local Color. The signs were everywhere. And they spanned over two world wars. War attracted soldiers from out of town, both black and white. Their arrival naturally led to resentment from soldiers who were used to a more tolerant atmosphere than Oregon provided.

The Oregon Daily Journal reported on some black soldiers from California who in the summer of 1918 were angered by a sign they saw in the window of a restaurant in Portland. The sign read, "We employ white help and cater to white trade only." The soldiers entered the restaurant and destroyed the sign. Similarly in 1943, soldiers going off to fight in World War II saw signs in Portland and were outraged.

The segregation in Portland was as stark as anything in the Jim Crow-era South. And Portland's bizarre dearth of black people (bizarre to outsiders who were unaware of the climate) really came to a head during World War II, when an influx of black workers came looking for the plentiful jobs offered by the Kaiser Shipyards.

"Portland was called the most segregated city north of the Mason-Dixon line," Imarisha tells me. "And so the question became where would these [newly arrived black workers] go? Suddenly you have tens of thousands of black folks pouring in when in Portland there was only one tiny neighborhood called the Albina neighborhood that was already overfull with about 2,500 black folks."

The company worked with the city to create Vanport, an enormous new housing development halfway between Vancouver, Washington and Portland - thus the name Vanport.

"At its height there was 100,000 people there and it was 40 percent black, which for anything to be 40 percent black in Oregon was astounding, Imarisha explains. "Vanport was built incredibly shoddily because it was never meant to last."

This temporary insta-town would become Oregon's second largest city, second only to Portland during the second World War.

"In fact the housing authority in Portland called it a blight and wanted Vanport obliterated. And in 1948 they got their wish when Vanport was completely flooded." Imarisha says. Amazingly, the flooding actually started modestly and people had time to leave. But Portland officials insisted that there was nothing to worry about when the first cracks started letting water into the community.

"Remember: Dikes are safe at present," a bulletin from the Portland Housing Authority read on May 30, 1948. "You will be warned if necessary. You will have time to leave. Don't get excited."

People were not warned in time and the city was flooded as the dikes fully gave way. Fifteen people would die in the floods. Less than two weeks later President Truman would travel to Vanport to see the extent of the damage firsthand.

"Because it was made with shoddy material, houses literally washed away off their foundations. All of Vanport was destroyed and about 18,000 people who were living there were left homeless."

The Clash of History and Future in the Pacific Northwest
Ken Webber of Medford, Oregon wears a confederate flag hat and shows the Confederate flag that got him fired as a school bus driver in 2012 (AP)
Oregon today still exists as a white utopia in some respects. The state, much like so many others, is haunted by the residue of less explicit experiments in whitopia. These experiments form the basis of Rich Benjamin's 2009 book Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.

In it, Benjamin travels the country, visiting places that are overwhelmingly white. He meets fascinating characters along the way, and helps to explain places like Oregon and how the actions of the 19th and 20th century bleed into the 21st.

From Searching for Whitopia:

Through most of the twentieth century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly designed to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will.

It's common to have racism without "racists."

I called Benjamin on the phone to talk about his book and what he experienced in the Pacific Northwest. He was quick to tell me that he met lots of interesting, lovely people in the region. But he was also unsettled by the unmistakable symbols of our country's racist history.

"There is and was some sense that the Pacific Northwest could amount to some form of utopia," Benjamin tells me referring to the white supremacist movement in the region. "And Richard Butler knew this himself, the old founder of Aryan Nations."

Butler died in 2004, but was obsessed as so many other white nationalist militants were, with establishing a white utopia in the area. Butler, much like the founders of Oregon, bothered to write it down.

"He identified the Pacific Northwest as what would become an Aryan homeland," Benjamin says. "So the Pacific Northwest has always had a utopic quality to white separatists."

"On the one hand, I saw a lot of can-do spirit, therefore one shouldn't be surprised by all of the technological start-ups both in Oregon and in Washington State. But I also saw a lot of Confederate refugees, to be frank," Benjamin tells me.

"I remember driving through swaths of Washington and Oregon and seeing a lot of Confederate flags," he says. "There are a lot of refugees from the South who I guess are attracted to Oregon not because they're racists but Oregon had a racial homogeneity and a conservatism and a gun culture that they really appreciate."

The Pacific Northwest offers a collision of the old and the new in so many forms. But there's something particularly disturbing about his description of the juxtaposition you can see in tech hubs - the romanticization of some particularly backwards symbols of a revolution that's supposed to be long since dead, yet nurtured in the very land that's supposed to be creating the industries of tomorrow.

"That was shocking, to drive through Oregon and witness so many Confederate flags, juxtaposed with the high-tech futurism," Benjamin tells me.

Oregon's White Utopian Promise Today
Senator Barack Obama looks out to a sea of supporters in Portland on May 18, 2008 (AP)
As Neda Maghbouleh pointed out for an article in the January 2009 issue of Center for New Racial Studies, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama gave Portland newspapers a striking image of its racial makeup. Just look at the photo above from Portland during Senator Obama's presidential campaign. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe Dave Matthews Band was about to go on stage.

The racial composition of any American city is a product of its history. This may seem painfully obvious, but it's something that we need to say out loud and type in bold letters to fully appreciate. The racial composition of any American city is a product of its history. And its a history that so many people in Oregon, in Minnesota, in any other "whitopia" don't seem to be privy to.

The title of Imarisha's most commonly given presentation is Why Aren't There More Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History. She has given the presentation to thousands of people around Oregon over the past four years and she's understandably frustrated that so few Oregonians are aware of something so fundamental to the state's founding. Oregon's history simply isn't being taught in most Oregon schools. And it's because even the teachers have no idea.

"It's still a hidden history today. It's not part of the curriculum that's being taught in public schools in this state. I, in fact, gave a presentation that was mostly public school administrators and public school teachers and I asked them how many of them had known about the exclusionary law before they came to the presentation. Seventy to eighty percent didn't know that Oregon had racial exclusion laws," she tells me.

"The image that the rest of the nation has about Portland is founded a lot on the show Portlandia, right? Keep Portland weird - this sort of idea of this being a white liberal playground. And it's predicated on racial exclusionary laws and the surplus resources that were purposefully kept from communities of color that were redirected into the white community."

This humble blog post barely scratches the surface of the black experience in Oregon, be it the 19th century, 20th century, or today. And it truly isn't meant to pick on Oregon as a lone destination of warped quasi-utopian intolerance. But as Imarisha said, they bothered to write it down.

It's time for white northerners to wake up to the sometimes uncomfortable history of what are now liberal enclaves like Minneapolis, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin. There are stories there that may surprise you. Even if the people committing heinous acts didn't write down their intentions first.

Secondary sources: Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930 by Keneth T. Jackson (1967); A Force For Change: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1912-1936by Kimberley Mangun (2010); Women in Pacific Northwest History edited by Karen J. Blair (1988); Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920sedited by David A. Horowitz (1999); Race, Politics and Denial: Why Oregon Forgot to Ratify the Fourteenth Amendmentby Cheryl A. Brooks (2004); The Creation of the Oregon Constitution by David Schuman (1995); Unwelcome Settlers: Black and Mulatto Oregon Pioneersby K. Keith Richard (1983); Negroes and Their Institutions in Oregon by Thomas C. Hogg (1969); Black Families and Migration to a Multiracial Society: Portland Oregon, 1900-1924by William Toll (1998); A Great Inheritance, A Special Destiny: Barack Obama's Candidacy and the Performance of Racial History in Portland, Oregon by Neda Maghbouleh (2009); "Promised Land" or Armageddon? History, Survivalists, and the Aryan Nations in the Pacific Northwest by Eckard Toy (1986); Matthew Deady and the Federal Judicial Response to Racism in the Early West by Ralph James Mooney (1984)

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When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926.

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Elizabeth Jennings Graham won a lawsuit against New Yorks 3rd avenue railway compony for ejecting her from a streetcar in 1854 because she was an african american.

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The first  National Military Park, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, 1890

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The first  National Military Park, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, 1890

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In 1872, President Ulysses Grant set aside a remarkable region of canyons, geysers, hot springs, and other natural wonders, known as Yellowstone, for the enjoyment of the public. Although Yellowstone was the first National Park, over the next century it was to be followed by thousands of other sites across the country.First National Park, Yellowstone, 1872

Located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, Yellowstone National Park is home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and elk. It also contains approximately one-half of the world's hydrothermal features, over 10,000, including over 300 geysers. Now Yellowstone is just one of nearly 400 National Parks, although it is still among the most visited every year.

First National Military Park, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, 1890
In 1890, Congress began taking steps to protect historic battlefields. Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park on the Georgia-Tennesse border, became the first National Military Park. It contains two major battlefields, Chickamauga, scene of the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War, and Lookout Mountain, where Union troops finally took control of Chattanooga. The Park was followed with designations of other famous Civil War sites, including Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. Today, in addition to the National Military Park designation, battle sites are also classified as National Battlefields, National Battlefield Parks, or National Battlefield Sites, with about two-dozen total in the system.

First National Monument, Devils Tower, 1906
The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorizes the President to designate landmarks, structures, and other objects as National Monuments, without approval from Congress. The first was Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, created by President Theodore Roosevelt. A massive rock formation, rising 867 feet from its base to the summit, it can be seen from many miles away. This site, like others that followed, remains controversial because American Indians consider the monument sacred. Today, there are almost 100 National Monuments.

National Park Service, 1916
The 1916 National Park Service Organic Act established the modern National Park Service, which oversees the various parks, monuments, and other sites that make up the National Park System. In 1970, Congress elaborated on the original Act, saying all units of the system have equal legal standing, regardless of their designation within the national system. In addition to the NPS, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (under the U.S. Department of the Interior), and the U.S. Forest Service (under the U.S. Department of Agriculture) also manage national sites.

First National Historic Site, Salem Maritime, 1938
The Historic Sites Act of 1935 allows the Secretary of the Interior to establish National Historic Sites that have national historical significance, usually because they are associated with a famous individual or event. The first was Salem Maritime National Historic Site, in Salem, Massachusetts, designated in 1938. The Site consists of 12 historic structures and land along the waterfront, as well as a visitor center. It highlights the maritime history of New England, whose shipping played an important role in the early economic development of the United States. Today, there are 78 National Historic Sites in the National Park System.

First National Seashore, Cape Hatteras, 1953
National Seashores were authorized in 1937, and the first, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, on the "Outer Banks" of North Carolina, was established on January 12, 1953. There have been only ten national seashore designations, scattered along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts.

First National Historic Landmark, Sergeant Floyd Monument, 1960
In 1960, the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to make another type of designation: National Historic Landmark. NHLs can be individual objects, buildings or other structures, sites, or entire districts. Unlike other national sites, more than half of the approximately 2,500 National Historic Landmarks are privately owned. All NHLs are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The first National Historic Landmark was the Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, Iowa, which honors the only member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who died on the journey.

First National Lakeshore, Pictured Rocks, 1966
Nearly thirty years after authorizing the designation of seashores, Congress turned to the Great Lakes, and created Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior, near Munising, Michigan, in 1966. There are now four National Lakeshores, all on Lakes Michigan and Superior.

First National Scenic Trail, Appalachian, 1968
In 1968, in order "to provide for the ever-increasing outdoor recreation needs of an expanding population," Congress authorized the creation of National Scenic Trails. The first was the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which stretches through 14 states from Maine to Georgia. In addition to Scenic Trails, National Recreation Trails and National Historic Trails also are part of the National Trails System.

First National River, Buffalo, 1972
A century after the creation of Yellowstone, another designation was created, and the Buffalo river in Arkansas became America's first National River in 1972. Although some development is allowed on designated rivers, the goal is to preserve their original "character."

To learn more about the various national site designations, see the National Park Service's Designation of National Park System Units.

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Parks, Monuments, and other National Sites

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In 1872, President Ulysses Grant set aside a remarkable region of canyons, geysers, hot springs, and other natural wonders, known as Yellowstone, for the enjoyment of the public.

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https://popularresistance.org/deep-racism-the-forgotten-history-of-human-zoos/

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George Washington was NOT the first american president 

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George Washington was NOT the first american president 

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George Washington was not the first president. he was the first President of the United States of America and the current constitution, but the first person to hold the title of "president"  after the Declaration of Independence was Samuel Huntington. https://www.brainjet.com/world/2366690/15-ridiculous-historical-facts-that-the-world-has-completely-forgotten/

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Emma Goldman was an anarchist and a witer. Her early experiences in russia and as an immigrant to the united states laid the groundwork for her later analysis of political and economic problems.

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African Americans and the American Revolution

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African Americans and the American Revolution

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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/

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The forgotten story of the “First Chinese  American”

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The forgotten story of the “First Chinese  American”

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An article that gives more information about Chinese history, and some interesting things you probably didn't know.
https://www.bucknell.edu/about-bucknell/communications/bucknell-magazine/recent-issues/spring-2013/the-forgotten-story-of-the-first-chinese-american

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http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/10-black-history-little-known-facts/#.WphCLtVKvrc

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Unknown Events in Early American History

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Unknown Events in Early American History

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https://listverse.com/2013/04/09/10-lesser-known-events-in-early-american-history/

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Germany tried to colonize Texas.

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The Mainzer Adelsverein at Biebrich am Rhein ( Verein zum Schutze Deutscher Einwanderer in Texas, "Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas"), better known as the Mainzer Adelsverein ( German pronunciation: [ˈmaɪ̯nt͡sɐ ˈaːdəlsfɐˌʔaɪn], "Nobility Society of Mainz"), organized on April 20, 1842, was a colonial attempt to establish a new Germany within the borders of Texas.

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Joseph Warren was, undoubtedly, the hero of Bunker Hill and by dying on that hill that June day in 1775; he became the embodiment of the young nation’s sacrifice.

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Doctor Joseph Warren - Boston National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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While Samuel Adams was away in Philadelphia in 1774, attending to the business of the Continental Congress, Joseph Warren assumed Adam's leadership role in Boston and became involved with the raising of militias and procurement of arms and powder.

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Civil Disobedience in Salem, Massachusetts

Thirty-year-old nurse Sarah Tarrant bravely challenged the British soldiers who occupied her town in February 1775.

Backstory
In November of 1774, Colonel David Mason was commissioned by the Patriots of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as an artillery officer. He had some experience in this during the French and Indian War at Fort William Henry. At the end of the war in 1763, he had formed an artillery company in Boston, Massachusetts. He had bought 17 old French cannon, 12-pounders, and was having them refit and mounted on carriages in Salem, Massachusetts.

Mason had been actively engaged in collecting military stores and making secret preparations for the approaching war, which then appeared inevitable. He purchased a number of cannon, which he committed to the care of Captain Robert Foster, a blacksmith, to affix the iron work to the carriages, and have them otherwise properly prepared for the service of resisting British aggression.

Captain Foster's workshop was on the north side of the North River, over which there was a drawbridge, and the cannon were secreted in and about the premises as securely as possible. About the last of February 1775, a number of these carriages were completed and the guns were mounted. Five thousand flannel cartridges were also prepared for these cannon by the wife and daughters of Colonel Mason.

