Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 24

January 10, 2025: Great Society Laws: Immigration and America

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On one definitivelyinclusive thing the 1965 immigration law did, one more complicated effect, andthe bottom line.

I hopethis entire series has made clear just how broad and deep was the Great Society’scommitment to progressively and positively affecting American society. But Ihave to admit that it’s still a bit surprising to me, in the best possible way,to remember that making federal immigration policies more progressive and inclusiveended up on that list. As I’ve argued since at least mythird book, the period beginning in the 1920s was the first time inAmerican history when our foundational diversity was genuinely threatened bythe federal government, thanks largely to that decade’squota laws and the restrictiveimmigration policy they produced. So it was far from a given that even aprogressive administration would be able to challenge, much less reverse, thosefour-plus decades of policy and history—and yet Johnson’s Great Society programdid so, through the Immigrationand Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-CellerAct), which did away with those nationality- and ethnicity-based quotas andmade immigration to the U.S. from much of the world far more possible onceagain.

The 1965law did so by instituting a number of other systems of preference through whichto categorize and admit immigrants. That’s an entirely understandable and evennecessary step, and moreover many of those new preferences made perfect sense,including an emphasis on familyconnections which directly challenged the ways in which immigration restrictionshad for nearly a century soughtto break up American families and through them communities. But at the sametime, I would point to another and far more problematic preference that wentback to the restrictive policies but was deepened by the 1965 law—the overtpreference for wealthy arrivals which has long been enshrined in the “MillionDollar Visa” policy. I’m not naïve enough not to understand the rationalebehind such a preference, and that particular policy does include an ostensiblerequirement that these wealthy arrivals create jobs for other Americans (althoughI would be pleasantly shocked if they were indeed required to do so). But atthe same time, my personal preference is still and will always be the sameone enshrined on the Statue ofLiberty’s pedestal—for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearningto breathe free.”

The divisionbetween wealthier and less wealthy immigrants was on full display in the most recentpresidential election, as illustrated by Elon Musk (himself a self-confessedundocumented immigrant in his early days in the US) becoming one of ourmost vocal cheerleaders for the Trump campaign in general and its xenophobic narrativesin particular. But as telling and significant as such divisions and debatesare, I think they ultimately can be a bit of a distraction from the moredefining question: whether we see immigration as a key aspect of the GreatSociety, of the best vision and version of the United States; or whether we seeit as a threat to those things. The 1960s Great Society answered that questionpotently through its inclusion of the 1965 immigration law among its programsand policies; the next four years will test whether and how those of us whoagree can continue to fight for immigration’s and all immigrants’ place in ourgreat society.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 9, 2025: Great Society Laws: Medicare and Medicaid

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

How theGreat Society reflected two distinct ways of thinking about health care, and whythe second in particular is still urgently needed.

One of thelife lessons we all learn—or rather we hope to live long enough to learn—is thataging ain’t for the faint of heart. I don’t know how long exactly a relativelyhealthy human body is designed (not in an Intelligent Design sense, to beclear, just in the biology and chemistry/nature and evolution sense) to live,but it seems clear to me that in the modern world our life expectancies well outpacethat plan, leading to all the potential (and likely, if not indeed inevitable)health and medical issues that come with aging. Before the creation of SocialSecurity in the 1930s, aging Americans were pretty much entirely on their ownwhen it came to such challenges; but that new program alone wasn’t quitesufficient to really deal with those health and medical realities, and so theGreat Society added a vital new element, the health insurance program forseniors knownas Medicare. As the son to a pair of older parents, I’ve seen first-handhow vital both Social Security and Medicare are to helping folks and familiesnavigate these inevitable challenges of aging, and I truly can’t imagine how anyonesurvived the arc of life in America without them (and it seems clear thatmany, many more folks did not, or at least did so with far more challengesstill).

