Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 109

April 29, 2022: Ulysses Grant Studying: His Legacies

[April 27thwill mark the 200thbirthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]

On a very controversial claim, and a couple arguments for it that are worth engaging even if you disagree.

I won’t make you wait for the controversial claim: I might well argue that Ulysses Grant’s presidency was both more important and more inspiring than Abraham Lincoln’s. Let me hasten to add, lest you start a petition to strip me of my AmericanStudies Card (and you have no idea how difficult it is to get one of those in the first place, so I’ll be damned if I let it slip away), that I’m being at least a bit hyperbolic for effect. I don’t believe any American president faced more dire nor more significant circumstances than did Lincoln, and I don’t know that any other could have handled it any better. Whatever his flaws and mistakes—and it’s certainly important to remember and engage them, even more so because of the hero worship that has accompanied our collective memories of Lincoln far too often (and which began in his own era, especially after his assassination)—Lincoln was without any question a top-five American president, and a case can certainly be made for the greatest of all.

But I said what I said—and while ranking presidents against each other is ultimately silly, I would nonetheless make the case that in some key ways Grant’s presidency was both more important and more inspiring than Lincoln’s. When it comes to importance, I’m thinking specifically about how vital it was that Grant followed Andrew Johnson—for my money the worst president in American history (at least until, I dunno, 2016 or thereabouts), and of course one for whose proximity to the presidency Lincoln himself bears a frustrating responsibility. While the die was unfortunately already cast for many of the awful things Johnson did between 1865 and 1869 to challenge Reconstruction, African American rights, and all the possibilities of America’s second founding, there’s no doubt that a great deal worse could have been done over the next eight years—and at the very least, that a different next president might have done precious little to push things in the right direction when it came to those unfolding histories. Which is to say, following a historically horrific presidency has to be one of the most important things a president could do, and I would argue Grant it did amazingly well.

That in and of itself makes Grant’s presidency deeply inspiring as well, but I mean something a bit different by my use of that term. I’ve long argued, in this space and many other spaces, that over the quarter-century following the Civil War the U.S. became thoroughly neo-Confederate and white supremacist, profoundly exclusionary on some of the most defining and national levels. No individuals, not even those as powerful as a president, could likely have stopped those trends, and to be sure no individuals were able to do so. But that makes it all the more important to highlight those individuals (as well as communities) who challenged those unfolding histories, who modeled a more inclusive and ideal America in the face of those worst sides of us (then, now, and always). I believe Ulysses S. Grant was one of those individuals, and that his presidency, whatever its scandals and shortcomings, offered an 8-year glimpse into what it would mean to have such inclusive allies at the highest levels of American government. That’s a model and a legacy that can and should inspire all of us as we fight to challenge the worst and extend the best of Reconstruction and America here in 2022.

April Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?

April 28, 2022: Ulysses Grant Studying: His Friends

[April 27thwill mark the 200thbirthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]

Three representative relationships across Grant’s iconic life (besides his friendship with Mark Twain, about which I wrote on Tuesday).

1)      James Longstreet: As that hyperlinked article indicates, certain famous details of the friendship between Grant and Longstreet are a bit difficult to pin down for a certainty; but there’s no doubt that the two became close during their time at West Point, that they remained connected through Grant’s wife Julia (a distant relation of Longstreet’s), and that they served together in the Mexican American War, all early experiences that were no doubt formative for their friendship. That’s one of many such examples of how U.S. and Confederate soldiers and generals were as intimately interconnected as were the regions themselves. But it also adds an interesting layer to Longstreet’s post-Civil War evolutions, about which I wrote at length in this Saturday Evening Post Considering History columnand many of which took place during Grant’s presidency.