Leslie's Retreat
An informant alerted British General Thomas Gage at Boston of Mason's activity, and Gage made immediate plans to capture the cannon. On a cold New England Sunday morning, he sent a contingent of 240 troops under Colonel Alexander Leslie to embark onboard a transport, land at Marblehead, and from there march to Salem and take possession of the rebel cannon in the name of His Majesty. They chose Sunday, because they thought it would catch the Puritans in their Meetinghouse at Sunday services.

The British troops arrived at Marblehead on Sunday, February 26, 1775, and the column marched to Salem as fast as possible. Their plan to rely on a Sabbath surprise was thwarted by the citizens of Marblehead, who quickly spread the alarm to Salem. The cry of, "The foe, the foe, they come!" was heard throughout the town, and a prearranged drum beat just outside the Meetinghouse door, and crying out, 'To arms! To arms!'"

Bells were rung and drums were beat to spread the alarm as far and wide as possible. Colonel Mason mounted his horse and rode with all speed to secure the cannon. Some of the guns were conveyed to Buffum's Hill, where some of the guns were hidden in a thick woods. Others were moved to Danvers, and buried in a gravel pit.

At least in part, this urgent call to arms was provoked by the jealous watchfulness of other Americans in Salem. These were Tories, men and women who were loyal to King George III. Some of these, spies according to their Whig neighbors, had revealed the exact location of the hidden cannon to General Gage, commander-in-chief of His Majesty's forces and military governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The British regulars marched briskly in the biting cold toward Salem, with the drum and fife corps playing Yankee Doodle. They planned to cross the bridge over the North River at Salem, find the cannons and destroy them, but they met the people of Salem at the North Bridge. Many were armed, most were angry and all appeared resolved that the Redcoats would not cross this bridge.

After the removal of the guns, Colonel Mason rode into town to watch the movement of the troops. There was no doubt in the minds of the people as to the real purpose of this visit - if the lanterns, hatchets, pickaxes, spades, handspikes, and coils of rope with which the regiment were equipped, had not already given them away. Mason immediately returned to his post on the north side of the bridge.

As soon as the British soldiers came in sight, the northern leaf of the drawbridge was raised to stop their progress. The people had collected on the north side of the river, and calmly awaited their approach. On the opposite side of the North River, minutemen from Salem and Danvers stood armed with everything from muskets to pitchforks and clubs, along with the militia, defiantly facing the British.

When faced with the resolution of the Salem residents, Leslie was urged by his lieutenants to fire on the crowd. At that moment, Captain John Felt was unable to hold his peace any longer. He shouted at Leslie in a voice that was unmistakably heard by civilian and soldier alike, "If you do fire, you will all be dead men!"

Colonel Leslie had become thoroughly convinced of the determination of the inhabitants to resist a forcible passage over the bridge, and he conferred with his officers. Still unwilling to abandon the mission, he advanced and said to the by-standers, "I am determined to pass over this bridge before I return to Boston, if I remain here until next autumn."

Captain Felt, to whom this remark was addressed, answered that "nobody would care for that." The Colonel replied, "By God, I will not be defeated;" to which Felt coolly answered, "You must acknowledge that you have been already baffled." And then was heard a firm but gentle voice, telling Colonel Leslie not to fire "upon these innocent people." Leslie turned around and inquired "who are you, sir?" The man replied, "I am Thomas Barnard, a minister of the Gospel and my mission is peace."

The Colonel complained that his soldiers were insulted, and expressed his determination to cross the bridge, saying he was upon the King's highway and would not be prevented from passing freely over it. An old man replied "it is not the King's highway, it is a road built by the owners of the lots on the other side, and no king, country or town has any control over it."

Almost an hour and a half had been consumed in the fruitless attempt to pass the bridge, and the day was fast drawing to a close. Mason on the northern side of the bridge was standing on a ladder at the top of the leaf, where he could address Leslie, with whom he was personally acquainted. A conference was held, in which Felt, Barnard, and Mason participated.

This conference resulted in Leslie's pledging his word that if the inhabitants would allow him to march in a peaceable manner not above fifty rods beyond the bridge, he would then return, without molesting any person or property. His orders were to pass the bridge, and he could not disobey them. Intercession was made with the people, by Mason and others, that they should accept these terms.

The inhabitants, who were not prepared to enter into the conflict, including the women who always proved themselves in these times which tried men's souls, assembled on a hill, where they could see all that was happening at the bridge, and they cheered, waved handkerchiefs and other tokens of encouragement to their husbands, fathers and brothers engaged in the melee.

There was scarcely any danger in allowing the troops to pass, for the guns had been secured and placed beyond their reach. The preliminaries settled and the distance which the regiment was to march beyond the bridge accurately ascertained, the drawbridge was lowered, and the troops quietly passed over.

Tarrant's Challenge
The feelings of the inhabitants, including those of the gentler sex, were highly excited by the appearance of British troops in their streets on the Sabbath, and while the soldiers were in the act of turning for their return march, a nurse named Sarah Tarrant, in one of the houses nearby, peered out of an upstairs window.

"Go home and tell your master he has sent you on a fool's errand, and has broken the peace of our Sabbath; what! do you think we were born in the woods, to be frightened by owls?" Sarah shouted at the Redcoats. (This was a common expression of the time that was meant to indicate that the speaker was accustomed to danger and could not be easily frightened.)

When one angered British trooper raised his weapon and took aim at her, she exclaimed, "Fire if you have the courage, but I doubt it!"

No shots were fired, and Leslie then retreated to his transport, and sailed back to Boston empty-handed. His conduct did not meet with the approval of his superiors, and for the failure of this expedition he was tried by a court martial, but was afterwards restored to his former rank.

There were eight military companies in Marblehead at that time, comprising nearly the whole male population, between sixteen and sixty years of age. They had all promptly assembled, and were ordered to station themselves behind the houses and fences along the road, prepared to attack the British on their return from Salem if hostile measures had been used by them. If no act of violence upon the persons or property of the people was committed, they were ordered not to show themselves, but to allow the British detachment to return unmolested to their transport.

The failure of this expedition should have convinced the ruling powers of the unconquerable spirit of the people, and their resolution to defend their just rights and privileges.

Sarah Tarrant lived to the ripe old age of 85, and died at Salem in May 1828.

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Sarah Tarrant | History of American Women

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Thirty-year-old nurse Sarah Tarrant bravely challenged the British soldiers who occupied her town in February 1775. Backstory In November of 1774, Colonel David Mason was commissioned by the Patriots of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as an artillery officer. He had some experience in this during the French and Indian War at Fort William Henry.

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10 Lesser-Known Events in American History

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10 Lesser-Known Events in American History

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https://listverse.com/2013/02/04/10-lesser-known-events-in-american-history/

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http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/shows/list/underground-railroad/stories-freedom/henry-box-brown/

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Do you know what a chautauqua is? If you don't live in a city like Boulder, Colorado, which has a large auditorium and park named after the movement, you might be drawing a blank. But at the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans would have been familiar with the movement-especially those who lived in the Midwest. As Julie R. Nelson writes, chautaquas didn't just educate Americans. They changed the lives of Midwestern women between 1878 and 1900, setting the stage for new gender roles in the twentieth century.

Chautauquas were the brainchild of John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister, and Lewis Miller, a businessman. Together, they reimagined an outdoor Sunday school training program on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York as the Chautauqua Institution-a kind of assembly designed to introduce attendees to new ideas and education. The concept spread throughout the United States as chautauquas in rural locations provided attendees with an ever-changing array of lectures, concerts, and other cultural opportunities.

The majority of Chautauqua participants were women at a time when strict social roles affected their educational opportunities.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, as the movement was called, also provided a four-year correspondence course for attendees. Nelson writes that it was one of the few ways rural people could get a liberal arts education. The curriculum started out as a reading list, then morphed into a formal course that offered a degree. Rooted in both spirituality and art, the courses caught on across the Midwest.

Chautauquas "satisfied an unspoken need" for rural women, writes Nelson. The majority of participants were women at a time when strict social roles affected women's educational opportunities. "There existed a fear in the hearts of many families that education...might jeopardize a daughter's success in marriage and motherhood," Nelson writes. Women were discouraged from pursuing a liberal arts education, and the few opportunities available for education in the 19th century emphasized their "proper" sphere: the home.

But a CLSC education took place in the home-and since it fell within women's sphere, it allowed women to do things like keep house and mother their children while learning. The progressive, student-paced program was ideal for nursing mothers and housewives, and offered women a social outlet during conversations with other participants. This "subtly expanded women's sphere and renegotiated gender interactions" as women adopted active roles within the organization and mixed freely with men.

It was a "subtle revolution," writes Nelson-one that women carried into other areas of their lives. For Nelson, the most lasting legacy of the chautauquas was the way in which it enabled a "bigendered culture," and that culture opened up political and social opportunities that had previously been off-limits to Midwestern women.

Chatauquas, which Theodore Roosevelt called "the most American thing in America," had other legacies, too. Everything from TED talks to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were influenced by chautauquas, and multiple Chautauqua communities and facilities still exist today. The term may be nearly obsolete, but the movement's commitment isn't.

JSTOR Citations

By: Julie R. Nelson

Agricultural History , Vol. 70, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 653-671

Agricultural History Society

Comments are closed.

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The Forgotten Movement That Changed American Women's Lives | JSTOR Daily

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Do you know what a chautauqua is? If you don't live in a city like Boulder, Colorado, which has a large auditorium and park named after the movement, you might be drawing a blank. But at the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans would have been familiar with the movement-especially those who lived in the Midwest.

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Timeline on millitary women coming to war

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Timeline on millitary women coming to war

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http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/images/nov/women_military_timeline.pdf

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Tarrant

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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( man-DEH-lə; Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬamandɛ̂ːla]; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

A Xhosa, Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, his administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. Internationally, Mandela acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a second presidential term and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Globally regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Thembu clan name, Madiba, and described as the " Father of the Nation".

Childhood: 1918-1934

Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then part of South Africa's Cape Province. Given the forename Rolihlahla, a Xhosa term colloquially meaning "troublemaker", in later years he became known by his clan name, Madiba. His patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was ruler of the Thembu Kingdom in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa's modern Eastern Cape province. One of Ngubengcuka's sons, named Mandela, was Nelson's grandfather and the source of his surname. Because Mandela was the king's child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan, a so-called "Left-Hand House", the descendants of his cadet branch of the royal family were morganatic, ineligible to inherit the throne but recognised as hereditary royal councillors.

Nelson Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela (1880-1928), was a local chief and councillor to the monarch; he was appointed to the position in 1915, after his predecessor was accused of corruption by a governing white magistrate. In 1926, Gadla was also sacked for corruption, but Nelson was told that his father had lost his job for standing up to the magistrate's unreasonable demands. A devotee of the god Qamata, Gadla was a polygamist with four wives, four sons and nine daughters, who lived in different villages. Nelson's mother was Gadla's third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Right Hand House and a member of the amaMpemvu clan of the Xhosa.

No one in my family had ever attended school ... On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name, I have no idea.

Mandela later stated that his early life was dominated by traditional Xhosa custom and taboo. He grew up with two sisters in his mother's in the village of Qunu, where he tended herds as a cattle-boy and spent much time outside with other boys. Both his parents were illiterate, but his mother, being a devout Christian, sent him to a local Methodist school when he was about seven. Baptised a Methodist, Mandela was given the English forename of "Nelson" by his teacher. When Mandela was about nine, his father came to stay at Qunu, where he died of an undiagnosed ailment that Mandela believed to be lung disease. Feeling "cut adrift", he later said that he inherited his father's "proud rebelliousness" and "stubborn sense of fairness".

Mandela's mother took him to the "Great Place" palace at Mqhekezweni, where he was entrusted to the guardianship of the Thembu regent, Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo. Although he did not see his mother again for many years, Mandela felt that Jongintaba and his wife Noengland treated him as their own child, raising him alongside their son, Justice, and daughter, Nomafu. As Mandela attended church services every Sunday with his guardians, Christianity became a significant part of his life. He attended a Methodist mission school located next to the palace, where he studied English, Xhosa, history and geography. He developed a love of African history, listening to the tales told by elderly visitors to the palace, and was influenced by the anti-imperialist rhetoric of a visiting chief, Joyi. Nevertheless, at the time he considered the European colonizers not as oppressors but as benefactors who had brought education and other benefits to southern Africa. Aged 16, he, Justice and several other boys travelled to Tyhalarha to undergo the ulwaluko circumcision ritual that symbolically marked their transition from boys to men; afterwards he was given the name Dalibunga.

Clarkebury, Healdtown, and Fort Hare: 1934-1940

Intending to gain skills needed to become a privy councillor for the Thembu royal house, Mandela began his secondary education in 1933 at Clarkebury Methodist High School in Engcobo, a Western-style institution that was the largest school for black Africans in Thembuland. Made to socialise with other students on an equal basis, he claimed that he lost his "stuck up" attitude, becoming best friends with a girl for the first time; he began playing sports and developed his lifelong love of gardening. He completed his Junior Certificate in two years, and in 1937 he moved to Healdtown, the Methodist college in Fort Beaufort attended by most Thembu royalty, including Justice. The headmaster emphasised the superiority of European culture and government, but Mandela became increasingly interested in native African culture, making his first non-Xhosa friend, a speaker of Sotho, and coming under the influence of one of his favourite teachers, a Xhosa who broke taboo by marrying a Sotho. Mandela spent much of his spare time at Healdtown as a long-distance runner and boxer, and in his second year he became a prefect.

In 1939, with Jongintaba's backing, Mandela began work on a BA degree at the University of Fort Hare, an elite black institution of approximately 150 students in Alice, Eastern Cape. He studied English, anthropology, politics, "native administration", and Roman Dutch law in his first year, desiring to become an interpreter or clerk in the Native Affairs Department. Mandela stayed in the Wesley House dormitory, befriending his own kinsman, K. D. Matanzima, as well as Oliver Tambo, who became a close friend and comrade for decades to come. He took up ballroom dancing, performed in a drama society play about Abraham Lincoln, and gave Bible classes in the local community as part of the Student Christian Association. Although he had friends who held connections to the African National Congress (ANC) who wanted South Africa to be independent of the British Empire, Mandela avoided any involvement with the nascent movement, and became a vocal supporter of the British war effort when the Second World War broke out. He helped establish a first-year students' house committee which challenged the dominance of the second-years, and at the end of his first year became involved in a students' representative council (SRC) boycott against the quality of food, for which he was suspended from the university; he never returned to complete his degree.