Although Medicareis an entirely communal and indeed a socialist program (yeah, I invoked the AmericanBogeyman, but it’s the truth, folks), I would argue that it nonethelessreflects an individual approach to health care, or rather a resource designedto help individuals and families navigate their own health and medicalchallenges. Given the Great Society’s emphases on both a “War on Poverty” andsocial safety nets, it’s not surprising that in the same years—and indeed inthe same law, the Medicareand Medicaid Act (also known as the Social Security Amendments) of 1965—theadministration also created a more overtly community-focused health insurance program,Medicaid. Designed as a way toguarantee a baseline level of health insurance and thus health care for themost disadvantaged Americans, Medicaid quickly evolved to include a number ofrelated and even more overtly community-focused programs, including for examplethe Children’s Health InsuranceProgram (CHIP) that offers access to not just health insurance but also communityhealth programs for all American children and families.

Medicareand Medicaid are in many ways, as their names suggest, parallel and complementaryprograms. But I do believe that the latter is more community focused than theformer, and likewise and even more importantly represents a recognition thathealth insurance and health care are communal needs, that access to themprofoundly affects not only individuals but also and in many ways especially communitiesfor the better (and the absence of them does so for the worse). One of the mostfrustrating aspects of the last couple decades in American politics (an incrediblylong and competitive list to be sure) has been the collective unwillingness ofso many Americans to a) recognize that programs like Medicare and Medicaid arealready collective and governmental and, again, socialist; and b) extend that awarenessto a recognition that collective health insurance and policies, such as theidea of “Medicarefor All,” would represent a vital step forward in guaranteeing access tohealth insurance and care for all Americans. That’s one Great Society lesson wedesperately still need to learn.

Last GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 8, 2025: Great Society Laws: Economic Safety Nets

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On threedistinct and equally important ways that the Great Society created safety nets.

1)     Housing: In that section of Monday’s post onthe Civil Rights Act of 1968, I noted that part of that law (Title VIII) cameto be known as theFair Housing Act. That important set of policies and protections was mademuch more possible by a distinct federal law from a few years earlier: the Housing andUrban Development Act of 1965. Besides adding a number of programs andprotections to federal housing policy, this 1965 law also created a new Cabinetdepartment, the Departmentof Housing and Urban Development. Given the federal government’s centralrole in such longstanding discriminatory practices as redlining, it wasparticularly important that the Great Society make equal opportunity to and accessibilityof housing a significant focus, both to redress such specific histories and todo what it could to guarantee this vital resource for all Americans.

2)     Jobs: If housing is a great example of a safetynet resource, though, it’s also just a baseline on which more must be added tohelp move individuals out of poverty and toward prosperity. Exemplifying theGreat Society’s efforts towards those broader goals was the EconomicOpportunity Act of 1964, which as President Johnson arguedwas intended “to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty inthis nation by opening to everyone the opportunity for education and training,the opportunity to work, and the opportunity to live in decency and dignity.” Andfor those critics who might worry about the dangers of federal governmentoverreach, it’s worth adding that this law pursued those shared goals primarilyby creating CommunityAction Agencies, local organizations that would help individuals, families,and communities in their areas in specific and targeted ways.

3)     Food Stamps: Whether or not an individual isable to find and keep a job or jobs, however, it’s important to add that fartoo often more of a safety net is needed to keep folks and families on theright side of the poverty line. Even before the Great Society, PresidentKennedy and Congress had recognized that fact and launched the Food Stamp Program (often known asthe Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) in 1962 to helpAmericans purchase food and related resources; but the Johnson administration expandedand cemented that program with the FoodStamp Act of 1964. Over the sixty years since, “food stamps” have becomealmost as frequent a target of misinformation and prejudice as “welfare,”and with just as little cause; as the Great Society’s contemporary activiststhe BlackPanthers knew well, if folks are hungry there’s very little that education,or jobs, or any other resource can truly offer them.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 7, 2025: Great Society Laws: Education and the Arts

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created hisGreat Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it inhis 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a greatsociety, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’slabor.” So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leadingup to a post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On two specificsignificant laws, and one broader effect of the Great Society.