2)      Ely Parker: I’ve written about Ely Parker, one of my favorite 19thcentury Americans, many times before in this space. He and Grant first became friends during Parker’s time supervising government engineering projects in Galena, Illinois, where Ulysses and Julia lived with family for a time just before the Civil War. During the war Parker became both adjutant and secretary to Grant, writing much of Grant’s correspondence and (most famously) drafting the Appomattoxsurrender documents. When Grant became president, he appointed Parker his , the first Native American to serve in the role; as the first hyperlinked article above notes, he and Grant worked hard to extend rights and protections to Native Americans during his brief time in the position. Every part of that story is more complicated than these few lines permit, but the bottom line is that Grant’s multiracial alliances and solidarities extended not just to African Americans but very much to Native Americans, as inspired by his longtime friendship with Ely Parker.

3)      John McDonald: Parker was an example of how Grant brought his friends into his administration in significant and inspiring ways; but as I discussed in Monday’s post, the scandals that became so much of the story of the Grant presidency were also deeply tied to his friends in far more problematic ways. That was particularly the case with John McDonald, a friend and fellow Civil War general whom President Grant appointed as Revenue Collector of the Missouri District in 1869. McDonald would become the corrupt center of the scandal known as the Whiskey Ring, a scandal exposed and investigated by Grant’s own Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bristow. That latter fact is to Grant’s credit, and seems to reflect his genuine lack of awareness of (and frustration with) what supposed friends such as McDonald were up to. But at the same time, those frustrating friends fundamentally shaped narratives of Grant’s presidency, in its own era and throughout the 150 years since, in the process far overshadowing more inspiring friendships like those with Longstreet and Parker.

Last GrantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?

April 27, 2022: Ulysses Grant Studying: His Heritage

[April 27thwill mark the 200thbirthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]

To celebrate Grant’s bicentennial, three interesting and important facts about his heritage and birth:

1)      A Legacy of Service: Grant wasn’t quite one of those folks able (and often all too proud) to trace his American origins back to the Mayflower, but he wasn’t far off either: his ancestors Matthew and Priscilla Grant arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. But that’s not the part of Grant’s multi-century American heritage (about which he wrote at length in his memoir) that interests me; I’d highlight instead the multi-generational story of civic and military service, which includes his great-grandfather (Noah) serving in the French and Indian War (as did Grant’s great-granduncle Solomon) and his grandfather (also Noah) seeing extensive action during the American Revolution. Grant’s choice to attend West Point at the age of 17 was of course his own (as well as his father’s, who wrote to his Congressman Thomas Hamer requesting that his son be nominated for the academy), but it was also very much in the steps of his ancestors, and would profoundly shape every subsequent stage of his life.

2)      An Abolitionist Dad: That father, Jesse Root Grant, didn’t serve in that particular way (he was only 18 at the time of the War of 1812, so wouldn’t have had a lot of opportunity in any case), but offered Ulysses another powerful model for civic engagement nonetheless. Jesse was a committed member of the Whig Party who would later serve as mayor of two Ohio towns close to Ulysses’ birthplace of Point Pleasant, Georgetown and Bethel. But he was also, and most impressively for the era, an even more committed abolitionist, one who broke from the Jacksonian Democrats over the issue of slavery and contributed a number of editorials on the subject to local and state papers. Moreover, Jesse lived in John Brown’s house when the two were both young and remained close to Brown, linking him even more potently to radical abolition. As I wrote Monday, Grant’s presidency was as progressive on issues of race as any in American history, and that seems clearly related to his father’s influence and legacy.

3)      A S-ymbolic Name: My final detail here is both more well-known and less significant than those other two, but I think it’s telling nonetheless. Jesse and his wife Hannah named their first child Hiram Ulysses, with Hiram a family name from Hannah’s Simpson clan and Ulysses drawn from a hatful of prospective names. Ulysses would be known throughout his childhood by his middle name, however, and when Congressman Hamer put forward the Grant family’s application to West Point, he called the young man Ulysses—and then, for whatever erroneous reason, listed his middle initial as “S.” The initial thus literally referred to nothing, but as a result Grant’s West Point peers began calling him Sam, as “U.S.” was a common abbreviation for “Uncle Sam” (a character first developed ). Partly this detail reminds us that the public persona of presidents is always distinct from the private realities; but partly it’s one further proof that U.S. Grant was descended from and destined for civic service and critical patriotism.