Arriving in Johannesburg: 1941-1943

Returning to Mqhekezweni in December 1940, Mandela found that Jongintaba had arranged marriages for him and Justice; dismayed, they fled to Johannesburg via Queenstown, arriving in April 1941. Mandela found work as a night watchman at Crown Mines, his "first sight of South African capitalism in action", but was fired when the induna (headman) discovered that he was a runaway. He stayed with a cousin in George Goch Township, who introduced Mandela to realtor and ANC activist Walter Sisulu. The latter secured Mandela a job as an articled clerk at the law firm of Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, a company run by Lazar Sidelsky, a liberal Jew sympathetic to the ANC's cause. At the firm, Mandela befriended Gaur Radebe-a Hlubi member of the ANC and Communist Party-and Nat Bregman, a Jewish communist who became his first white friend. Mandela attended Communist Party gatherings, where he was impressed that Europeans, Africans, Indians, and Coloureds mixed as equals. He later stated that he did not join the party because its atheism conflicted with his Christian faith, and because he saw the South African struggle as being racially based rather than as class warfare. To continue his higher education, Mandela signed up to a University of South Africa correspondence course, working on his bachelor's degree at night.

Earning a small wage, Mandela rented a room in the house of the Xhoma family in the Alexandra township; despite being rife with poverty, crime and pollution, Alexandra always remained a special place for him. Although embarrassed by his poverty, he briefly dated a Swazi woman before unsuccessfully courting his landlord's daughter. To save money and be closer to downtown Johannesburg, Mandela moved into the compound of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, living among miners of various tribes; as the compound was visited by various chiefs, he once met the Queen Regent of Basutoland. In late 1941, Jongintaba visited Johannesburg-there forgiving Mandela for running away-before returning to Thembuland, where he died in the winter of 1942. Mandela and Justice arrived a day late for the funeral. After he passed his BA exams in early 1943, Mandela returned to Johannesburg to follow a political path as a lawyer rather than become a privy councillor in Thembuland. He later stated that he experienced no epiphany, but that he "simply found [himself] doing so, and could not do otherwise."

Revolutionary activity

Law studies and the ANC Youth League: 1943-1949

Mandela began studying law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was the only black African student and faced racism. There, he befriended liberal and communist European, Jewish and Indian students, among them Joe Slovo and Ruth First. Becoming increasingly politicised, Mandela marched in August 1943 in support of a successful bus boycott to reverse fare rises. Joining the ANC, he was increasingly influenced by Sisulu, spending time with other activists at Sisulu's Orlando house, including his old friend Oliver Tambo. In 1943, Mandela met Anton Lembede, an ANC member affiliated with the "Africanist" branch of African nationalism, which was virulently opposed to a racially united front against colonialism and imperialism or to an alliance with the communists. Despite his friendships with non-blacks and communists, Mandela embraced Lembede's views, believing that black Africans should be entirely independent in their struggle for political self-determination. Deciding on the need for a youth wing to mass-mobilise Africans in opposition to their subjugation, Mandela was among a delegation that approached ANC president Alfred Bitini Xuma on the subject at his home in Sophiatown; the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) was founded on Easter Sunday 1944 in the Bantu Men's Social Centre, with Lembede as president and Mandela as a member of its executive committee.

Mandela and Evelyn in July 1944 at Walter and Albertina Sisulu's wedding party in the Bantu Men's Social Centre

At Sisulu's house, Mandela met Evelyn Mase, a trainee nurse and ANC activist from Engcobo, Transkei. Entering a relationship and marrying in October 1944, they initially lived with her relatives until moving into a rented house in the township of Orlando in early 1946. Their first child, Madiba "Thembi" Thembekile, was born in February 1945; a daughter, Makaziwe, was born in 1947 but died of meningitis nine months later. Mandela enjoyed home life, welcoming his mother and his sister, Leabie, to stay with him. In early 1947, his three years of articles ended at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, and he decided to become a full-time student, subsisting on loans from the Bantu Welfare Trust.

In July 1947, Mandela rushed Lembede, who was ill, to hospital, where he died; he was succeeded as ANCYL president by the more moderate Peter Mda, who agreed to co-operate with communists and non-blacks, appointing Mandela ANCYL secretary. Mandela disagreed with Mda's approach, and in December 1947 supported an unsuccessful measure to expel communists from the ANCYL, considering their ideology un-African. In 1947, Mandela was elected to the executive committee of the ANC's Transvaal Province branch, serving under regional president C. S. Ramohanoe. When Ramohanoe acted against the wishes of the committee by co-operating with Indians and communists, Mandela was one of those who forced his resignation.

In the South African general election in 1948, in which only whites were permitted to vote, the Afrikaner-dominated Herenigde Nasionale Party under Daniel François Malan took power, soon uniting with the Afrikaner Party to form the National Party. Openly racialist, the party codified and expanded racial segregation with new apartheid legislation. Gaining increasing influence in the ANC, Mandela and his party cadre allies began advocating direct action against apartheid, such as boycotts and strikes, influenced by the tactics already employed by South Africa's Indian community. Xuma did not support these measures and was removed from the presidency in a vote of no confidence, replaced by James Moroka and a more militant executive committee containing Sisulu, Mda, Tambo and Godfrey Pitje. Mandela later related that he and his colleagues had "guided the ANC to a more radical and revolutionary path." Having devoted his time to politics, Mandela failed his final year at Witwatersrand three times; he was ultimately denied his degree in December 1949.

Defiance Campaign and Transvaal ANC Presidency: 1950-1954

The ANC's tricolour flag; black for the people, green for the land, and gold for the resources of Africa

Mandela took Xuma's place on the ANC national executive in March 1950, and that same year was elected national president of the ANCYL. In March, the Defend Free Speech Convention was held in Johannesburg, bringing together African, Indian and communist activists to call a May Day general strike in protest against apartheid and white minority rule. Mandela opposed the strike because it was multi-racial and not ANC-led, but a majority of black workers took part, resulting in increased police repression and the introduction of the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950, affecting the actions of all protest groups. At the ANC national conference of December 1951, he continued arguing against a racially united front, but was outvoted.

Thereafter, Mandela rejected Lembede's Africanism and embraced the idea of a multi-racial front against apartheid. Influenced by friends like Moses Kotane and by the Soviet Union's support for wars of national liberation, his mistrust of communism broke down and he began reading literature by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong, eventually embracing the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. Commenting on communism, he later stated that he "found [himself] strongly drawn to the idea of a classless society which, to [his] mind, was similar to traditional African culture where life was shared and communal." In April 1952, Mandela began work at the H.M. Basner law firm, which was owned by a communist, although his increasing commitment to work and activism meant he spent less time with his family.

In 1952, the ANC began preparation for a joint Defiance Campaign against apartheid with Indian and communist groups, founding a National Voluntary Board to recruit volunteers. The campaign was designed to follow the path of nonviolent resistance influenced by Mahatma Gandhi; some supported this for ethical reasons, but Mandela instead considered it pragmatic. At a Durban rally on 22 June, Mandela addressed an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, initiating the campaign protests for which he was arrested and briefly interned in Marshall Square prison. These events established Mandela as one of the best-known black political figures in South Africa. With further protests, the ANC's membership grew from 20,000 to 100,000 members; the government responded with mass arrests and introduced the Public Safety Act, 1953 to permit martial law. In May, authorities banned Transvaal ANC president J. B. Marks from making public appearances; unable to maintain his position, he recommended Mandela as his successor. Although Africanists opposed his candidacy, Mandela was elected to be regional president in October.

Mandela's former home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto

In July 1952, Mandela was arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act and stood trial as one of the 21 accused-among them Moroka, Sisulu and Yusuf Dadoo-in Johannesburg. Found guilty of "statutory communism", a term that the government used to describe most opposition to apartheid, their sentence of nine months' hard labour was suspended for two years. In December, Mandela was given a six-month ban from attending meetings or talking to more than one individual at a time, making his Transvaal ANC presidency impractical, and during this period the Defiance Campaign petered out. In September 1953, Andrew Kunene read out Mandela's "No Easy Walk to Freedom" speech at a Transvaal ANC meeting; the title was taken from a quote by Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, a seminal influence on Mandela's thought. The speech laid out a contingency plan for a scenario in which the ANC was banned. This Mandela Plan, or M-Plan, involved dividing the organisation into a cell structure with a more centralised leadership.

Mandela obtained work as an attorney for the firm Terblanche and Briggish, before moving to the liberal-run Helman and Michel, passing qualification exams to become a full-fledged attorney. In August 1953, Mandela and Tambo opened their own law firm, Mandela and Tambo, operating in downtown Johannesburg. The only African-run law firm in the country, it was popular with aggrieved black people, often dealing with cases of police brutality. Disliked by the authorities, the firm was forced to relocate to a remote location after their office permit was removed under the Group Areas Act; as a result, their clientele dwindled. As a lawyer of aristocratic heritage, Mandela was part of Johannesburg's elite black middle-class, and accorded much respect from the black community. Although a second daughter, Makaziwe Phumia, was born in May 1954, Mandela's relationship with Evelyn became strained, and she accused him of adultery. He may have had affairs with ANC member Lillian Ngoyi and secretary Ruth Mompati; various individuals close to Mandela in this period have stated that the latter bore him a child. Disgusted by her son's behaviour, Nosekeni returned to Transkei, while Evelyn embraced the Jehovah's Witnesses and rejected Mandela's preoccupation with politics.

Congress of the People and the Treason Trial: 1955-1961

We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.

- Opening words of the Freedom Charter

After taking part in the unsuccessful protest to prevent the forced relocation of all black people from the Sophiatown suburb of Johannesburg in February 1955, Mandela concluded that violent action would prove necessary to end apartheid and white minority rule. On his advice, Sisulu requested weaponry from the People's Republic of China, which was denied. Although the Chinese government supported the anti-apartheid struggle, they believed the movement insufficiently prepared for guerrilla warfare. With the involvement of the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions and the Congress of Democrats, the ANC planned a Congress of the People, calling on all South Africans to send in proposals for a post-apartheid era. Based on the responses, a Freedom Charter was drafted by Rusty Bernstein, calling for the creation of a democratic, non-racialist state with the nationalisation of major industry. The charter was adopted at a June 1955 conference in Kliptown; 3,000 delegates attended the event, which was forcibly closed down by police. The tenets of the Freedom Charter remained important for Mandela, and in 1956 he described it as "an inspiration to the people of South Africa".

Following the end of a second ban in September 1955, Mandela went on a working holiday to Transkei to discuss the implications of the Bantu Authorities Act, 1951 with local Xhosa chiefs, also visiting his mother and Noengland before proceeding to Cape Town. In March 1956, he received his third ban on public appearances, restricting him to Johannesburg for five years, but he often defied it. Mandela's marriage broke down and Evelyn left him, taking their children to live with her brother. Initiating divorce proceedings in May 1956, she claimed that Mandela had physically abused her; he denied the allegations and fought for custody of their children. She withdrew her petition of separation in November, but Mandela filed for divorce in January 1958; the divorce was finalised in March, with the children placed in Evelyn's care. During the divorce proceedings, he began courting a social worker, Winnie Madikizela, whom he married in Bizana in June 1958. She later became involved in ANC activities, spending several weeks in prison. Together they had two children: Zenani, born in February 1959, and Zindziswa (1960-2020).

In December 1956, Mandela was arrested alongside most of the ANC national executive and accused of "high treason" against the state. Held in Johannesburg Prison amid mass protests, they underwent a preparatory examination before being granted bail. The defence's refutation began in January 1957, overseen by defence lawyer Vernon Berrangé, and continued until the case was adjourned in September. In January 1958, Oswald Pirow was appointed to prosecute the case, and in February the judge ruled that there was "sufficient reason" for the defendants to go on trial in the Transvaal Supreme Court. The formal Treason Trial began in Pretoria in August 1958, with the defendants successfully applying to have the three judges-all linked to the governing National Party-replaced. In August, one charge was dropped, and in October the prosecution withdrew its indictment, submitting a reformulated version in November which argued that the ANC leadership committed high treason by advocating violent revolution, a charge the defendants denied.

In April 1959, Africanists dissatisfied with the ANC's united front approach founded the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC); Mandela disagreed with the PAC's racially exclusionary views, describing them as "immature" and "naïve". Both parties took part in an anti-pass campaign in early 1960, in which Africans burned the passes that they were legally obliged to carry. One of the PAC-organised demonstrations was fired upon by police, resulting in the deaths of 69 protesters in the Sharpeville massacre. The incident brought international condemnation of the government and resulted in rioting throughout South Africa, with Mandela publicly burning his pass in solidarity.

Responding to the unrest, the government implemented state of emergency measures, declaring martial law and banning the ANC and PAC; in March, they arrested Mandela and other activists, imprisoning them for five months without charge in the unsanitary conditions of the Pretoria Local prison. Imprisonment caused problems for Mandela and his co-defendants in the Treason Trial; their lawyers could not reach them, and so it was decided that the lawyers would withdraw in protest until the accused were freed from prison when the state of emergency was lifted in late August 1960. Over the following months, Mandela used his free time to organise an All-In African Conference near Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in March 1961, at which 1,400 anti-apartheid delegates met, agreeing on a stay-at-home strike to mark 31 May, the day South Africa became a republic. On 29 March 1961, six years after the Treason Trial began, the judges produced a verdict of not guilty, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused of "high treason", since they had advocated neither communism nor violent revolution; the outcome embarrassed the government.

MK, the SACP, and African tour: 1961-62

Disguised as a chauffeur, Mandela travelled around the country incognito, organising the ANC's new cell structure and the planned mass stay-at-home strike. Referred to as the "Black Pimpernel" in the press-a reference to Emma Orczy's 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel-a warrant for his arrest was put out by the police. Mandela held secret meetings with reporters, and after the government failed to prevent the strike, he warned them that many anti-apartheid activists would soon resort to violence through groups like the PAC's Poqo. He believed that the ANC should form an armed group to channel some of this violence in a controlled direction, convincing both ANC leader Albert Luthuli -who was morally opposed to violence-and allied activist groups of its necessity.

Inspired by the actions of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution, in 1961 Mandela, Sisulu and Slovo co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation", abbreviated MK). Becoming chairman of the militant group, Mandela gained ideas from literature on guerrilla warfare by Marxist militants Mao and Che Guevara as well as from the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Although initially declared officially separate from the ANC so as not to taint the latter's reputation, MK was later widely recognised as the party's armed wing. Most early MK members were white communists who were able to conceal Mandela in their homes; after hiding in communist Wolfie Kodesh's flat in Berea, Mandela moved to the communist-owned Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, there joined by Raymond Mhlaba, Slovo and Bernstein, who put together the MK constitution. Although in later life Mandela denied, for political reasons, ever being a member of the Communist Party, historical research published in 2011 strongly suggested that he had joined in the late 1950s or early 1960s. This was confirmed by both the SACP and the ANC after Mandela's death. According to the SACP, he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee.

We of Umkhonto have always sought to achieve liberation without bloodshed and civil clash. Even at this late hour, we hope that our first actions will awaken everyone to a realization of the dangerous situation to which Nationalist policy is leading. We hope that we will bring the Government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late so that both government and its policies can be changed before matters reach the desperate stage of civil war.

