Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 306

November 16, 2015: SHA Follow Ups: Our Panel on the KKK

[This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend my first Southern Historical Associationannual conference, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thanks to a We’re History piece of mine, I was invited by Elaine Frantz Parsons to take part in a wonderful panel on the Reconstruction-era KKK. In this series I’ll follow up both that panel and other takeaways from this great conference!]A few takeaways from my impressive fellow panelists and the excellent conversation that followed our talks.1)      Professor Kidada Williams, with whom I’ve been Twitter friends for a long time but whom it was just as inspiring to hear in person as I would have predicted, presented a paper from her book in progress on the effects of night riding and KKK attacks on African American lives, families, homes, communities, and more. Her connections of trauma studies and postcolonial theory to these historical and cultural subjects promise to be as innovative and important as is her first book, and I was particularly struck by both her close readings of African American testimonies before the Congressional hearings on the KKK and her broader, interdisciplinary analyses of these acts of testimony and witnessing of violent events and histories. Can’t wait to read that next book!2)      Graduate student Katie Lennard, whom I’ve just followed on Twitter while writing this blog post, presented a paper drawn from her dissertation on the evolution and meanings of the KKK’s uniforms. This project brings together material culture, cultural and social histories, economic and political histories, and American Studies lenses in ways that are of course deeply inspiring to this AmericanStudier. I was especially impressed by her ability to weave together close readings of literary and cultural works (such as 21 pre-Thomas Dixon novels that feature the KKK, most of which I knew nothing about), material and visual culture analyses of college fraternity images and materials from the late 19th century, and historical moments such as William Joseph Simmons’ 1915 reconstitution of the KKK. Her dissertation promises to contribute significantly to our collective conversations and memories!3)      The remainder of our time included commentary from both Bruce Baker and Michael Fitzgerald, important additions from Elaine (based in part on her forthcoming book on the Klan), and a number of helpful questions and ideas from our very good-sized (especially for the conference’s final session) audience. Of the many ideas I could highlight from those great conversations, I’ll focus here on one: Bruce’s thought, in response to my description of various literary and cultural texts as presenting conversions to the Southern perspective, that it might be possible to describe these as racist conversion narratives, alluding to both anti-racist such narratives from white abolitionists and the long-standing American genre of the Puritan conversion narrative. As with so many ideas from this evocative and provocative panel, I’ll be thinking about this a lot as my work moves forward!Next SHA follow up tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

November 14-15, 2015: Crowd-sourced Inventors and Inventions

[This weekend marks the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I wrote in Friday’s post. All week I’ve AmericanStudied some of our most complex and significant inventors—and this crowd-sourced post is drawn from the inventive responses and thoughts of fellow AmericanStudiers. Add yours in comments, please!]Between my end-of-week travels to the Southern Historical Association conference (on which see next week’s series) and my start-of-week return from Disney World (on which see a future series), I didn’t have a chance to beat the bushes to get responses for this crowd-sourced post, I’m afraid. So I’ll just say two things:1)      If you want to see my thoughts on a different angle to and contemporary connection for these invention ideas, see this Talking Points Memo piece;2)      And please share your responses to the week’s posts, or any other thoughts on inventors and inventions (American or otherwise), in comments! Thanks!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 13, 2015: American Inventors: Steamboat Culture