Next GrantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?

April 26, 2022: Ulysses Grant Studying: His Book

[April 27thwill mark the 200thbirthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]

On three figures in Grant’s life we can better remember through his acclaimed autobiography The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885-1886).

1)      Mark Twain: Twain of course needs no help garnering a prominent place in our collective memories; but as that hyperlinked article indicates, his friendship with Grant is its own complex and compelling story, and one that contributed significantly to the writing, publication, and success of Grant’s memoir. Ever the marketing genius, Twain also devised a particularly innovative and impressive plan for publicizing and selling the book. But as I’ve learned while researching my current book project, the influences of Grant and Twain’s friendship went far beyond that final stage in Grant’s life (the book was published posthumously), and included their mutual connection to and role in advocating for the Hartford Chinese Educational Mission. One of many reasons to better remember these unlikely friends!

2)      Adam Badeau: As that article traces at length (through the eyes of Henry Adams, no less), Grant’s longtime junior officer and friend had a far more fraught and controversial relationship to The Personal Memoirs. It seems likely, as the article notes, that Badeau served only as a researcher and fact-checker for the memoir, not (as he later litigiously claimed) its true author; but on the other hand, he had written multiple books about Grant’s military career, among many other works of nonfiction and fiction, so he might well have offered additional content and/or writing suggestions to Grant along the way. In any case, he reminds us that Grant’s Civil War service wasn’t just a central subject of the book—it remained, two decades later, the organizing principle around which most of Grant’s relationships and legacies were organized.

3)      Julia Grant: But not the only nor the most important such organizing principle, of course. Julia and Ulysses were engaged as early as 1844 (although his Mexican American War service put the wedding off for a time), married in 1848, and remained married through Ulysses’ 1885 death. But she was more than a life partner; she was also very much the motivation for his race to finish the book before his death, as he had lost everything in a Ponzi scheme a year earlier and was desperate to provide for Julia and the family (hence Twain’s elaborate publicity and sales scheme, and hence Julia’s resistance to Badeau’s lawsuit for royalties). In the book Grant focuses almost entirely on his public persona and affairs, as was the norm for memoirs by public figures in the period; but it’s fair to say that the whole book was about his marriage in the most fundamental and inspiring ways.

Next GrantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?

April 25, 2022: Ulysses Grant Studying: His Presidency

[April 27thwill mark the 200thbirthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]

[Gonna start the series by resharing this 2019 150th anniversary post, as it makes clear what I mean by misunderstood.]

On the 150thanniversary of his inauguration, the inescapable truths about President Grant, and how to move beyond them.

On March 4th, 1869 Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as President of the United States. Grant was replacing the truly odious Andrew Johnson, one of the worst presidents (and most tragic and destructive mistakes) in American history, and so he was bound to look pretty good in comparison. And his measured and thoughtful inaugural address indicated the possibility of an impressive and influential presidency to come: in his adamant support for the 15th Amendment and African American suffrage in particular; but also for example in his argument in favor of “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” including advocacy for Native American citizenship. At this pivotal moment in American history, with so much of the post-war era yet to be decided and shaped, this former general with no prior governing experience seemed to be poised to help guide the nation in progressive and productive directions.