As the sonof a lifelong earlychildhood educator I am perhaps biased, but to my mind one of the mostunder-appreciated (and certainly one of the most transformative) of the GreatSociety laws would be the Elementaryand Secondary Education Act of 1965. Part of Johnson’s overarching conceptof a “Waron Poverty,” this hugely influential law represented a major reform of anddeepened federal commitment to public education in the United States overall,and disadvantaged students and families in particular. The Act’s dualemphases on guaranteeing equal access and shrinking achievement gaps compriseda radical new perspective on how the federal government should approach educationpolicy, one supported by significant and ongoing commitments of money and otherresources, and over the sixty years since those emphases have been complementedand extended by additions involving bilingual education and stronger protectionsagainst discrimination (toward students and teachers alike), among others.

Later in1965 (it was a very busy year for Great Society laws and programs!), a separateCongressional law created the National Endowmentfor the Arts (NEA), which became instantly and remains to this day the mostprominent federal arts organization. The NEA’s original mission statement linkedboth the organization and the arts themselves directly to education, in and outof classrooms: the NEA is “dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, bothnew and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providingleadership in arts education.” But at the same time, the NEA’s significant annual grant funding in particular isimportantly available to any and all artists and creators, individuals andcommunities, with no necessary connection to particular educationalinstitutions nor to educational goals (which of course are far from the only placeor role for the arts in society). These are complementary but far from directlyoverlapping 1965 laws, that is.

But I dowant to push further with my connection between these two laws in oneadditional and important way. I agree with the framing that the Education Actwas tied to the War on Poverty, as access to education is crucial to connectingall children, families, and communities to the opportunities that can help alleviatepoverty and lead to better futures. But to quote one of our most famousteacher characters, “medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noblepursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love,these are what we stay alive for.” I really love that the Great Societysupported the arts in education as well as the arts overall, and expressed clearlythrough such emphases and priorities that both arts education and the arts arepart of all lives and communities, rather than in any way more elective orelite. We would do well to extend that emphasis today.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 6, 2025: Great Society Laws: Civil and Voting Rights

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created hisGreat Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it inhis 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a greatsociety, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’slabor.” So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leadingup to a post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On one smallerbut still important detail in each of three pivotal civil rights laws.

1)     TheCivil Rights Act of 1964: Among the many protections against discriminationand segregation in this groundbreaking law, I’d highlight Title VII’sprohibition against discrimination “based on sex.” There’s apparently a greatdeal of debate of whether that section, introduced as an amendment by thepowerful RepresentativeHoward W. Smith (D-VA), was intended sincerely or as an attempt to derailthe bill’s protections for African Americans. But while Smith was asegregationist, he was also a longtime sponsorof the Equal Rights Amendment, so it seems likely to me that he did hope toinclude these protections in the final law—and in any case, the amendmentpassed and was included in the Civil Rights Act.

2)     TheVoting Rights Act of 1965: The many General and Special Provisions includedin this landmark law could be the subject of an entire weeklong blog series intheir own right, especially since so many of them connect to overarchingAmerican histories and issues. Here I’ll highlight just one: Section 203c,which createda census-based formula to determine which jurisdictions are required toprovide election materials in multiple languages. Given the (stupid and racist)ways in which 21st century Americans have responded to things like “Pressing2 for Spanish,” I can only imagine how divisive this provision was in 1965—makingme even gladder that it’s there.