[This coming weekend will mark the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, on whose influential invention today’s post focuses. All week I’ve AmericanStudied some of our most complex and significant inventors—and I’d love for you to share your thoughts on them and other inventors (and inventions) for an innovative crowd-sourced weekend post!]Five cultural texts that make good use of the vital transportation innovation that the birthday boy helped develop.1)      The Confidence-Man (1857): I focused in this post, later re-posted by the great , on Melville’s satirical, ambiguous novella. The key element of Melville’s book is the diverse, layered, evolving community of characters it features—and those characters would never have been brought together, nor have had the time for their community to interact and change as it does in the course of the novella, without the unique social space of a Mississippi River steamboat journey.2)      Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885): Although the Mississippi journey at the heart of Twain’s novel takes place on a much smaller vehicle, Huck and Jim’s raft does encounter multiple steamboats, leading to some of their most striking adventures. But my point here is a different one: Twain’s novel (like his career) owes its existence at least as much to the 19th century literary genre known as Southwestern Humor as it does to any single influence; and many of that genre’s best-known works, such as T.B. Thorpe’s short story “The Big Bear of Arkansas” (1854), were set on Mississippi River steamboats. 3)      Show Boat (1927): Show Boat originated as a 1926 novel by Edna Ferber, but has lived on for nearly 100 years thanks to the novel’s 1927 Broadway musical adaptation. Even if that musical had left behind only Paul Robeson’s 1936 version of the song “Old Man River,” it would have made an indelible mark on American culture. But Robeson’s song also reflects the novel and musical’s most unique contribution to steamboat culture: the focus on the multi-racial communities of steamboats, and the role that this American innovation played for each of those cultures as well as for their cross-cultural encounters.4)      Steamboat Willie (1928): Walt Disney’s animated short is famous not so much for its own merits (it’s funny enough, but slight and forgettable) as for introducing its iconic mouse leading manto the world, as well as for being the first cartoon with synchronized sound (and, it seems, saving Walt Disney from bankruptcy). But it’s also worth recognizing the vital role in that process played by nostalgia for the age of steam—in an era when the automobile was becoming dominant and the airplane was capturing the headlines, Disney’s cartoon tapped into and capitalized on the enduring role of the steamboat in the American imagination.5)      Fevre Dream (1982): By the 20th century the imagination was about the only place where the steamboat was still dominant, however—and no cultural work captures both the steamboat’s heyday and the end of its era with more power than George R.R. Martin’s novel. Martin’s book is a gothic vampire novel in the tradition of Anne Rice and others, but like so many of his works it’s also about the shift from one era to another, and the losses as well as progresses that come with such transitions. And in his creation of a floating vampire community aboard a Mississippi steamboat, Martin brought Melville’s work into a new genre and frame, and helped ensure that steamboat culture will live on into the 21st century.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 12, 2015: American Inventors: Boykin and Graham

[This coming weekend will mark the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I’ll write in Friday’s post. All week I’ll AmericanStudy some of our most complex and significant inventors—and I’d love for you to share your thoughts on them and other inventors (and inventions) for an innovative crowd-sourced weekend post!]Two largely forgotten, inspiring and influential inventors, and what links them.Otis Boykin (1920-1982) was a product of the segregated Jim Crow South in every sense: born in 1920 Dallas, attended the city’s African American Booker T. Washington High School (graduating as valedictorian), and then attended and worked as a lab assistant at Nashville’s historic black Fisk University. After Fisk he moved to Chicago, attending the Illinois Institute of Technology and joining the lab of engineer and inventor Hal Fruth. And then he became one of the 20th century’s most prolific inventors in his own right, inventing more than 25 electronic devices (and patenting 11 of them), including an electrical resistor used in numerous computers and televisions and, most influentially, a control unit that became a vital component in artificial heart pacemakers. Few 20th century inventions have more directly improved and saved lives than the pacemaker, and without Boykin’s contribution it’s entirely possible that the device would never have reached that level of success. Just one of many ways that Boykin transcended, and revealed the ridiculousness of, the imposed limitations of the world into which he was born.Bette Nesmith Graham (nee McMurray; 1924-1980) seemed destined at an early age for the role of a post-war housewife: dropping out of high school at the age of 17, marrying a young man on his way to service in World War II and having their child while he was overseas, and attending secretarial school in the meantime to help support the young family. But shortly after her husband returned from the war they divorced, and she moved with her son and other family members to Dallas, where she worked as a bank secretary and moved up to the role of executive secretary. And then, inspired both by the difficulty of correcting mistakes with the era’s typewriters and by some extra work she did painting holiday pictures on the bank’s windows, she invented a paint-based white correction fluid—one that she began marketing as “Mistake Out” in 1956 and that became “Liquid Paper”when she started her own company out of her house a few years later. By 1979, when she sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for nearly $50 million, the company had 200 employees and was producing 25 million bottles annually. A particularly vivid illustration of just how far Nesmith Graham had come from the 17 year old wartime bride and housewife-to-be. (Her son Michael went even further, becoming a member of The Monkees, but that’s another story for another post!)There are lots of interesting details that link these two 20th century inventors—their connections to Dallas, for one example; their very similar birth and death years, for another; and the tragically early timing of those deaths, for a third. Boykin and Graham are also certainly linked, as the structure of my two prior paragraphs illustrates, by the ways in which their life trajectories represented striking breaks from social and cultural limitations and expectations, making their successes all the more impressive to be sure. But I would also highlight another exemplary side to these two figures and stories, one that I would argue defines them as 20th century inventors in contrast with the earlier figures on whom I’ve focused so far in this series: the way in which their inventions were not necessarily as overtly new or innovative as earlier ones like the electric light and the telephone, but represented instead seemingly small advances in technology or business that ended up revolutionizing our world through their contributions. While of course the century witnessed its own amazing innovations, including the computer and the cellular phone, even these were developed out of a series of smaller, gradual and complementary such steps, not at all unlike Boykin’s and Graham’s (and with Boykin’s a part of them). Just one more reason to better remember these two inspiring and influential inventors.Last inventive post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 11, 2015: American Inventors: Bell and Edison