Unfortunately, that “no prior governing experience” part ended up influencing Grant’s presidency far more fully and disastrously than his impressive ideas. Grant brought a number of friends and allies with him to his administration, both as Cabinet members and as appointees to other positions, and trustingly delegated authority to them (as perhaps any president has to, of course). When time and again a shockingly high percentage of these administration members were revealed to be taking part in corrupt schemes, Grant tended to stand by them, at least initially; while as far as historians can tell he neither knew about nor profited from any of those schemes, his friendship with and support for these scandalous figures inevitably and unquestionably sullied his own image and reputation. As much as I’d like to argue (and partly will in a moment) that the scandals didn’t define Grant’s presidency, the simple truth is that his was one of the most scandal-ridden in American history (perhaps the most so until, I dunno, right now), and will always be associated with that corruption.

If we can’t change the events of the past, however, we can and should think about collective memories, about what we most fully and centrally remember about historical events. And without denying the factual realities of the Grant Administration scandals, I would nonetheless argue that the historical emphasis on them is related to the triumph of neo-Confederate narratives of Reconstruction, the Civil War, race, and much else in the late 19th century (and ever since). That is, frustratingly bad as Grant was at managing his corrupt friends, he was in other ways the progressive president foreshadowed by his inaugural address: helping gain passage of the 15th Amendment, opposing the Ku Klux Klan, and, perhaps most influentially, founding the Justice Department primarily to advocate for African American rights; and appointing his friend and Civil War comrade (and amazing American) Ely Parker as the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and working toward a very different and more peaceful relationship between the federal government and Native American tribes. If Grant’s corrupt administration contributed to the failure of some of these initiatives (and I’m sure it did, although white supremacist opposition contributed even more), that’s no reason for us to forget or minimize their existence as we celebrate the sesquicentennial of this presidency.

Next GrantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?

April 23-24, 2022: Tiffany Chenault’s Guest Post: Boston Marathon RECAP

[On April 19th, 1897, the first Boston Marathon was run. So for the 125th anniversary of this iconic road race, this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Marathon histories and contexts, leading up to this special Guest Post from my favorite RunningStudier!]

[As I wrote in this post, one of the best things I’ve done in my career was reaching out to Tiffany Chenaultto be a co-leader of the SSN Boston Chapter. A Sociology professor at Salem State University and one of the leaders of higher ed faculty unions throughout the state, Tiffany is also a very serious runner (she’s completing a project to run a half-marathon in every state) and an equally series studier of running and race. I’m really excited to share some of her thoughts and work in this Guest Post!]

I could not believe I was participating in the 126thBoston Marathon. This was something that was never on my bucket list. To be honest I didn’t know anything about it (Boston Marathon) until I moved to Boston in 2005. I learned through my white colleagues that everyone goes to watch the Marathon on Patriot’s Day. It was the ultimate tailgating event, I was told. That was how it was framed to me. The black friends I met in Boston, could have cared less about the Marathon. They never went downtown on Marathon Monday and they were a bit indifferent about it. It meant there was more traffic downtown. Also, in reality, their Boston neighborhoods were not impacted. I should say, their neighborhoods were excluded from the signs, banners, and advertisements which celebrates the arrival of the marathon and the runners. Those items I would see in the middle/upper-class white neighborhoods of the city. This was my first experience with the Boston Marathon  

Fast forward ten years later when I would become a runner. This was an identity that I never thought I would claim or imagine ever saying those words out of my mouth.  The loss of my mother and my grief led me to running as an outlet for healing. As I was running and healing, the sociologist in me started to look around my new running space and realized the whiteness of this space. Where were the other black women who looked like me that ran? This was a question that developed the more I ran, the more I healed, the more my sociological inquiry developed.

I started off with 5k (3 miles), 10ks (6 miles), half marathons (13.1 miles) and later built up to my first marathon (26.2 miles) in 2015.  For me, if I was going to run one marathon in my life, I was going to do it in my hometown and in the place my mother was buried. The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, Ohio was my first and I thought was my last marathon. For all the time, energy, money, sweat, and pain you go through, I wanted the marathon I chose to mean something. I wanted to have a connection to the place, the space, and the people. Even in that race, I saw more black women running but we were still a small minority within the minority of the less than 1% of the U. S. population that has run a marathon.