- Statement released by MK to announce the start of their sabotage campaign

Operating through a cell structure, MK planned to carry out acts of sabotage that would exert maximum pressure on the government with minimum casualties; they sought to bomb military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transport links at night, when civilians were not present. Mandela stated that they chose sabotage because it was the least harmful action, did not involve killing, and offered the best hope for racial reconciliation afterwards; he nevertheless acknowledged that should this have failed then guerrilla warfare might have been necessary. Soon after ANC leader Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, MK publicly announced its existence with 57 bombings on Dingane's Day (16 December) 1961, followed by further attacks on New Year's Eve.

The ANC decided to send Mandela as a delegate to the February 1962 meeting of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Leaving South Africa in secret via Bechuanaland, on his way Mandela visited Tanganyika and met with its president, Julius Nyerere. Arriving in Ethiopia, Mandela met with Emperor Haile Selassie I, and gave his speech after Selassie's at the conference. After the symposium, he travelled to Cairo, Egypt, admiring the political reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and in April 1962 he went to Morocco where asked El Khatib to meet the king to ask him to give him £5,000. The next day he got the £5,000 along with some weapons and training to Mandela's soldier, and then went to Tunis, Tunisia, where President Habib Bourguiba gave him £5,000 for weaponry. He proceeded to Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, receiving funds from Liberian president William Tubman and Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré. He left Africa for London, England, where he met anti-apartheid activists, reporters and prominent politicians. Upon returning to Ethiopia, he began a six-month course in guerrilla warfare, but completed only two months before being recalled to South Africa by the ANC's leadership.

Imprisonment

Arrest and Rivonia trial: 1962-1964

On 5 August 1962, police captured Mandela along with fellow activist Cecil Williams near Howick. Many MK members suspected that the authorities had been tipped off with regard to Mandela's whereabouts, although Mandela himself gave these ideas little credence. In later years, Donald Rickard, a former American diplomat, revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency, which feared Mandela's associations with communists, had informed the South African police of his location. Jailed in Johannesburg's Marshall Square prison, Mandela was charged with inciting workers' strikes and leaving the country without permission. Representing himself with Slovo as legal advisor, Mandela intended to use the trial to showcase "the ANC's moral opposition to racism" while supporters demonstrated outside the court. Moved to Pretoria, where Winnie could visit him, he began correspondence studies for a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of London International Programmes. His hearing began in October, but he disrupted proceedings by wearing a traditional , refusing to call any witnesses, and turning his plea of mitigation into a political speech. Found guilty, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment; as he left the courtroom, supporters sang " Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika".

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realised. But if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

On 11 July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm, arresting those that they found there and uncovering paperwork documenting MK's activities, some of which mentioned Mandela. The Rivonia Trial began at Pretoria Supreme Court in October, with Mandela and his comrades charged with four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government; their chief prosecutor was Percy Yutar. Judge Quartus de Wet soon threw out the prosecution's case for insufficient evidence, but Yutar reformulated the charges, presenting his new case from December 1963 until February 1964, calling 173 witnesses and bringing thousands of documents and photographs to the trial.

Although four of the accused denied involvement with MK, Mandela and the other five accused admitted sabotage but denied that they had ever agreed to initiate guerrilla war against the government. They used the trial to highlight their political cause; at the opening of the defence's proceedings, Mandela gave his three-hour " I Am Prepared to Die" speech. That speech-which was inspired by Castro's " History Will Absolve Me"-was widely reported in the press despite official censorship. The trial gained international attention; there were global calls for the release of the accused from the United Nations and World Peace Council, while the University of London Union voted Mandela to its presidency. On 12 June 1964, justice De Wet found Mandela and two of his co-accused guilty on all four charges; although the prosecution had called for the death sentence to be applied, the judge instead condemned them to life imprisonment.

Robben Island: 1964-1982

In 1964, Mandela and his co-accused were transferred from Pretoria to the prison on Robben Island, remaining there for the next 18 years. Isolated from non-political prisoners in Section B, Mandela was imprisoned in a damp concrete cell measuring 8 feet (2.4 m) by 7 feet (2.1 m), with a straw mat on which to sleep. Verbally and physically harassed by several white prison wardens, the Rivonia Trial prisoners spent their days breaking rocks into gravel, until being reassigned in January 1965 to work in a lime quarry. Mandela was initially forbidden to wear sunglasses, and the glare from the lime permanently damaged his eyesight. At night, he worked on his LLB degree, which he was obtaining from the University of London through a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall, Oxford, but newspapers were forbidden, and he was locked in solitary confinement on several occasions for the possession of smuggled news clippings. He was initially classified as the lowest grade of prisoner, Class D, meaning that he was permitted one visit and one letter every six months, although all mail was heavily censored.

The political prisoners took part in work and hunger strikes-the latter considered largely ineffective by Mandela-to improve prison conditions, viewing this as a microcosm of the anti-apartheid struggle. ANC prisoners elected him to their four-man "High Organ" along with Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba, and he involved himself in a group, named Ulundi, that represented all political prisoners (including Eddie Daniels) on the island, through which he forged links with PAC and Yu Chi Chan Club members. Initiating the "University of Robben Island", whereby prisoners lectured on their own areas of expertise, he debated socio-political topics with his comrades.

Though attending Christian Sunday services, Mandela studied Islam. He also studied Afrikaans, hoping to build a mutual respect with the warders and convert them to his cause. Various official visitors met with Mandela, most significantly the liberal parliamentary representative Helen Suzman of the Progressive Party, who championed Mandela's cause outside of prison. In September 1970, he met British Labour Party politician Denis Healey. South African Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger visited in December 1974, but he and Mandela did not get along with each other. His mother visited in 1968, dying shortly after, and his firstborn son Thembi died in a car accident the following year; Mandela was forbidden from attending either funeral. His wife was rarely able to see him, being regularly imprisoned for political activity, and his daughters first visited in December 1975. Winnie was released from prison in 1977 but was forcibly settled in Brandfort and remained unable to see him.

From 1967 onwards, prison conditions improved. Black prisoners were given trousers rather than shorts, games were permitted, and the standard of their food was raised. In 1969, an escape plan for Mandela was developed by Gordon Bruce, but it was abandoned after the conspiracy was infiltrated by an agent of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), who hoped to see Mandela shot during the escape. In 1970, Commander Piet Badenhorst became commanding officer. Mandela, seeing an increase in the physical and mental abuse of prisoners, complained to visiting judges, who had Badenhorst reassigned. He was replaced by Commander Willie Willemse, who developed a co-operative relationship with Mandela and was keen to improve prison standards.

By 1975, Mandela had become a Class A prisoner, which allowed him greater numbers of visits and letters. He corresponded with anti-apartheid activists like Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Desmond Tutu. That year, he began his autobiography, which was smuggled to London, but remained unpublished at the time; prison authorities discovered several pages, and his LLB study privileges were revoked for four years. Instead, he devoted his spare time to gardening and reading until the authorities permitted him to resume his LLB degree studies in 1980.

By the late 1960s, Mandela's fame had been eclipsed by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Seeing the ANC as ineffectual, the BCM called for militant action, but, following the Soweto uprising of 1976, many BCM activists were imprisoned on Robben Island. Mandela tried to build a relationship with these young radicals, although he was critical of their racialism and contempt for white anti-apartheid activists. Renewed international interest in his plight came in July 1978, when he celebrated his 60th birthday. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Lesotho, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in India in 1979, and the Freedom of the City of Glasgow, Scotland in 1981. In March 1980, the slogan "Free Mandela!" was developed by journalist Percy Qoboza, sparking an international campaign that led the UN Security Council to call for his release. Despite increasing foreign pressure, the government refused, relying on its Cold War allies US president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher; both considered Mandela's ANC a terrorist organisation sympathetic to communism and supported its suppression.

Pollsmoor Prison: 1982-1988

In April 1982, Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Tokai, Cape Town, along with senior ANC leaders Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba; they believed that they were being isolated to remove their influence on younger activists at Robben Island. Conditions at Pollsmoor were better than at Robben Island, although Mandela missed the camaraderie and scenery of the island. Getting on well with Pollsmoor's commanding officer, Brigadier Munro, Mandela was permitted to create a roof garden; he also read voraciously and corresponded widely, now being permitted 52 letters a year. He was appointed patron of the multi-racial United Democratic Front (UDF), founded to combat reforms implemented by South African president P. W. Botha. Botha's National Party government had permitted Coloured and Indian citizens to vote for their own parliaments, which had control over education, health and housing, but black Africans were excluded from the system. Like Mandela, the UDF saw this as an attempt to divide the anti-apartheid movement on racial lines.

Bust of Mandela erected on London's South Bank by the Greater London Council administration of Ken Livingstone in 1985

The early 1980s witnessed an escalation of violence across the country, and many predicted civil war. This was accompanied by economic stagnation as various multinational banks-under pressure from an international lobby-had stopped investing in South Africa. Numerous banks and Thatcher asked Botha to release Mandela-then at the height of his international fame-to defuse the volatile situation. Although considering Mandela a dangerous "arch-Marxist", Botha offered him, in February 1985, a release from prison if he "unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon". Mandela spurned the offer, releasing a statement through his daughter Zindzi stating, "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people [ANC] remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts."

In 1985, Mandela underwent surgery on an enlarged prostate gland before being given new solitary quarters on the ground floor. He was met by "seven eminent persons", an international delegation sent to negotiate a settlement, but Botha's government refused to co-operate, calling a state of emergency in June and initiating a police crackdown on unrest. The anti-apartheid resistance fought back, with the ANC committing 231 attacks in 1986 and 235 in 1987. The violence escalated as the government used the army and police to combat the resistance and provided covert support for vigilante groups and the Zulu nationalist movement Inkatha, which was involved in an increasingly violent struggle with the ANC. Mandela requested talks with Botha but was denied, instead secretly meeting with Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee in 1987, and having a further 11 meetings over the next three years. Coetsee organised negotiations between Mandela and a team of four government figures starting in May 1988; the team agreed to the release of political prisoners and the legalisation of the ANC on the condition that they permanently renounce violence, break links with the Communist Party, and not insist on majority rule. Mandela rejected these conditions, insisting that the ANC would end its armed activities only when the government renounced violence.

Mandela's 70th birthday in July 1988 attracted international attention, including a tribute concert at London's Wembley Stadium that was televised and watched by an estimated 200 million viewers. Although presented globally as a heroic figure, he faced personal problems when ANC leaders informed him that Winnie had set herself up as head of a gang, the "Mandela United Football Club", which had been responsible for torturing and killing opponents-including children-in Soweto. Though some encouraged him to divorce her, he decided to remain loyal until she was found guilty by trial.

Victor Verster Prison and release: 1988-1990

Recovering from tuberculosis exacerbated by the damp conditions in his cell, Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl, in December 1988. He was housed in the relative comfort of a warder's house with a personal cook, and he used the time to complete his LLB degree. While there, he was permitted many visitors and organised secret communications with exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo.

In 1989, Botha suffered a stroke; although he would retain the state presidency, he stepped down as leader of the National Party, to be replaced by F. W. de Klerk. In a surprise move, Botha invited Mandela to a meeting over tea in July 1989, an invitation Mandela considered genial. Botha was replaced as state president by de Klerk six weeks later; the new president believed that apartheid was unsustainable and released a number of ANC prisoners. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, de Klerk called his cabinet together to debate legalising the ANC and freeing Mandela. Although some were deeply opposed to his plans, de Klerk met with Mandela in December to discuss the situation, a meeting both men considered friendly, before legalising all formerly banned political parties in February 1990 and announcing Mandela's unconditional release. Shortly thereafter, for the first time in 20 years, photographs of Mandela were allowed to be published in South Africa.

Leaving Victor Verster Prison on 11 February, Mandela held Winnie's hand in front of amassed crowds and the press; the event was broadcast live across the world. Driven to Cape Town's City Hall through crowds, he gave a speech declaring his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the white minority, but he made it clear that the ANC's armed struggle was not over and would continue as "a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid". He expressed hope that the government would agree to negotiations, so that "there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle", and insisted that his main focus was to bring peace to the black majority and give them the right to vote in national and local elections. Staying at Tutu's home, in the following days Mandela met with friends, activists, and press, giving a speech to an estimated 100,000 people at Johannesburg's FNB Stadium.

End of apartheid

Early negotiations: 1990-91

Mandela proceeded on an African tour, meeting supporters and politicians in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Libya and Algeria, and continuing to Sweden, where he was reunited with Tambo, and London, where he appeared at the Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa concert at Wembley Stadium. Encouraging foreign countries to support sanctions against the apartheid government, he met President François Mitterrand in France, Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, and Thatcher in the United Kingdom. In the United States, he met President George H. W. Bush, addressed both Houses of Congress and visited eight cities, being particularly popular among the African American community. In Cuba, he became friends with President Castro, whom he had long admired. He met President R. Venkataraman in India, President Suharto in Indonesia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Australia. He visited Japan, but not the Soviet Union, a longtime ANC supporter.

In May 1990, Mandela led a multiracial ANC delegation into preliminary negotiations with a government delegation of 11 Afrikaner men. Mandela impressed them with his discussions of Afrikaner history, and the negotiations led to the Groot Schuur Minute, in which the government lifted the state of emergency. In August, Mandela-recognising the ANC's severe military disadvantage-offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticised by MK activists. He spent much time trying to unify and build the ANC, appearing at a Johannesburg conference in December attended by 1,600 delegates, many of whom found him more moderate than expected. At the ANC's July 1991 national conference in Durban, Mandela admitted that the party had faults and announced his aim to build a "strong and well-oiled task force" for securing majority rule. At the conference, he was elected ANC President, replacing the ailing Tambo, and a 50-strong multiracial, mixed gendered national executive was elected.

Mandela was given an office in the newly purchased ANC headquarters at Shell House, Johannesburg, and moved into Winnie's large Soweto home. Their marriage was increasingly strained as he learned of her affair with Dali Mpofu, but he supported her during her trial for kidnapping and assault. He gained funding for her defence from the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa and from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, but, in June 1991, she was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison, reduced to two on appeal. On 13 April 1992, Mandela publicly announced his separation from Winnie. The ANC forced her to step down from the national executive for misappropriating ANC funds; Mandela moved into the mostly white Johannesburg suburb of Houghton. Mandela's prospects for a peaceful transition were further damaged by an increase in "black-on-black" violence, particularly between ANC and Inkatha supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, which resulted in thousands of deaths. Mandela met with Inkatha leader Buthelezi, but the ANC prevented further negotiations on the issue. Mandela argued that there was a " third force" within the state intelligence services fuelling the "slaughter of the people" and openly blamed de Klerk-whom he increasingly distrusted-for the Sebokeng massacre. In September 1991, a national peace conference was held in Johannesburg at which Mandela, Buthelezi and de Klerk signed a peace accord, though the violence continued.