[This coming weekend will mark the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I’ll write in Friday’s post. All week I’ll AmericanStudy some of our most complex and significant inventors—and I’d love for you to share your thoughts on them and other inventors (and inventions) for an innovative crowd-sourced weekend post!]On heroes, villains, and another way to see the historical picture.It’s been a long time since my elementary school days, but one of the lessons that still sticks out from that era of my life—and one I’ve seen in my boys’ first few years of school as well—is that inventors are consistently highlighted as some of the most heroic individual figures from history, pioneering men and women who personally and decisively changed the world. Even though the 21stcentury world around us seems to offer numerous counter-examples to that idea—can anyone name or identify the individual who invented the cell phone? The personal computer? The internet? Or do we all instead recognize these as the product of cumulative work by many different people and institutions over many years—we still, I would argue, cling to the heroic inventor narrative when it comes to figures from our past. And no two figures better exemplify that narrative than Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, whose inventions of the telephone and the light bulb are almost always (rightly) numbered among the most significant in our history.I’m not here to contest that sense of significance, not as I write by electric light after talking to my boys on the telephone. But as historians have long known, and as is perhaps starting to get into our textbooks and collective memories as well, Bell and Edison not only did not pioneer these inventions on their own, they might well have taken some of the credit due to equally (if not more) pioneering colleagues. The articles at those prior two hyperlinks tell the story: of Elisha Gray’s groundbreaking work to develop the telephone, work at best copied and perhaps (as that first article argues) stolen by Bell; and of Lewis Latimer’s vital work in developing the light bulbs that became the standard, work that was done as part of Edison’s laboratories but nonetheless was almost entirely subsumed into a narrative focused on Edison as an individual inventor. The fact that only adds one more layer to the complexity of these histories and how they have been remembered; but even if we leave aside that piece of biographical information, there’s no doubt that our memories of these inventions are drastically oversimplified if not downright inaccurate.So were Bell and Edison more historical villains than heroes? That’s what the first linked article on Bell and Gray overtly argues, and what many have argued in recent years about Edison as well (not only because of Latimir but also, as that linked piece notes, because of the lack of credit received by Edison’s rival Nikola Tesla). Perhaps such a pendulum swing is inevitable, given our past and to some degree still present embrace of the hero narrative for these figures; and if it can help us better remember forgotten inventors like Gray and Latimer, then it will at least be a productive swing. But it seems to me that the historical truth is the same as the contemporary one—that pioneering inventions are the products of multiple figures and efforts, across many institutions and years. What would happen if our narratives of the telephone and the light bulb didn’t fixate on Bell and Edison but didn’t seek to replace them either, and instead became like the opening credits of The Brady Bunch, assembling individual pictures and figures into a collage of how these wondrous innovations came into the world? I’d say it’s worth trying and finding out!Next inventive post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 10, 2015: American Inventors: Eli Whitney’s Effects