In the research, pop culture, and literature on running, I discovered that women/female runners are always white. Black women and other women of color were hardly mentioned or studied. When race is discussed in the running space, it usually revolves around black men. When people think of black marathoners, they are thinking of the elite, African runners, who come from countries such as from Kenya and Ethiopia, Morocco, and Algeria. Yes, they are black but they are not African-American domestic runners. What was missing and invisible, were the intersectional experiences of black women runners. It became important to consider the social location of race, gender, and social class that black women experience in running through their lens and ideas.

Does gendered racism play a role in why or why not black women participate in this sport? I had questions. To answer these questions, I started a research journey of running a half marathon in every state. I sought out and found a community of black women who ran. From 5ks (3 miles), marathons (26.2 miles), ultra-marathons (30 miles are more) and everything in between.

Through the five years of running and researching I found several networks of black women recreational runners. There are several themes that black women experience that have come up time and time again which range from hair and body politics, gendered racism, racialized connection with community and spaces, safety, running routes, heterogeneity of blackness, social class, and running in a racial hostile time of black lives matter, say her name, and the Trump era.

As I collected information and met people, I was constantly asked “have you ever run the Boston Marathon?” Despite telling people that I have run two marathons and over 35 half marathons (at that time), everyone always asked about Boston.

Fast forward to April 18th, 2022. The 126thBoston Marathon.  I didn’t have an interest or desire in running the Boston Marathon. This year after a couple of virtual Boston Marathons and meeting last year, the 125th year, in person in October.  This was the year the race would be back on its regular scheduled time; the third Monday of April. This Marathon also was the 50th anniversary of women running the marathon.  

As one of the co-ambassadors for Black Girls Run! Boston chapter, I received an invitation bib to run the marathon, this was in February. My thoughts, do I do this?

There are two ways you get into Boston. Run a marathon with a qualified Boston time to get in or run for a charity, where you have to raise anywhere between $5000-$10,000 and still train. I was doing neither of those things. I had this great opportunity that I couldn’t let pass. To run the Boston Marathon, research Boston Marathon culture, and use this a vehicle to train for my last two continuous states (Idaho and Wyoming), I had to jump on it.

First issue, Boston is not cheap. You pay for eliteness. Everyone has to pay close to $400 to register. It doesn’t matter if you qualified, are running for charity, or received an invitation bib, everyone pays. When I ran in the Paris Marathon, that was around $150. It costs to be a recreational runner but some cost a lot more than others.

Second issue, the 50th anniversary of women running the Marathon. I was curious of how women were celebrated. Walking through the Expo and looking at the Runner’s guide, I did not see African American women. Marilyn Bevans was the first African- American women to run the Boston Marathon and finish in under three hours. She was also the first known women of color to complete the Boston Marathon.  In 1977, she came in second place. I did not see Indigenous women runners, Asian or Latinx female runners. In other words, the stories of women runners, were mostly white.  Knowing the history of Marilyn and other black women Boston Marathon runners, I felt that I was continuing their legacy. That was a point of pride.

Third Issue: Boston is an international running city but it is still racially segregated. The city has a racially diverse population but the residents are racially segregated. Boston has a complex history of race relations, from Busing Segregation of the 1920s, the false accusations from Charles Stuart that claimed a black man killed his wife and unborn child, to sports greats like Bill Russell, who played for the Celtics and the racism he encountered in Boston. All of that to say, Boston has not fully recovered from its past. 

Fourth issue: Connection with Black Unicorn Marathoners. The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) did sponsor and support events that black marathoners could gather together to network, greet, celebrate, and support each other. In a sea of over 30,000 it is good to know other runners whom you might not see but know they are running the course with you. The Black Unicorn Marathoners was formed in April 2015 to be a support system for each other.