CODESA talks: 1991-92

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began in December 1991 at the Johannesburg World Trade Centre, attended by 228 delegates from 19 political parties. Although Cyril Ramaphosa led the ANC's delegation, Mandela remained a key figure. After de Klerk used the closing speech to condemn the ANC's violence, Mandela took to the stage to denounce de Klerk as the "head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime". Dominated by the National Party and ANC, little negotiation was achieved. CODESA 2 was held in May 1992, at which de Klerk insisted that post-apartheid South Africa must use a federal system with a rotating presidency to ensure the protection of ethnic minorities; Mandela opposed this, demanding a unitary system governed by majority rule. Following the Boipatong massacre of ANC activists by government-aided Inkatha militants, Mandela called off the negotiations, before attending a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity in Senegal, at which he called for a special session of the UN Security Council and proposed that a UN peacekeeping force be stationed in South Africa to prevent " state terrorism". Calling for domestic mass action, in August the ANC organised the largest-ever strike in South African history, and supporters marched on Pretoria.

De Klerk and Mandela at the World Economic Forum, 1992

Following the Bisho massacre, in which 28 ANC supporters and one soldier were shot dead by the Ciskei Defence Force during a protest march, Mandela realised that mass action was leading to further violence and resumed negotiations in September. He agreed to do so on the conditions that all political prisoners be released, that Zulu traditional weapons be banned, and that Zulu hostels would be fenced off, the latter two measures intended to prevent further Inkatha attacks; de Klerk reluctantly agreed. The negotiations agreed that a multiracial general election would be held, resulting in a five-year coalition government of national unity and a constitutional assembly that gave the National Party continuing influence. The ANC also conceded to safeguarding the jobs of white civil servants; such concessions brought fierce internal criticism. The duo agreed on an interim constitution based on a liberal democratic model, guaranteeing separation of powers, creating a constitutional court, and including a US-style bill of rights; it also divided the country into nine provinces, each with its own premier and civil service, a concession between de Klerk's desire for federalism and Mandela's for unitary government.

The democratic process was threatened by the Concerned South Africans Group (COSAG), an alliance of black ethnic-secessionist groups like Inkatha and far-right Afrikaner parties; in June 1993, one of the latter-the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB)- attacked the Kempton Park World Trade Centre. Following the murder of ANC activist Chris Hani, Mandela made a publicised speech to calm rioting, soon after appearing at a mass funeral in Soweto for Tambo, who had died of a stroke. In July 1993, both Mandela and de Klerk visited the United States, independently meeting President Bill Clinton, and each receiving the Liberty Medal. Soon after, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Influenced by Thabo Mbeki, Mandela began meeting with big business figures, and he played down his support for nationalisation, fearing that he would scare away much-needed foreign investment. Although criticised by socialist ANC members, he had been encouraged to embrace private enterprise by members of the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist parties at the January 1992 World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

General election: 1994

With the election set for 27 April 1994, the ANC began campaigning, opening 100 election offices and orchestrating People's Forums across the country at which Mandela could appear, as a popular figure with great status among black South Africans. The ANC campaigned on a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to build a million houses in five years, introduce universal free education and extend access to water and electricity. The party's slogan was "a better life for all", although it was not explained how this development would be funded. With the exception of the Weekly Mail and the , South Africa's press opposed Mandela's election, fearing continued ethnic strife, instead supporting the National or Democratic Party. Mandela devoted much time to fundraising for the ANC, touring North America, Europe and Asia to meet wealthy donors, including former supporters of the apartheid regime. He also urged a reduction in the voting age from 18 to 14; rejected by the ANC, this policy became the subject of ridicule.

Concerned that COSAG would undermine the election, particularly in the wake of the conflict in Bophuthatswana and the Shell House massacre-incidents of violence involving the AWB and Inkatha, respectively-Mandela met with Afrikaner politicians and generals, including P. W. Botha, Pik Botha and Constand Viljoen, persuading many to work within the democratic system. With de Klerk, he also convinced Inkatha's Buthelezi to enter the elections rather than launch a war of secession. As leaders of the two major parties, de Klerk and Mandela appeared on a televised debate; although de Klerk was widely considered the better speaker at the event, Mandela's offer to shake his hand surprised him, leading some commentators to deem it a victory for Mandela. The election went ahead with little violence, although an AWB cell killed 20 with car bombs. As widely expected, the ANC won a sweeping victory, taking 63% of the vote, just short of the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally change the constitution. The ANC was also victorious in seven provinces, with Inkatha and the National Party each taking one. Mandela voted at the Ohlange High School in Durban, and though the ANC's victory assured his election as president, he publicly accepted that the election had been marred by instances of fraud and sabotage.

Presidency of South Africa: 1994-1999

The newly elected National Assembly's first act was to formally elect Mandela as South Africa's first black chief executive. His inauguration took place in Pretoria on 10 May 1994, televised to a billion viewers globally. The event was attended by four thousand guests, including world leaders from a wide range of geographic and ideological backgrounds. Mandela headed a Government of National Unity dominated by the ANC-which had no experience of governing by itself-but containing representatives from the National Party and Inkatha. Under the Interim Constitution, Inkatha and the National Party were entitled to seats in the government by virtue of winning at least 20 seats. In keeping with earlier agreements, both de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki were given the position of Deputy President. Although Mbeki had not been his first choice for the job, Mandela grew to rely heavily on him throughout his presidency, allowing him to shape policy details. Moving into the presidential office at Tuynhuys in Cape Town, Mandela allowed de Klerk to retain the presidential residence in the Groote Schuur estate, instead settling into the nearby Westbrooke manor, which he renamed " Genadendal", meaning "Valley of Mercy" in Afrikaans. Retaining his Houghton home, he also had a house built in his home village of Qunu, which he visited regularly, walking around the area, meeting with locals, and judging tribal disputes.

Aged 76, he faced various ailments, and although exhibiting continued energy, he felt isolated and lonely. He often entertained celebrities, such as Michael Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and the Spice Girls, and befriended ultra-rich businessmen, like Harry Oppenheimer of Anglo American. He also met with Queen Elizabeth II on her March 1995 state visit to South Africa, which earned him strong criticism from ANC anti-capitalists. Despite his opulent surroundings, Mandela lived simply, donating a third of his R 552,000 annual income to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, which he had founded in 1995. Although dismantling press censorship, speaking out in favour of freedom of the press and befriending many journalists, Mandela was critical of much of the country's media, noting that it was overwhelmingly owned and run by middle-class whites and believing that it focused too heavily on scaremongering about crime.

In December 1994, Mandela published Long Walk to Freedom, an autobiography based around a manuscript he had written in prison, augmented by interviews conducted with American journalist Richard Stengel. In late 1994, he attended the 49th conference of the ANC in Bloemfontein, at which a more militant national executive was elected, among them Winnie Mandela; although she expressed an interest in reconciling, Nelson initiated divorce proceedings in August 1995. By 1995, he had entered into a relationship with Graça Machel, a Mozambican political activist 27 years his junior who was the widow of former president Samora Machel. They had first met in July 1990 when she was still in mourning, but their friendship grew into a partnership, with Machel accompanying him on many of his foreign visits. She turned down Mandela's first marriage proposal, wanting to retain some independence and dividing her time between Mozambique and Johannesburg.

National reconciliation

Gracious but steely, [Mandela] steered a country in turmoil toward a negotiated settlement: a country that days before its first democratic election remained violent, riven by divisive views and personalities. He endorsed national reconciliation, an idea he did not merely foster in the abstract, but performed with panache and conviction in reaching out to former adversaries. He initiated an era of hope that, while not long-lasting, was nevertheless decisive, and he garnered the highest international recognition and affection.

- Rita Barnard, The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela

Presiding over the transition from apartheid minority rule to a multicultural democracy, Mandela saw national reconciliation as the primary task of his presidency. Having seen other post-colonial African economies damaged by the departure of white elites, Mandela worked to reassure South Africa's white population that they were protected and represented in "the Rainbow Nation". Although his Government of National Unity would be dominated by the ANC, he attempted to create a broad coalition by appointing de Klerk as Deputy President and appointing other National Party officials as ministers for Agriculture, Environment, and Minerals and Energy, as well as naming Buthelezi as Minister for Home Affairs. The other cabinet positions were taken by ANC members, many of whom-like Joe Modise, Alfred Nzo, Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj and Dullah Omar-had long been comrades of Mandela, although others, such as Tito Mboweni and Jeff Radebe, were far younger. Mandela's relationship with de Klerk was strained; Mandela thought that de Klerk was intentionally provocative, and de Klerk felt that he was being intentionally humiliated by the president. In January 1995, Mandela heavily chastised de Klerk for awarding amnesty to 3,500 police officers just before the election, and later criticised him for defending former Minister of Defence Magnus Malan when the latter was charged with murder.

Mandela personally met with senior figures of the apartheid regime, including lawyer Percy Yutar and Hendrik Verwoerd's widow, Betsie Schoombie, also laying a wreath by the statue of Afrikaner hero Daniel Theron. Emphasising personal forgiveness and reconciliation, he announced that "courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace." He encouraged black South Africans to get behind the previously hated national rugby team, the Springboks, as South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela wore a Springbok shirt at the final against New Zealand, and after the Springboks won the match, Mandela presented the trophy to captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner. This was widely seen as a major step in the reconciliation of white and black South Africans; as de Klerk later put it, "Mandela won the hearts of millions of white rugby fans." Mandela's efforts at reconciliation assuaged the fears of white people, but also drew criticism from more militant black people. Among the latter was his estranged wife, Winnie, who accused the ANC of being more interested in appeasing the white community than in helping the black majority.

Mandela oversaw the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate crimes committed under apartheid by both the government and the ANC, appointing Tutu as its chair. To prevent the creation of martyrs, the commission granted individual amnesties in exchange for testimony of crimes committed during the apartheid era. Dedicated in February 1996, it held two years of hearings detailing rapes, torture, bombings and assassinations before issuing its final report in October 1998. Both de Klerk and Mbeki appealed to have parts of the report suppressed, though only de Klerk's appeal was successful. Mandela praised the commission's work, stating that it "had helped us move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future".

Domestic programmes

Mandela's administration inherited a country with a huge disparity in wealth and services between white and black communities. Of a population of 40 million, around 23 million lacked electricity or adequate sanitation, and 12 million lacked clean water supplies, with 2 million children not in school and a third of the population illiterate. There was 33% unemployment, and just under half of the population lived below the poverty line. Government financial reserves were nearly depleted, with a fifth of the national budget being spent on debt repayment, meaning that the extent of the promised Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was scaled back, with none of the proposed nationalisation or job creation. In 1996, the RDP was replaced with a new policy, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), which maintained South Africa's mixed economy but placed an emphasis on economic growth through a framework of market economics and the encouragement of foreign investment; many in the ANC derided it as a neo-liberal policy that did not address social inequality, no matter how Mandela defended it. In adopting this approach, Mandela's government adhered to the " Washington consensus" advocated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Under Mandela's presidency, welfare spending increased by 13% in 1996/97, 13% in 1997/98, and 7% in 1998/99. The government introduced parity in grants for communities, including disability grants, child maintenance grants and old-age pensions, which had previously been set at different levels for South Africa's different racial groups. In 1994, free healthcare was introduced for children under six and pregnant women, a provision extended to all those using primary level public sector health care services in 1996. By the 1999 election, the ANC could boast that due to their policies, 3 million people were connected to telephone lines, 1.5 million children were brought into the education system, 500 clinics were upgraded or constructed, 2 million people were connected to the electricity grid, water access was extended to 3 million people, and 750,000 houses were constructed, housing nearly 3 million people.

The Land Reform Act 3 of 1996 safeguarded the rights of labour tenants living on farms where they grew crops or grazed livestock. This legislation ensured that such tenants could not be evicted without a court order or if they were over the age of 65. Recognising that arms manufacturing was a key industry for the South African economy, Mandela endorsed the trade in weapons but brought in tighter regulations surrounding Armscor to ensure that South African weaponry was not sold to authoritarian regimes. Under Mandela's administration, tourism was increasingly promoted, becoming a major sector of the South African economy.

Critics like Edwin Cameron accused Mandela's government of doing little to stem the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country; by 1999, 10% of South Africa's population were HIV positive. Mandela later admitted that he had personally neglected the issue, in part due to public reticence in discussing issues surrounding sex in South Africa, and that he had instead left the issue for Mbeki to deal with. Mandela also received criticism for failing to sufficiently combat crime; South Africa had one of the world's highest crime rates, and the activities of international crime syndicates in the country grew significantly throughout the decade. Mandela's administration was also perceived as having failed to deal with the problem of corruption.

Further problems were caused by the exodus of thousands of skilled white South Africans from the country, who were escaping the increasing crime rates, higher taxes and the impact of positive discrimination toward black people in employment. This exodus resulted in a brain drain, and Mandela criticised those who left. At the same time, South Africa experienced an influx of millions of illegal migrants from poorer parts of Africa; although public opinion toward these illegal immigrants was generally unfavourable, characterising them as disease-spreading criminals who were a drain on resources, Mandela called on South Africans to embrace them as "brothers and sisters".

Foreign affairs

Mandela expressed the view that "South Africa's future foreign relations [should] be based on our belief that human rights should be the core of international relations". Following the South African example, Mandela encouraged other nations to resolve conflicts through diplomacy and reconciliation. In September 1998, Mandela was appointed secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement, who held their annual conference in Durban. He used the event to criticise the "narrow, chauvinistic interests" of the Israeli government in stalling negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and urged India and Pakistan to negotiate to end the Kashmir conflict, for which he was criticised by both Israel and India. Inspired by the region's economic boom, Mandela sought greater economic relations with East Asia, in particular with Malaysia, although this was prevented by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He extended diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China (PRC), who were growing as an economic force, and initially also to Taiwan, who were already longstanding investors in the South African economy. However, under pressure from the PRC, he cut recognition of Taiwan in November 1996, and he paid an official visit to Beijing in May 1999.

Mandela with US president Bill Clinton. Despite publicly criticising him on several occasions, Mandela liked Clinton, and personally supported him during his impeachment proceedings.

Mandela attracted controversy for his close relationship with Indonesian president Suharto, whose regime was responsible for mass human rights abuses, although on a July 1997 visit to Indonesia he privately urged Suharto to withdraw from the occupation of East Timor. He also faced similar criticism from the West for his government's trade links to Syria, Cuba and Libya and for his personal friendships with Castro and Gaddafi. Castro visited South Africa in 1998 to widespread popular acclaim, and Mandela met Gaddafi in Libya to award him the Order of Good Hope. When Western governments and media criticised these visits, Mandela lambasted such criticism as having racist undertones, and stated that "the enemies of countries in the West are not our enemies." Mandela hoped to resolve the long-running dispute between Libya and the United States and Britain over bringing to trial the two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who were indicted in November 1991 and accused of sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103. Mandela proposed that they be tried in a third country, which was agreed to by all parties; governed by Scots law, the trial was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in April 1999, and found one of the two men guilty.