3)     TheCivil Rights Act of 1968: There’s a lot of goodness in this follow-up CivilRights Act, including not just the protections that came to be known as theFair Housing Act, but also the countless rights it helped grant to NativeAmerican communities through the “IndianBill of Rights.” But because everything in our history is complicated andmuch of it contradictory, I’ll highlight here the law’s Title X, the Anti-RiotAct, which made it a felony to “travel in interstate commerce with theintent to incite, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry on a riot.” AsI’ve written many times,“riot” is one of the most fraught terms in our political discourse—and when welearn that this act was signedinto law during the uprisings after the assassination of Martin Luther KingJr., we realize just how fraught this particular usage of the term was andremains.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 4-5, 2025: 2025 Anniversaries: Five 1975 Films

[A NewYear means another blog series dedicated to historic anniversaries we’ll becommemorating this year. Leading up to this special weekend post on five filmscelebrating their 50th this year!]

Quickthoughts on what five 1975 classics can tell us in 2025:

1)     Jaws: I wroteabout what Spielberg’s game-changing summer blockbuster can tell us about Americancommunities in that hyperlinked post. But here, in a moment when orcasare rightfully rising up to take back the seas from selfish greedy humans, I’lladd that it’s getting increasingly difficult not to root for the shark—and forall of nature to resist and overthrow the human regime that has been sounnecessarily destructive to it. Sorry for that bleak start to an ostensiblyfun post, but, well, January 2025 be like.

2)     OneFlew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Surprisingly, that brief mention ina post on Dorothea Dix is the only time I’ve really engaged at all in thisspace with Milos Forman’s complex and wonderful film (or even with KenKesey’s even better 1962 novel, it seems). I can’t do any kind of justiceto it in this brief space, but I will say that a fraught but definite lesson ofthe 2024 election is that we need to do better to engage with youngmen’s mental health—and the history of how we’ve done so (or how we haven’t)is, to say the least, relevant.

3)     DogDay Afternoon: This 1975 film I have blogged about atlength, in that hyperlinked post. But that post was from 2014, and I’d pointout something deeply cringe-worthy that reflects a vital continued conversationin 2024: my use of “transsexual” in the final paragraph (in service of, I hopeand believe, entirely inclusive ideas, but nonetheless). On the one hand, we’vecome a long way in the last ten years in how we talk about our transgenderfellow Americans—but on the other hand, if you watched any Trumpcampaign ads, you know just how far we still have to go, and how much weneed sympathetic portrayals like this film’s.

4)     The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The portrayalof LGBTQ+ Americans is significantly more central still in this cultclassic film, of course. In recent years there’s been alot of debate over whether the film is transphobic; I won’t pretend to bequalified to weigh in, but this articlerepresents one side of the coin, and thisone the other. Cultural works are complicated and contradictory, and onesfrom 50 years ago even more so of course. I vote we watch them all, take awaywhat we can, critique what we need to, do the work.

5)     Nashville: In that recentpost I made the case for how a few of the many main characters in Robert Altman’sfilm can help us think about not just that place and time, but our own as well.My older son nowliving in Nashville has pushed me to think more about that community, asboth of my sons’ interestsin country music have made me give that genre a far deeper listen. And that’sthe thing—as much as I don’t feel that I recognize far too many fellowAmericans in 2025, we’d all better find ways to do so more fully if we’re gonnasurvive together.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 3, 2025: 2025 Anniversaries: 1925 Literature

[A NewYear means another blog series dedicated to historic anniversaries we’ll becommemorating this year. Leading up to a special weekend post on five filmscelebrating their 50th this year!]

In lieu ofa last full post in this series I’m going to ask you to read instead a SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnof mine where I made the case for reading and remembering 1925 not only throughthe lens of its most famous and frequently-taught novel, but with otherimportant books and voices in the mix as well. The fact that such educational effortsare likely to be endangered in 2025 America makes that goal only that much moreimportant still!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 2, 2025: 2025 Anniversaries: Two 1875 Laws

[A NewYear means another blog series dedicated to historic anniversaries we’ll becommemorating this year. Leading up to a special weekend post on five filmscelebrating their 50th this year!]

The PageAct, the Civil Rights Act, and the worst and best of America.