I was able to attend the meet in greet at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury and meet my fellow black marathon runners. The joy to see those faces, hear their stories and experiences is something that I would not get if I didn’t know there was a central gathering place. We were all celebrated.

The community of black runners spilled over into race day.  The few black women I saw running in my running wave, we gave each other smiles, thumbs up, and hugs. One woman said “you got this sis” and kept going. I made sure to give extra words of encouragement to the black women I saw.  The cherry on top, besides running through the finish line was seeing the running groups of color, such as Pioneers and Trailblazers on mile 21 celebrating and supporting the runners in their running group and other runners of color. This was my Boston Marathon experience.

[Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Boston Marathon histories or stories you’d highlight?]

April 22, 2022: Boston Marathon Studying: Team Hoyt

[On April 19th, 1897, the first Boston Marathon was run. So for the 125th anniversary of this iconic road race, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Marathon histories and contexts, leading up to a special Guest Post from my favorite RunningStudier!]

I don’t really want to analyze the amazing, inspiring story of Dick and Rick Hoyt, the father-son duo known as Team Hoyt whose more than 30 Boston Marathons—among countless other races—became the stuff of true Boston, sports, and collective legend. Some stories are beyond even AmericanStudier’s need for constant analysis. But I also didn’t want to write a Boston Marathon series without highlighting the Hoyts. So check out those pieces and resources above, and here’s to one of the most iconic father-son combinations we’ve ever seen!

Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Boston Marathon histories or stories you’d highlight?

April 21, 2022: Boston Marathon Studying: The Bombing

[On April 19th, 1897, the first Boston Marathon was run. So for the 125th anniversary of this iconic road race, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Marathon histories and contexts, leading up to a special Guest Post from my favorite RunningStudier!]

[Re-sharing this December 2013 post on the Boston Marathon Bombing, because I would still say very much the same things.]

On a couple ways to AmericanStudy an event that’s still understandably raw and delicate.

A former Fitchburg State University student was good friends with one of the four people killed in April’s bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line (both were Chinese exchange students). One of my FSU colleagues was near the finish line with her young son and was profoundly impacted by the experience.  And as a resident of Waltham, I was required to stay in my home throughout the lockdown later that week, as police searched neighboring Watertown for the surviving second bomber and brother.  All of which is to say, I know full well how much the bombing and its aftermaths affected our local communities (as well as the nation and world), and I’m well aware that even eight months later it might feel too soon to analyze and AmericanStudy the event.

But on the other hand, I’d say that’s part—if a delicate and challenging part—of the job of a public AmericanStudies scholar, to try to provide contexts and frames for even our most raw and painful moments. One such context that has interested me ever since that fateful day in April has been the question of how we remember such events, and more exactly of why we remember some tragedies far more than others. For example, two days after the Marathon bombing, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded, killing 15 people and seriously injuring more than 160 others (totals higher than the bombing’s effects). Yet while the explosion received some attention in its immediate moment, it has gone virtually unremembered on the national level since, and certainly has not occupied the continual place in our conversations that the bombing has. Of course, the bombing was a premeditated and violent act, not an accident—but the Texas explosion has its own complex and controversial histories and contexts. So why do we remember murder or terrorism so much more strongly than other tragedies? A complicated, but important, AmericanStudies question for sure.

Even more complicated and delicate, but just as important, are questions about the narratives we have constructed and continue to construct of the young bombers. I’m not looking to wade into Rolling Stone territory here—that’s been done, and done, and done. But here’s a moment that stood out to me, as I followed the media coverage during my locked-down day: George Stephanopoulos was interviewing a high school class of the surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and he asked her the following pair of questions: “Did he speak with an accident? Or was he Americanized?”  I’ve written before about the equation of “American” with “English-speaking,” but this moment took that equation one step further, defining an accident (a foreign one, presumably—not a Southern or Boston accent, to be sure!) as similarly outside of the definition of “Americanized.” There would be many, many ways to push back on such a narrative—which might be relatively rare in our national community, but also might not be—but perhaps the simplest would be this: it’s quite likely that most, if not all, of the Founding Fathers spoke with a British accent. So however we define “American,” accents seem utterly inseparable from it.