Mandela echoed Mbeki's calls for an " African Renaissance", and he was greatly concerned with issues on the continent. He took a soft diplomatic approach to removing Sani Abacha's military junta in Nigeria but later became a leading figure in calling for sanctions when Abacha's regime increased human rights violations. In 1996, he was appointed chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and initiated unsuccessful negotiations to end the First Congo War in Zaire. He also played a key role as a mediator in the ethnic conflict between Tutsi and Hutu political groups in the Burundian Civil War, helping to initiate a settlement which brought increased stability to the country but did not end the ethnic violence. In South Africa's first post-apartheid military operation, troops were ordered into Lesotho in September 1998 to protect the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili after a disputed election had prompted opposition uprisings. The action was not authorised by Mandela himself, who was out of the country at the time, but by Buthelezi, who was serving as acting president during Mandela's absence, with the approval of Mandela and Mbeki.

Withdrawing from politics

The new Constitution of South Africa was agreed upon by parliament in May 1996, enshrining a series of institutions to place checks on political and administrative authority within a constitutional democracy. De Klerk opposed the implementation of this constitution, and that month he and the National Party withdrew from the coalition government in protest, claiming that the ANC were not treating them as equals. The ANC took over the cabinet positions formerly held by the Nationals, with Mbeki becoming sole Deputy President. Inkatha remained part of the coalition, and when both Mandela and Mbeki were out of the country in September 1998, Buthelezi was appointed "Acting President", marking an improvement in his relationship with Mandela. Although Mandela had often governed decisively in his first two years as president, he had subsequently increasingly delegated duties to Mbeki, retaining only a close personal supervision of intelligence and security measures. During a 1997 visit to London, he said that "the ruler of South Africa, the de facto ruler, is Thabo Mbeki" and that he was "shifting everything to him".

Mandela stepped down as ANC President at the party's December 1997 conference. He hoped that Ramaphosa would succeed him, believing Mbeki to be too inflexible and intolerant of criticism, but the ANC elected Mbeki regardless. Mandela and the Executive supported Jacob Zuma, a Zulu who had been imprisoned on Robben Island, as Mbeki's replacement for Deputy President. Zuma's candidacy was challenged by Winnie, whose populist rhetoric had gained her a strong following within the party, although Zuma defeated her in a landslide victory vote at the election.

Mandela's relationship with Machel had intensified; in February 1998, he publicly stated that he was "in love with a remarkable lady", and under pressure from Tutu, who urged him to set an example for young people, he organised a wedding for his 80th birthday, in July that year. The following day, he held a grand party with many foreign dignitaries. Although the 1996 constitution allowed the president to serve two consecutive five-year terms, Mandela had never planned to stand for a second term in office. He gave his farewell speech to Parliament on 29 March 1999 when it adjourned prior to the 1999 general elections, after which he retired. Although opinion polls in South Africa showed wavering support for both the ANC and the government, Mandela himself remained highly popular, with 80% of South Africans polled in 1999 expressing satisfaction with his performance as president.

Retirement

Continued activism and philanthropy: 1999-2004

Retiring in June 1999, Mandela aimed to lead a quiet family life, divided between Johannesburg and Qunu. Although he set about authoring a sequel to his first autobiography, to be titled The Presidential Years, it remained unfinished and was only published posthumously in 2017. Mandela found such seclusion difficult and reverted to a busy public life involving a daily programme of tasks, meetings with world leaders and celebrities, and-when in Johannesburg-working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, founded in 1999 to focus on rural development, school construction, and combating HIV/AIDS. Although he had been heavily criticised for failing to do enough to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic during his presidency, he devoted much of his time to the issue following his retirement, describing it as "a war" that had killed more than "all previous wars"; affiliating himself with the Treatment Action Campaign, he urged Mbeki's government to ensure that HIV-positive South Africans had access to anti-retrovirals. Meanwhile, Mandela was successfully treated for prostate cancer in July 2001.

In 2002, Mandela inaugurated the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, and in 2003 the Mandela Rhodes Foundation was created at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, to provide postgraduate scholarships to African students. These projects were followed by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the 46664 campaign against HIV/AIDS. He gave the closing address at the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000, and in 2004, spoke at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, calling for greater measures to tackle tuberculosis as well as HIV/AIDS. Mandela publicised AIDS as the cause of his son Makgatho's death in January 2005, to defy the stigma about discussing the disease.

Publicly, Mandela became more vocal in criticising Western powers. He strongly opposed the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo and called it an attempt by the world's powerful nations to police the entire world. In 2003, he spoke out against the plans for the United States to launch a war in Iraq, describing it as "a tragedy" and lambasting US president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair (whom he referred to as an "American foreign minister") for undermining the UN, saying, "All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil". He attacked the United States more generally, asserting that "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America", citing the atomic bombing of Japan; this attracted international controversy, although he later improved his relationship with Bush. Retaining an interest in the Lockerbie suspect, he visited Megrahi in Barlinnie prison and spoke out against the conditions of his treatment, referring to them as "psychological persecution".

"Retiring from retirement": 2004-2013

Mandela and US president George W. Bush in the Oval Office, 2005

In June 2004, aged 85 and amid failing health, Mandela announced that he was "retiring from retirement" and retreating from public life, remarking, "Don't call me, I will call you." Although continuing to meet with close friends and family, the foundation discouraged invitations for him to appear at public events and denied most interview requests.

He retained some involvement in international affairs. In 2005, he founded the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust, travelling to the United States to speak before the Brookings Institution and the NAACP on the need for economic assistance to Africa. He spoke with US senator Hillary Clinton and President George W. Bush and first met the then-senator Barack Obama. Mandela also encouraged Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe to resign over growing human rights abuses in the country. When this proved ineffective, he spoke out publicly against Mugabe in 2007, asking him to step down "with residual respect and a modicum of dignity." That year, Mandela, Machel and Desmond Tutu convened a group of world leaders in Johannesburg to contribute their wisdom and independent leadership to some of the world's toughest problems. Mandela announced the formation of this new group, The Elders, in a speech delivered on his 89th birthday.

Mandela's 90th birthday was marked across the country on 18 July 2008, with the main celebrations held at Qunu, and a concert in his honour in Hyde Park, London. In a speech marking the event, Mandela called for the rich to help the poor across the world. Throughout Mbeki's presidency, Mandela continued to support the ANC, usually overshadowing Mbeki at any public events that the two attended. Mandela was more at ease with Mbeki's successor, Zuma, although the Nelson Mandela Foundation was upset when his grandson, Mandla Mandela, flew him out to the Eastern Cape to attend a pro-Zuma rally in the midst of a storm in 2009.

In 2004, Mandela successfully campaigned for South Africa to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, declaring that there would be "few better gifts for us" in the year marking a decade since the fall of apartheid. Despite maintaining a low profile during the event due to ill health, Mandela made his final public appearance during the World Cup closing ceremony, where he received much applause. Between 2005 and 2013, Mandela, and later his family, were embroiled in a series of legal disputes regarding money held in family trusts for the benefit of his descendants. In mid-2013, as Mandela was hospitalised for a lung infection in Pretoria, his descendants were involved in an intra-family legal dispute relating to the burial place of Mandela's children, and ultimately Mandela himself.

Illness and death: 2011-2013

In February 2011, Mandela was briefly hospitalised with a respiratory infection, attracting international attention, before being re-admitted for a lung infection and gallstone removal in December 2012. After a successful medical procedure in early March 2013, his lung infection recurred and he was briefly hospitalised in Pretoria. In June 2013, his lung infection worsened and he was readmitted to a Pretoria hospital in serious condition. The Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba visited Mandela at the hospital and prayed with Machel, while Zuma cancelled a trip to Mozambique to visit him the following day. In September 2013, Mandela was discharged from hospital, although his condition remained unstable.

After suffering from a prolonged respiratory infection, Mandela died on 5 December 2013 at the age of 95, at around 20:50 local time at his home in Houghton, surrounded by his family. Zuma publicly announced his death on television, proclaiming ten days of national mourning, a memorial service held at Johannesburg's FNB Stadium on 10 December 2013, and 8 December as a national day of prayer and reflection. Mandela's body lay in state from 11 to 13 December at the Union Buildings in Pretoria and a state funeral was held on 15 December in Qunu. Approximately 90 representatives of foreign states travelled to South Africa to attend memorial events. It was later revealed that 300 million rand (about 20 million dollars) originally earmarked for humanitarian development projects had been redirected to finance the funeral. The media was awash with tributes and reminiscences, while images of tributes to Mandela proliferated across social media. His US$4.1 million estate was left to his widow, other family members, staff, and educational institutions.

Political ideology

A friend once asked me how I could reconcile my creed of African nationalism with a belief in dialectical materialism. For me, there was no contradiction. I was first and foremost an African nationalist fighting for our emancipation from minority rule and the right to control our own destiny. But at the same time, South Africa and the African continent were part of the larger world. Our problems, while distinctive and special, were not unique, and a philosophy that placed those problems in an international and historical context of the greater world and the course of history was valuable. I was prepared to use whatever means necessary to speed up the erasure of human prejudice and the end of chauvinistic and violent nationalism.

Mandela identified as both an African nationalist, an ideological position he held since joining the ANC, and as a socialist. He was a practical politician, rather than an intellectual scholar or political theorist. According to biographer Tom Lodge, "for Mandela, politics has always been primarily about enacting stories, about making narratives, primarily about morally exemplary conduct, and only secondarily about ideological vision, more about means rather than ends."

The historian Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni described Mandela as a "liberal African nationalist-decolonial humanist", while political analyst Raymond Suttner cautioned against labelling Mandela a liberal and stated that Mandela displayed a "hybrid socio-political make-up". Mandela adopted some of his political ideas from other thinkers-among them Indian independence leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, African American civil rights activists, and African nationalists like Nkrumah-and applied them to the South African situation. At the same time, he rejected other aspects of their thought, such as the anti-white sentiment of many African nationalists. In doing so he synthesised both counter-cultural and hegemonic views, for instance by drawing upon ideas from the then-dominant Afrikaner nationalism in promoting his anti-apartheid vision.

His political development was strongly influenced by his legal training and practice, in particular his hope to achieve change not through violence but through "legal revolution". Over the course of his life, he began by advocating a path of non-violence, later embracing violence, and then adopting a non-violent approach to negotiation and reconciliation. When endorsing violence, he did so because he saw no alternative, and was always pragmatic about it, perceiving it as a means to get his opponent to the negotiating table. He sought to target symbols of white supremacy and racist oppression rather than white people as individuals and was anxious not to inaugurate a race war in South Africa. This willingness to use violence distinguishes Mandela from the ideology of Gandhism, with which some commentators have sought to associate him.

Although he presented himself in an autocratic manner in several speeches, Mandela was a devout believer in democracy and abided by majority decisions even when deeply disagreeing with them. He had exhibited a commitment to the values of democracy and human rights since at least the 1960s. He held a conviction that "inclusivity, accountability and freedom of speech" were the fundamentals of democracy, and was driven by a belief in natural and human rights. Suttner argued that there were "two modes of leadership" that Mandela adopted. On one side he adhered to ideas about collective leadership, although on the other believed that there were scenarios in which a leader had to be decisive and act without consultation to achieve a particular objective.

According to Lodge, Mandela's political thought reflected tensions between his support for liberal democracy and pre-colonial African forms of consensus decision making. He was an admirer of British-style parliamentary democracy, stating that "I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration." In this he has been described as being committed to "the Euro-North American modernist project of emancipation", something which distinguishes him from other African nationalist and socialist leaders like Nyerere who were concerned about embracing styles of democratic governance that were Western, rather than African, in origin. Mandela nevertheless also expressed admiration for what he deemed to be indigenous forms of democracy, describing Xhosa traditional society's mode of governance as "democracy in its purest form". He also spoke of an influential African ethical tenet, Ubuntu, which is a Ngnuni term meaning "A person is a person through other persons" or "I am because we are."

Socialism and Marxism

Mandela advocated the ultimate establishment of a classless society, with Sampson describing him as being "openly opposed to capitalism, private land-ownership and the power of big money". Mandela was influenced by Marxism, and during the revolution he advocated scientific socialism. He denied being a communist at the Treason Trial, and maintained this stance both when later talking to journalists, and in his autobiography, where he outlined that the cooperation with the SACP was pragmatic, asking rhetorically, "who is to say that we were not using them?" According to the sociologist Craig Soudien, "sympathetic as Mandela was to socialism, a communist he was not." Conversely, the biographer David Jones Smith stated that Mandela "embraced communism and communists" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, while the historian Stephen Ellis commented that Mandela had assimilated much of the Marxist-Leninist ideology by 1960.

Ellis also found evidence that Mandela had been an active member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) during the late 1950s and early 1960s, something that was confirmed after his death by both the ANC and the SACP, the latter of which claimed that he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee. His membership had been hidden by the ANC, aware that knowledge of Mandela's former SACP involvement might have been detrimental to his attempts to attract support from Western countries. Mandela's view of these Western governments differed from those of Marxist-Leninists, for he did not believe that they were anti-democratic or reactionary and remained committed to democratic systems of governance.

The 1955 Freedom Charter, which Mandela had helped create, called for the nationalisation of banks, gold mines and land, to ensure equal distribution of wealth. Despite these beliefs, Mandela initiated a programme of privatisation during his presidency in line with trends in other countries of the time. It has been repeatedly suggested that Mandela would have preferred to develop a social democratic economy in South Africa but that this was not feasible as a result of the international political and economic situation during the early 1990s. This decision was in part influenced by the fall of the socialist states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc during the early 1990s.

Personality and personal life

Mandela was widely considered a charismatic leader, described by biographer Mary Benson as "a born mass leader who could not help magnetizing people". He was highly image conscious and throughout his life always sought out fine quality clothes, with many commentators believing that he carried himself in a regal manner. His aristocratic heritage was repeatedly emphasised by supporters, thus contributing to his "charismatic power". While living in Johannesburg in the 1950s, he cultivated the image of the "African gentleman", having "the pressed clothes, correct manners, and modulated public speech" associated with such a position. In doing so, Lodge argued that Mandela became "one of the first media politicians ... embodying a glamour and a style that projected visually a brave new African world of modernity and freedom". Mandela was known to change his clothes several times a day, and he became so associated with highly coloured Batik shirts after assuming the presidency that they came to be known as " Madiba shirts".

For political scientists Betty Glad and Robert Blanton, Mandela was an "exceptionally intelligent, shrewd, and loyal leader". His official biographer, Anthony Sampson, commented that he was a "master of imagery and performance", excelling at presenting himself well in press photographs and producing sound bites. His public speeches were presented in a formal, stiff manner, and often consisted of clichéd set phrases. He typically spoke slowly, and carefully chose his words. Although he was not considered a great orator, his speeches conveyed "his personal commitment, charm and humour".