I’vewritten a good bit about the Page Act of 1875, thenation’s first federal immigration law, both inthis space and in other projects like my ConsideringHistory column and my podcast(where the Page Act frustratingly foreshadowed the Chinese Exclusion era that soaffected the Celestials). In researching for the podcast’s Fifth Inning inparticular, I learned about just how blatant California RepresentativeHorace Page was in his arguments for this law and its attempts to restrict(if not entirely exclude) Chinese arrivals overall and Chinese women inparticular, which he claimed were intended “to end the danger of cheap Chineselabor and immoral Chinese women.” And, for that matter, how none other thanPresident Ulysses Grant echoed some of those prejudiced and xenophobic sentiments,as in his December7, 1875 annual message to Congress: “I invite the attention of Congress toanother evil—the importation of Chinese women, but few of whom are brought toour shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations.”

Grant’sendorsement of this racist and exclusionary federal law was particularly frustratinggiven his crucial role in that same year in the support for and passage of a farmore progressive and inclusive law: theCivil Rights Act of 1875. Drafted by Radical Republican Senator Charles Sumner in a directresponse to the developing system of racial segregation that would become knownas Jim Crow, thislaw prohibited discrimination in any public conveyances and accommodations (sonot just public transportation, but also “inns, theaters, and other places ofpublic amusement”). Although the increasingly awful Supreme Court would laterstrike down the law in its 1883Civil Rights Cases decision, it’s important not to let that eventualhistory minimize how progressive and significant the 1875 law was—and, for thatmatter, how much of aninfluence it was on the more famous and more enduring (we hope, he added inearly 2025) Civil Rights Act of 1964.

So how canwe possibly commemorate the 150th anniversary of these diametricallyopposed federal laws without minimizing one or the other? Certainly the dualityhelps remind us that many of the late 19th century’s most ardent advocatesof African American rights and equality were frustratingly unable to extendthat perspective to Chinese and Asian Americans, as apparently illustrated byGrant but also and far more clearly by SupremeCourt Justice John Marshall Harlan. But to my mind it’s also a reflectionof just how difficult it can be, and concurrently and not coincidentally howcrucial it is, to fight for solidarity and community as well as rights andprogress—to truly imagine and work toward, that is, liberty and justice forall. Even in periods of progress that balance isn’t easy to maintain, andin our more fraught and fragile eras (like the late 19th century,and like right freaking now) it’s far easier still to throw certain Americansoverboard. Let’s commemorate 1875 by recommitting that we not make the samemistake in 2025.

Lastanniversary tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 1, 2025: 2025 Anniversaries: The Erie Canal

[A NewYear means another blog series dedicated to historic anniversaries we’ll becommemorating this year. Leading up to a special weekend post on five filmscelebrating their 50th this year!]

For the 200thanniversary of its opening, three figures who helped construct the Erie Canal.

1)     DeWitt Clinton: There’sa whole Early Republic history to be written through the lens of the Clintonfamily, includingGeorge (the fourth Vice President of the US) and his nephew DeWitt(who himself ran for President in 1812, in between stints as a Senator andGovernor of New York among other influential roles). The final public act inDeWitt’s life was his two terms as NY Governor, during the second of which hedied unexpectedly in February 1828. And no aspect of DeWitt’s time as governor wasmore significant to him, nor more influential for the state and young nation,than his supportfor the Erie Canal project (leading to his nickname “Father of the ErieCanal”). He and it met with plenty of opposition, producing such colorfulphrases as “Clinton’sBig Ditch.” But as with so many progressive ideas, just about everybody wasmore than happy to get on board once Clinton’s pet project opened andcontributed so potently and positively to the evolving Early Republic.