Last Marathon split tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Boston Marathon histories or stories you’d highlight?

April 20, 2022: Boston Marathon Studying: Rosie Ruiz

[On April 19th, 1897, the first Boston Marathon was run. So for the 125th anniversary of this iconic road race, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Marathon histories and contexts, leading up to a special Guest Post from my favorite RunningStudier!]

On three layers to the infamous Boston Marathon scandal beyond the headlines.

1)      New York and Boston: I’ve been reading recently about the Mandela Effect, the way in which large groups of people can remember something differently than how it actually took place. I don’t know if this quite qualifies, but it seems to me that Rosie Ruiz is consistently remembered for having cheated her way to the 1980 Boston Marathon women’s title by taking the subway instead of running the full course. Yet that’s in fact a combination of two different sides to Ruiz’s story: she was discovered to have cheated to the Boston title(by jumping out of the crowd on Commonwealth Avenue near the finish line) and stripped of that crown; and subsequently, stories came out about her being spotted on the subway during the 1979 New York City marathon, which had provided her qualifying time for Boston and which was then also stripped from her record. Obviously these are parallel and interconnected stories, but the combination of them into one event reveals at the very least the need to reexamine our collective memories of any figure and history.

2)      Subsequent crimes: As far as I can tell, Ruiz largely disappeared from the public record after those 1980 revelations, with two specific, also parallel exceptions: her April 1982 arrest in New York (on the same day as the Boston Marathon) for embezzling from a real estate company; and her November 1983 arrest as part of a South Florida drug bust. These arrests would seem to indicate that both Ruiz’s propensity for cheating and her troubled life went far beyond the 1979 and 1980 sports scandals, but it’s also possible to see them another way: that after those scandals (before which the 26-year-old Ruiz had never been arrested) her life went off the rails, spiraling into additional criminal behavior. Obviously that’s a chicken-and-egg type question, and the answer wouldn’t change the facts of these different unethical and illegal actions in any case. But it’s always worth thinking about narratives of contingency and inevitability when it comes to the arc of any individual life, just as with all of history.

3)      A Cuban American childhood: Ruiz was born in Havana, and immigrated to (or rather fled to, given the realities of movement under Castro’s regime) the United States with her family in 1962, when she was 8. She was apparently then separated from her mother and lived with extended family in South Florida. I don’t want to overstate the relevance of these complex childhood details, as of course the vast majority of either Cuban Americans or immigrant children separated from their parents do not go on to a life of cheating and criminality. Yet if we simply examine Ruiz’s own life, it’s fair to say that these early experiences would have been influential, and perhaps more specifically that they left her with feelings of instability or uncertainty about such foundational elements as home and family. All part of understanding the story of Rosie Ruiz beyond the headlines, anyway.

Next Marathon split tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Boston Marathon histories or stories you’d highlight?

April 19, 2022: Boston Marathon Studying: Katherine Switzer

[On April 19th, 1897, the first Boston Marathon was run. So for the 125th anniversary of this iconic road race, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Marathon histories and contexts, leading up to a special Guest Post from my favorite RunningStudier!]

I don’t tend to dedicate entire posts to linking to another piece; but in this case, as the groundbreaking runner and Boston Marathon participant Katherine Switzer notes in her own intro to the piece I’ll share, it’s vital that we get the facts of her experiences from her own perspective, rather than the many mythologized narratives that have sprung up around them and her. So in lieu of reading a full post of mine about Switzer, I’ll ask you to check out this recollection of that 1967 Boston Marathon, drawn from her memoir Marathon Woman (2007) and originally published in Runner’s World magazine. Enjoy!

Next Marathon split tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Boston Marathon histories or stories you’d highlight?