Mandela was a private person who often concealed his emotions and confided in very few people. Privately, he lived an austere life, refusing to drink alcohol or smoke, and even as president made his own bed. Renowned for his mischievous sense of humour, he was known for being both stubborn and loyal, and at times exhibited a quick temper. He was typically friendly and welcoming, and appeared relaxed in conversation with everyone, including his opponents. A self-described Anglophile, he claimed to have lived by the "trappings of British style and manners". Constantly polite and courteous, he was attentive to all, irrespective of their age or status, and often talked to children or servants. He was known for his ability to find common ground with very different communities. In later life, he always looked for the best in people, even defending political opponents to his allies, who sometimes thought him too trusting of others. He was fond of Indian cuisine, and had a lifelong interest in archaeology and boxing.

The significance of Mandela can be considered in two related ways. First, he has provided through his personal presence as a benign and honest conviction politician, skilled at exerting power but not obsessed with it to the point of view of excluding principles, a man who struggled to display respect to all ... Second, in so doing he was able to be a hero and a symbol to an array of otherwise unlikely mates through his ability, like all brilliant nationalist politicians, to speak to very different audiences effectively at once.

- Bill Freund, academic

He was raised in the Methodist denomination of Christianity; the Methodist Church of Southern Africa claimed that he retained his allegiance to them throughout his life. On analysing Mandela's writings, the theologian Dion Forster described him as a Christian humanist, although added that his thought relied to a greater extent on the Southern African concept of Ubuntu than on Christian theology. According to Sampson, Mandela never had "a strong religious faith" however, while Elleke Boehmer stated that Mandela's religious belief was "never robust".

Mandela was very self-conscious about being a man and regularly made references to manhood. He was heterosexual, and biographer Fatima Meer said that he was "easily tempted" by women. Another biographer, Martin Meredith, characterised him as being "by nature a romantic", highlighting that he had relationships with various women. Mandela was married three times, fathered six children, and had seventeen grandchildren and at least seventeen great-grandchildren. He could be stern and demanding of his children, although he was more affectionate with his grandchildren. His first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase in October 1944; they divorced in March 1958 under the multiple strains of his adultery and constant absences, devotion to revolutionary agitation, and the fact that she was a Jehovah's Witness, a religion requiring political neutrality. Mandela's second wife was the social worker Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, whom he married in June 1958. They divorced in March 1996. Mandela married his third wife, Graça Machel, on his 80th birthday in July 1998.

Reception and legacy

By the time of his death, within South Africa Mandela was widely considered both "the father of the nation" and "the founding father of democracy". Outside of South Africa, he was a "global icon", with the scholar of South African studies Rita Barnard describing him as "one of the most revered figures of our time". One biographer considered him "a modern democratic hero". Some have portrayed Mandela in messianic terms, in contrast to his own statement that "I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances." He is often cited alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the 20th century's exemplary anti-racist and anti-colonial leaders. Boehmer described him as "a totem of the totemic values of our age: toleration and liberal democracy" and "a universal symbol of social justice".

Mandela's international fame emerged during his incarceration in the 1980s, when he became the world's most famous political prisoner, a symbol of the anti-apartheid cause, and an icon for millions who embraced the ideal of human equality. In 1986, Mandela's biographer characterised him as "the embodiment of the struggle for liberation" in South Africa. Meredith stated that in becoming "a potent symbol of resistance" to apartheid during the 1980s, he had gained "mythical status" internationally. Sampson commented that even during his life, this myth had become "so powerful that it blurs the realities", converting Mandela into "a secular saint". Within a decade of the end of his presidency, Mandela's era was widely thought of as "a golden age of hope and harmony", with much nostalgia being expressed for it. His name was often invoked by those criticising his successors like Mbeki and Zuma. Across the world, Mandela earned international acclaim for his activism in overcoming apartheid and fostering racial reconciliation, coming to be viewed as "a moral authority" with a great "concern for truth". Mandela's iconic status has been blamed for concealing the complexities of his life.

Mandela generated controversy throughout his career as an activist and politician, having detractors on both the right and the radical left. During the 1980s, Mandela was widely labelled a terrorist by prominent political figures in the Western world for his embrace of political violence. According to Thatcher, for instance, the ANC was "a typical terrorist organisation". The US government's State and Defense departments officially designated the ANC as a terrorist organisation, resulting in Mandela remaining on their terrorism watch-list until 2008. On the left, some voices in the ANC-among them Frank B. Wilderson III-accused him of selling out for agreeing to enter negotiations with the apartheid government and for not implementing the reforms of the Freedom Charter during his presidency. According to Barnard, "there is also a sense in which his chiefly bearing and mode of conduct, the very respect and authority he accrued in representing his nation in his own person, went against the spirit of democracy", and concerns were similarly expressed that he placed his own status and celebrity above the transformation of his country. His government would be criticised for its failure to deal with both the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the high levels of poverty in South Africa. Mandela was also criticised for his friendship with political leaders such as Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi, who had supported the struggle against apartheid but were deemed dictators by critics.[unreliable source? ]

Orders, decorations, monuments, and honours

Over the course of his life, Mandela was given over 250 awards, accolades, prizes, honorary degrees and citizenships in recognition of his political achievements. Among his awards were the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize, and the Libyan Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights. In 1990, India awarded him the Bharat Ratna, and in 1992 Pakistan gave him their Nishan-e-Pakistan. The same year, he was awarded the Atatürk Peace Award by Turkey; he at first refused the award, citing human rights violations committed by Turkey at the time, but later accepted the award in 1999. He was appointed to the Order of Isabella the Catholic and the Order of Canada, and was the first living person to be made an honorary Canadian citizen. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him as a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John and granted him membership in the Order of Merit.

In 2004, Johannesburg granted Mandela the Freedom of the City, and in 2008 a Mandela statue was unveiled at the spot where Mandela was released from prison. On the Day of Reconciliation 2013, a bronze statue of Mandela was unveiled at Pretoria's Union Buildings. In November 2009, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed Mandela's birthday, 18 July, as " Mandela Day", marking his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. It called on individuals to donate 67 minutes to doing something for others, commemorating the 67 years that Mandela had been a part of the movement. In 2015 the UN General Assembly named the amended Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners as "the Mandela Rules" to honour his legacy. Subsequently, the years 2019 to 2028 were also designated the United Nations Nelson Mandela Decade of Peace.

Biographies and popular media

The first biography of Mandela was authored by Mary Benson, based on brief interviews with him that she had conducted in the 1960s. Two authorised biographies were later produced by friends of Mandela. The first was Fatima Meer's Higher Than Hope, which was heavily influenced by Winnie and thus placed great emphasis on Mandela's family. The second was Anthony Sampson's Mandela, published in 1999. Other biographies included Martin Meredith's Mandela, first published in 1997, and Tom Lodge's Mandela, brought out in 2006.

Since the late 1980s, Mandela's image began to appear on a proliferation of items, among them "photographs, paintings, drawings, statues, public murals, buttons, t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, and more", items that have been characterised as "Mandela kitsch". In the 1980s he was the subject of several songs, such as The Specials' " Free Nelson Mandela", Hugh Masekela's " Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)", and Johnny Clegg's " Asimbonanga (Mandela)", which helped to bring awareness of his imprisonment to an international audience.

Mandela has also been depicted in films on multiple occasions. Some of these, such as the 2013 feature film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, the 2017 miniseries and the 1996 documentary Mandela, have focused on covering his adult life in entirety or until his inaugural as president. Others, such as the 2009 feature film and the 2010 documentary The 16th Man, have focused on specific events in his life. Lukhele has argued that in Invictus and other films, "the America film industry" has played a significant part in "the crafting of Mandela's global image".

References

Bibliography

Boehmer, Elleke (2005). "Postcolonial Terrorist: The Example of Nelson Mandela". Parallax. 11 (4): 46-55. doi:10.1080/13534640500331666. S2CID 144267205.

Bromley, Roger (2014). "'Magic Negro', Saint or Comrade: Representations of Nelson Mandela in Film". Altre Modernità (12): 40-58.

Ellis, Stephen (2011). "The Genesis of the ANC's Armed Struggle in South Africa 1948-1961". Journal of Southern African Studies. 37 (4): 657-676. doi:10.1080/03057070.2011.592659. hdl:. S2CID 144061623.

Forster, Dion (2014). "Mandela and the Methodists: Faith, Fallacy and Fact". Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae. 40: 87-115.

Freund, Bill (2014). "The Shadow of Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013". African Political Economy. 41 (140): 292-296. doi:10.1080/03056244.2014.883111. S2CID 153570087.

Glad, Betty; Blanton, Robert (1997). "F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela: A Study in Cooperative Transformational Leadership". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 27 (3): 565-590. JSTOR 27551769.

Guiloineau, Jean; Rowe, Joseph (2002). Nelson Mandela: The Early Life of Rolihlahla Madiba. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. pp. 9-26. ISBN 978-1-55643-417-4.

Kalumba, Kibujjo M. (1995). "The Political Philosophy of Nelson Mandela: A Primer". Journal of Social Philosophy. 26 (3): 161-171. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9833.1995.tb00092.x.

Lukhele, Francis (2012). "Post-Prison Nelson Mandela: A 'Made-in-America Hero'". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 46 (2): 289-301. doi:10.1080/00083968.2012.702088. S2CID 142631031.

Mafela, Munzhedzi James (2008). "The Revelation of African Culture in Long Walk to Freedom". In Anna Haebich; Frances Peters-Little; Peter Read (eds.). Indigenous Biography and Autobiography. Sydney: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University. pp. 99-107. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2014). "From a 'Terrorist' to Global Icon: A Critical Decolonial Ethical Tribute to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela of South Africa". Third World Quarterly. 35 (6): 905-921. doi:10.1080/01436597.2014.907703. S2CID 144338285.

Oppenheim, Claire E. (2012). "Nelson Mandela and the Power of Ubuntu". Religions. 3 (2): 369-388. doi:10.3390/rel3020369.

Suttner, Raymond (2007). "(Mis)Understanding Nelson Mandela". African Historical Review. 39 (2): 107-130. doi:10.1080/17532520701786202. S2CID 218645921.

Suttner, Raymond (2016). "'I Was Not Born With a Hunger to Be Free': Nelson Mandela's Early Journeys towards Political Awareness". Journal of Asian and African Studies. 51 (1): 17-31. doi:10.1177/0021909614541973. S2CID 144447985.

Read, James H. (2010). "Leadership and power in Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom". Journal of Power. 3 (3): 317-339. doi:10.1080/17540291.2010.524792. S2CID 143804607.

Tomaselli, Keyan; Tomaselli, Ruth (2003). "The Media and Mandela". Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. 4 (2): 1-10. doi:10.1080/17533170300404204. S2CID 144534323.

External links

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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( man-DEH-lə ; Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬamandɛ̂ːla]; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.

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John Brown's failed attempt to loot the armory at Harper's Ferry sparks the beginning of abolition.
http://www.history.com/topics/john-brown

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/bostons-forgotten-role-in-the-womens-movement_b_6810764.html

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till

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In 1926 a man by the name of Robert Winslow Gordon walked out on a Spring day with a hand cranked cylinder and used it to make the song we know of as 'Kumbaya' which isn't it's true name, it was truly called "Come By Here" to reference the lord and talk about the oppression that people of color endure, specifically, slaves. One of the original lyrics went "Somebody need you, lord come by here...Now I need you lord, come by here". It was explaining the need of a savior which was supposed to be empowering. This lead to a majority of folk lovers enjoying the song but to white people the phrase "Come By Here" sounded like the African word "Kumbaya". After a while the song lost it's meaning and has now become a political insult to call others inferior

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The Unknown Racist History of Oregon Video

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The Unknown Racist History of Oregon Video

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https://www.opb.org/television/programs/local-color/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO3Fxe4mDP4

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This is idiotic. I am revealing the truth.

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Deep Racism: The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos - PopularResistance.Org

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Racism is deeply embedded in our culture. Slavery of African people, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and colonialist imperialism are seeds that intertwine to create racism that still has impacts today. One example of the sad human history of racism -- of colonizers seeing themselves as superior to others -- is the long history of human zoos that featured Africans and conquered indigenous peoples, putting them on display in much the same way as animals. People would be kidnapped and brought to be exhibited in human zoos. It was not uncommon for these people to die quickly, even within a year of their captivity. This history is long and deep and continued into the 1950s. Several articles below with lots of photos so we can see the reality of this terrible legacy

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[WARNING: Some images may disturb.] Slavery has been a part of human society since its beginning - and it continues to thrive today. This list looks at some facts about slavery that should (for the most part) be unknown to most of our readers. This is a look through history at how slavery has existed and survived through time.

Slavery was officially established in Virginia in 1654, when Anthony Johnson, a black man, convinced a court that his servant (also black) John Casor was his for life. Johnson himself had been brought to Virginia some years earlier as an indentured servant (a person who must work to repay a debt, or on contract for so many years in exchange for food and shelter - image of a contract above) but he saved enough money to buy out the remainder of his contract and that of his wife. The court ruled in Johnson's favor, and the very first officially state-recognized slave existed in Virginia. Johnson eventually became very wealthy and began importing his own black slaves from Africa, for which he was granted 250 acres (at the time, any person importing a slave would be paid 50 acres per person). Eventually the unfortunate repercussions of this decision would come back to haunt Johnson when his land was confiscated and given to a white man because Johnson "was a Negroe and by consequence an alien."

In the second part of the eighteenth century, slavery was beginning to disappear naturally in the United States as farmers were planting crops that required far less manual work. Many slave owners freed their slaves and it began to look like slavery would die out completely. But things were to change. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (a device for processing raw cotton). This meant that a single man could process fifty times more cotton in a day than previously - making cotton a huge money making crop. This caused the almost immediate replacement of many crops with cotton, and slavery became once again firmly entrenched until its modern abolition.

The word "slave" comes to us from Byzantine Greek "sklabos" which was the name for the Slavic people. The reason for this is that the Vikings used to capture the Slavs and sell them to the Romans as slaves. The term only dates back as far as 580 AD as the Latin word "servus" was more commonly used before that for all kinds of servants - enslaved or not.

The Bible does not expressly condone or forbid slavery. In the New Testament, Jesus heals a slave and commends his owner for his faith. He does not take the time to condemn the slave owner for having a slave, nor at any point does he try to suggest that slavery is wrong. Saint Paul said this to slave owners: "Do not threaten [your slaves], since you know that He who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him" (Ephesians 6:9). The Old Testament goes a little further and reminds people to treat their slaves well. The most likely reason for this apparent moral discrepancy is that the Bible was penned at a time when slavery was not only widespread, but considered perfectly normal and moral - there was no reason to mention it as most people wouldn't have considered it an issue worth thinking about. Slaves at the time were also generally treated much better than the slaves of modern times, and would usually end up being made free after a number of years servitude.