2)     CanvassWhite: Prominent political allies are key for any major project of course,but at the end of the day it takes the folks on the ground to make the projecta reality. There weren’t really professional civil engineers yet (at least notin America), and so the folks on the ground came from many walks of life: politicianslike James Geddes,judges like BenjaminWright, educators like NathanRoberts, and amateur inventors and would-be engineers like Canvass White.Just 26 when he began working for Judge Wright as an engineer on the Erie Canalproject in 1816, White persuaded Governor Clinton to fund a trip to Englandto learn more about their canals. He learned so much, and contributed so muchto the Erie Canal project over the decade leading up to its opening, that he wouldbe appointed Chief Engineer for multiple subsequent such projects, including theDelaware and Raritan Canal and the Lehigh Canal.

3)     ElyParker: I’ve written about Parker, one of my favorite Americans, many timesin this space, including that hyperlinked post and thisone among others. He was born in 1828, so to be clear he didn’t play anyrole in the original construction of the Erie Canal (he was awesome but notsuperhuman). But he studiedcivil engineering at RPI, and when an 1840s extension of the canal wasannounced, Parker (still only 20 years old at the time) applied for and wasappointed as theproject’s resident engineer in Rochester. He was also in that same periodcontinuing hislifelong fight for his Seneca Nation’s land rights and claims, which helpsus remember both that all construction projects in America intersect with suchfraught issues and that figures like Parker have worked to complement ratherthan oppose these needs.

Nextanniversary tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

December 31, 2024: 2025 Anniversaries: Lexington and Concord

[A NewYear means another blog series dedicated to historic anniversaries we’ll be commemoratingthis year. Leading up to a special weekend post on five films celebrating their50th this year!]

On two waysto add to our memories of an already very familiar history.

Comparedto yesterday’s subject of King Philip’s War, and indeed compared to almost any otherAmerican histories, the battles ofLexington and Concord figure very, very prominently in our collectivememories. Even as a kid learning about American history in Virginia schools—andthus occupying an overtly partisan, anti-New England place inthe debate over where the American Revolution and thus the United States ofAmerica itself began—I distinctly remember how much was made of the minutemen atLexington and Concord (and of related figures and stories like PaulRevere’s ride). There’s no version of our revolutionary and foundinghistories that doesn’t include these sites and stories in central ways, and thuscommemorating the 250th anniversaryof Lexington and Concord might well feel like a repetition, or at least areinforcement, of existing memories.

If you’rea reader of this blog, though, you already know that I believe we can and shouldalways expand and add nuance to our collective memories, and that the process isonly that much more important when the histories already feel familiar. I’ve writtenpreviously in this space, in response to Serena Zabin’s phenomenal book TheBoston Massacre: A Family History (2020), about the importance ofthinking of the American Revolution as a civil conflict, rather than a warbetween two distinct nations. As Zabin traces, even the British soldiers had becomepart of American communities in a variety of ways that made these battlesfamilial; and if we go beyond the people firing guns at each other at Lexingtonand Concord, we can really remember the range of perspectives featured amongcolonists themselves on the conflict, on England and America, and on everyaspect of this historical moment. In a very real sense, the shotheard ‘round the world was more like Fort Sumter, the first shots in acivil war, than we’ve generally been able to see.

Moreover,and more complicatedly still, that reference to Fort Sumter can remind us ofanother vital and too often forgotten aspect of Massachusetts in 1775—the presenceand practice of slavery in the colony (and in the state once it was created aswell). I’ve madethe case repeatedly, in this space and most everywhereelse, for thinking about enslaved people like ElizabethFreeman and Quock Walker as American revolutionary leaders. Seen in thatlight, another shot heard ‘round the world (or one that should have been andstill should be, anyway) was the1777 petition through which Massachusetts enslaved people and their alliesargued for their freedom in a post-Declarationof Independence world. At the very least, 250th anniversary commemorationsof Lexington and Concord in 2025 should include Massachusetts and Americanenslaved people, a recognition of both the limits of revolution and of whatevery part of those unfolding histories meant and could mean for these Americancommunities.

Nextanniversary tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?