Liberia is a small nation on the west coast of Africa, surrounded by Sierra Leone, The Ivory Coast, Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1822, Liberia was founded as a colony by American slaves who had been freed. So thankful were the slaves for the efforts of President James Monroe that they named their new capital city after him (Monrovia). The area was populated by various native ethnic groups and the American slaves had a tendency to look down on them as uncivilized. In 1847, the freed slaves declared independence and the nation was officially born. For its first 133 years, the country was a one-party state dominated by the Americo-Liberians. Ironically, the Americo-Liberians and their children were the only people considered citizens and allowed to vote. Liberia is currently the only (and first) African nation to have an elected woman (Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf) as its head. Liberian English (the official language in Liberia) is a transplanted variant of the English spoken by African American slaves in the 19th Century. The freed slaves turned Liberia into a replica of the cities they left in the United States - as can be seen by the now dilapidated Masonic Temple above which is in Monrovia.

In Africa, prior to the arrival of European slave traders, slavery was a normal part of life. The thing that makes it stand out from European style slavery was the fact that it was a sign of good reputation and honor if a slave owner treated his slaves with respect and kindness. The better treated your slaves, the more honorable and highly regarded you were. Manhandling a slave (as the Europeans were wont to do) was considered unethical and you risked your reputation if you did not feed, clothe, and provide quality surroundings for your slaves.

Charles Lynch was a farmer and American revolutionary from Virginia. During the American Revolution, he headed an irregular court which tried and punished loyalist supporters of the British. The sentences handed down were usually property seizure, flogging, or conscription into the army. After the revolution, Lynch became a member of the Virginia Senate. He is, of course, now famous for the term "lynching" or a "lynch mob". Lynching of slaves initially started out as flogging, but within a short period of time this progressed to summary execution (usually by hanging). Lynchburg in Virginia is named for his brother John.

Slavery is an ancient practice; it is referred to in man's earliest records such as the Code of Hammurabi (1760 BC, pictured above), the earliest known law code - from Babylon. It is mentioned in the Bible and some of the ancient philosophers (including Aristotle) believed that some men were born in a natural state of slavery - thereby making it moral to enslave that man (a nice way to justify it if ever there was one). Slavery in those days was often the punishment for debt - once the debt was repaid, the slave might be released.

While the Catholic Church has repeatedly condemned the idea of slavery, there was a short period in the 15th and 16th centuries when it was allowed by special papal permission. The Pope who gave permission was Pope Nicholas V (pictured above) in 1452 when he issued a special bull (a formal letter issued by the Pope) allowing King Afonso V of Portugal to enslave pagans caught during wars. The pertinent text is:

"We grant you [Kings of Spain and Portugal] by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property [...] and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery."

In 1537, Pope Paul III returned to the traditional anti-slavery view of the Church.

According to studies done by anti-slavery groups, there are currently more slaves today than at any time in history! Three quarters are female and over half are children. It is believed that there are around 27 million people in slavery right now. Furthermore, this number does not include people who are not technically slaves but are in a form of servitude tantamount to slavery. This is sometimes called "unfree labor". The average slave today costs around $90 - whereas in the past they cost upwards of $40,000 (in today's money). A study done at Berkeley University estimates that there are around 10,000 slaves in the United States at the moment. [ Source]

Contributor: JFrater

Jamie is the owner and chief-editor of Listverse. He spends his time working on the site, doing research for new lists, and collecting oddities. He is fascinated with all things historic, creepy, and bizarre.

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10 Fascinating Facts About Slavery - Listverse

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Ten fascinating facts about slavery that should be unknown to most of our readers.^Ten fascinating facts about slavery that should be unknown to most of our readers.^Ten fascinating facts about slavery that should be unknown to most of our readers. Slavery has been a part of human society since its beginning - and it continues to thrive today.

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Louis Farrakhan the controversial leader of Islam organized a rally of black men to Washington to show pride and solidarity.

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https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/uncivil?selected=GLT6754684783

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All about frederick. yay. Beware of the video, it will auto play.

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Contents

1. Who Was Frederick Douglass?

2. Escape from Slavery

3. From Slave to Abolitionist Leader

4. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

5. Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Great Britain

6. Frederick Douglass' Paper

7. Frederick Douglass Quotes

8. Frederick Douglass During the Civil War

9. Frederick Douglass: Later Life and Death

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. After that conflict and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, he continued to push for equality and human rights until his death in 1895.

Douglass' 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, described his time as an enslaved worker in Maryland. It was one of five autobiographies he penned, along with dozens of noteworthy speeches, despite receiving minimal formal education.

An advocate for women's rights, and specifically the right of women to vote, Douglass' legacy as an author and leader lives on. His work served as an inspiration to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond.
READ MORE: What Frederick Douglass Revealed-and Omitted-in His Famous Autobiographies
Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in or around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his exact birth date.

His mother was of Native American ancestry and his father was of African and European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother's name), and took the name Douglass only after he escaped. His full name at birth was "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey."

After he was separated from his mother as an infant, Douglass lived for a time with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the age of six, he was moved away from her to live and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From there, Douglass was "given" to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, sent him to work with his brother Hugh in Baltimore. Douglass credits Hugh's wife Sophia with first teaching him the alphabet.

From there, he taught himself to read and write. By the time he was hired out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching other enslaved people to read using the Bible.

As word spread of his efforts to educate fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a farmer who was known for his brutal treatment of the enslaved people in his charge. Roughly 16 at this time, Douglass was regularly whipped by Covey.

Escape from Slavery

After several failed attempts at escape, Douglass finally left Covey's farm in 1838, first boarding a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. From there he traveled through Delaware, another slave state, before arriving in New York and the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles.

Once settled in New York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black woman from Baltimore he met while in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and the two were married in September 1838. They would have five children together.
READ MORE: Frederick Douglass's Emotional Meeting with His Former Slave Master
From Slave to Abolitionist Leader

After their marriage, the young couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a married couple who were born "free persons of color." It was the Johnsons who inspired the couple to take the surname Douglass, after the character in the Sir Walter Scott poem, "The Lady of the Lake."

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement. During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men eventually met when both were asked to speak at an abolitionist meeting, during which Douglass shared his story of slavery and escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become a speaker and leader in the abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had become part of the American Anti-Slavery Society's "Hundred Conventions" project, a six-month tour through the United States. Douglass was physically assaulted several times during the tour by those opposed to the abolitionist movement.

In one particularly brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass' hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and he never regained full use of his hand.

In 1858, radical abolitionist John Brown stayed with Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, as he planned his raid on the U.S. military arsenal at Harper's Ferry, part of his attempt to establish a stronghold of formerly enslaved people in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown was caught and hanged for masterminding the attack, offering the following prophetic words as his final statement: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
READ MORE: Why Frederick Douglass Matters
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Two years later, Douglass published the first and most famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. (He also authored My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he wrote: "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom."

He also noted, "Thus is slavery the enemy of both the slave and the slaveholder."

Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Great Britain

Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Great Britain. At the time, the former country was just entering the early stages of the Irish Potato Famine, or the Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed by the relative freedom he had as a man of color, compared to what he had experienced in the United States. During his time in Ireland, he would meet the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell, who would become an inspiration for his later work.

In England, Douglass also delivered what would later be viewed as one of his most famous speeches, the so-called "London Reception Speech."

In the speech, he said, "What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?... I need not lift up the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state of things..."

Frederick Douglass' Paper

When he returned to the United States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star. He also became involved in the movement for women's rights.

He was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering of women's rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the meeting and said, "In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world."

He would later include coverage of women's rights issues in the pages of the North Star. The newsletter's name was changed to Frederick Douglass' Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start of the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered another of his more famous speeches, one that later came to be called "What to a slave is the 4th of July?"

In one section of the speech, Douglass noted, "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

For the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Douglass delivered a rousing address in Washington, D.C., during which he said, "where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Frederick Douglass During the Civil War

During the brutal conflict that divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak and worked tirelessly for the end of slavery and the right of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported President Abraham Lincoln in the early years of the Civil War, Douglass would fall into disagreement with the politician after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice of slavery. Douglass was disappointed that Lincoln didn't use the proclamation to grant formerly enslaved people the right to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside soldiers for the Union army.

It is said, though, that Douglass and Lincoln later reconciled and, following the latter's assassination in 1865, and the passage of the 13th amendment, 14th amendment, and 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted formerly enslaved people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and protected all citizens from racial discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park in 1876.

Historians, in fact, suggest that Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president's favorite walking stick to Douglass after that speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served in many official positions in government, including as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic, thereby becoming the first Black man to hold high office. He also continued speaking and advocating for African American and women's rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, he supported the candidacy of former Union general Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to take a hard line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Grant notably also oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which was designed to suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.
READ MORE: Why Frederick Douglass Wanted Black Men to Fight in the Civil War
Frederick Douglass: Later Life and Death

In 1877, Douglass met with Thomas Auld, the man who once "owned" him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass' wife Anna died in 1882, and he married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States, during the Republican National Convention. Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison received the party nomination.

Douglass remained an active speaker, writer and activist until his death in 1895. He died after suffering a heart attack on his way home from a meeting of the National Council of Women, a women's rights group still in its infancy at the time, in Washington, D.C.

His life's work still serves as an inspiration to those who seek equality and a more just society.

Sources

Frederick Douglas, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the South, University of North Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
"Reception Speech. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846." USF.edu.
"What to the slave is the 4th of July?" TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). "Donald Trump's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." The Atlantic.

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Who Was Frederick Douglass? Escape from Slavery From Slave to Abolitionist Leader Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Great Britain Frederick Douglass' Paper Frederick Douglass Quotes Frederick Douglass During the Civil War Frederick Douglass: Later Life and Death Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker.

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https://daily.jstor.org/the-forgotten-movement-that-changed-american-womens-lives/

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Elizabeth Jennings Graham was another transportation activist just like Rosa Parks

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Elizabeth Jennings Graham was another transportation activist just like Rosa Parks

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http://www.neatorama.com/2014/05/20/heroes-who-changed-US-history/

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In this episode you learn how a group of ex-farmers attempts one of the biggest raids of the Civil War

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Uncivil: A new history podcast from Gimlet Media.

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America is divided, and it always has been. We're going back to the moment when that split turned into war.

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Mary Todd was the first lady to aid the Union in danger

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Mary Todd was the first lady to aid the Union in danger

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https://www.biography.com/news/first-ladies-and-their-causes-20770127

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Sergeant William Harvey Carney was a forgotten hero

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinda_Blalock

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quilts were used as maps for slaves to escape 

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quilts were used as maps for slaves to escape 

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https://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1606271,00.html

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Sybil Ludington, the pretty great person.

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Sybil Ludington, the pretty great person.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington

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Harriet Tubman, The Savior Of More Than 500 People

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Harriet Tubman, The Savior Of More Than 500 People

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http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/underground-railroad

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secret history of the underground railroad 

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secret history of the underground railroad 

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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-secret-history-of-the-underground-railroad/384966/

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https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war

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In this episode you learn about the land promised to people

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Uncivil: A new history podcast from Gimlet Media.

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America is divided, and it always has been. We're going back to the moment when that split turned into war.

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raids with Harriet Tubman and Muntgomery

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raids with Harriet Tubman and Muntgomery

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They saved around 700 slaves.

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A black man that fought in the Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Fleetwood

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Background

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."
Frederick Douglass

The issues of emancipation and military service were intertwined from the onset of the Civil War. News from Fort Sumter set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units. They were turned away, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. army (although they had served in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812). In Boston disappointed would-be volunteers met and passed a resolution requesting that the Government modify its laws to permit their enlistment.

The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorizing the recruitment of black troops, concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede. When Gen. John C. Frémont (photo citation: 111-B-3756) in Missouri and Gen. David Hunter (photo citation: 111-B-3580) in South Carolina issued proclamations that emancipated slaves in their military regions and permitted them to enlist, their superiors sternly revoked their orders. By mid-1862, however, the escalating number of former slaves (contrabands), the declining number of white volunteers, and the increasingly pressing personnel needs of the Union Army pushed the Government into reconsidering the ban.

As a result, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, freeing slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army. Two days later, slavery was abolished in the territories of the United States, and on July 22 President Lincoln (photo citation: 111-B-2323) presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. After the Union Army turned back Lee's first invasion of the North at Antietam, MD, and the Emancipation Proclamation was subsequently announced, black recruitment was pursued in earnest. Volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, and Massachusetts filled the first authorized black regiments. Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass (photo citation: 200-FL-22) encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship. (Two of Douglass's own sons contributed to the war effort.) Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers.

By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war-30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman (photo citation: 200-HN-PIO-1), who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.

Because of prejudice against them, black units were not used in combat as extensively as they might have been. Nevertheless, the soldiers served with distinction in a number of battles. Black infantrymen fought gallantly at Milliken's Bend, LA; Port Hudson, LA; Petersburg, VA; and Nashville, TN. The July 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, SC, in which the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers lost two-thirds of their officers and half of their troops, was memorably dramatized in the film Glory. By war's end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor.

In addition to the perils of war faced by all Civil War soldiers, black soldiers faced additional problems stemming from racial prejudice. Racial discrimination was prevalent even in the North, and discriminatory practices permeated the U.S. military. Segregated units were formed with black enlisted men and typically commanded by white officers and black noncommissioned officers. The 54th Massachusetts was commanded by Robert Shaw and the 1st South Carolina by Thomas Wentworth Higginson-both white. Black soldiers were initially paid $10 per month from which $3 was automatically deducted for clothing, resulting in a net pay of $7. In contrast, white soldiers received $13 per month from which no clothing allowance was drawn. In June 1864 Congress granted equal pay to the U.S. Colored Troops and made the action retroactive. Black soldiers received the same rations and supplies. In addition, they received comparable medical care.

The black troops, however, faced greater peril than white troops when captured by the Confederate Army. In 1863 the Confederate Congress threatened to punish severely officers of black troops and to enslave black soldiers. As a result, President Lincoln issued General Order 233, threatening reprisal on Confederate prisoners of war (POWs) for any mistreatment of black troops. Although the threat generally restrained the Confederates, black captives were typically treated more harshly than white captives. In perhaps the most heinous known example of abuse, Confederate soldiers shot to death black Union soldiers captured at the Fort Pillow, TN, engagement of 1864. Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest witnessed the massacre and did nothing to stop it.

The document featured with this article is a recruiting poster directed at black men during the Civil War. It refers to efforts by the Lincoln administration to provide equal pay for black soldiers and equal protection for black POWs. The original poster is located in the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917, Record Group 94.
Article Citation
Freeman, Elsie, Wynell Burroughs Schamel, and Jean West. "The Fight for Equal Rights: A Recruiting Poster for Black Soldiers in the Civil War." Social Education 56, 2 (February 1992): 118-120. [Revised and updated in 1999 by Budge Weidman.]

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Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War

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Background "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

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Harriet tubman, Born Araminta Ross, Was a Abductor for the underground railroad, a series tunnels for slaves to escape to freedom. She also was a Spy for the Union army.

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Harriet tubman, Born Araminta Ross, Was a Abductor for the underground railroad, a series tunnels for slaves to escape to freedom. She also was a Spy for the Union army.

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a women wen't to the civil war to fight
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/biographies/sarah-emma-edmonds