[This coming weekend will mark the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I’ll write in Friday’s post. All week I’ll AmericanStudy some of our most complex and significant inventors—and I’d love for you to share your thoughts on them and other inventors (and inventions) for an innovative crowd-sourced weekend post!]On the famous inventor’s more and less well-known effects, and what they have in common.Eli Whitney never intended to end up on a Georgia plantation at all, much less to develop an invention that would revolutionize life in that Southern American setting. Trained in law at Yale, the New England native was led by financial exigency to take a job as a tutor in South Carolina; on the way down he met the owner of Mulberry Grove plantation, Revolutionary hero Nathanael Greene’s widow Catharine Littlefield Greene, and was persuaded by her to visit the plantation. The visit led to a business relationship with plantation manager (and Greene’s future husband) Phineas Miller, and through that relationship Whitney was encouraged to pursue his idea for a new, much more efficient form of harvesting cotton. That idea developed into the cotton gin, an invention that changed the cotton industry and American agriculture forever—and one that, most historians believe, allowed for the early 19th century significant expansion of the slave system that deepened the sectional divide and ultimately precipitated the Civil War.At the same time that Whitney’s most famous invention (albeit one for which he fought for the patent for the rest of his life) greatly aided the Southern cause, however, his other most prominent idea contributed significantly to the Northern one. Historians no longer believe that Whitney originated the concept of interchangeable parts in the production of weaponry, as was the theory for a time. But like Thomas Jefferson with the polygraph, Whitney’s support for this technological innovation helped bring it to America and popularize it, and certainly he applied it to the manufacture of muskets and other firearms in important new ways that greatly changed that rapidly evolving industry. Indeed, despite the prominence of the cotton gin in both its own era and our collective memories of the Early Republic, it was really as an arms manufacturer that Whitney made his reputation and fortune in the early 19th century—and in that role he proved just as influential as in the agricultural realm, as the use of interchangeable parts in rifles has been cited as contributing to one of the North’s principal advantages (its far greater and newer supply of weaponry) at the onset of and throughout the Civil War. So Eli Whitney invented a new technology that helped expand the South’s slave system, and also supported and amplified another new technology that contributed to the North’s eventual military defeat of that system. In that way, the effects of this pioneering figure’s innovations could be seen as a historical wash. But in another way, I would argue that both cases illustrate just how much invention comes down to the law of unintended consequences, rather than to the control and power our narratives often attribute to genius inventors. As is so often the case, Whitney’s inventions themselves were at least partly accidents, the results of unexpected turns in his life that could easily have gone other ways. But even after those inventions had come into existence, it’s fair to say that their most significant effects and meanings were not ones that their inventor could have predicted, and thus that the way inventions become a part of our history and society are both more random and (more saliently) more communal than those narratives of individual genius tend to credit. If Whitney’s example can help us better remember that, than that would be a particularly meaningful effect.Next inventive post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 9, 2015: American Inventors: Franklin and Jefferson

[This coming weekend will mark the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I’ll write in Friday’s post. All week I’ll AmericanStudy some of our most complex and significant inventors—and I’d love for you to share your thoughts on them and other inventors (and inventions) for an innovative crowd-sourced weekend post!]On a telling invention linked to each of the founding innovators, and what differentiates the two.I written before, both in this space and in others, about some of my issues with Ben Franklin, or at least with the troubling national narratives to which he contributed in their early stages. But at the same time, it’s important to be clear that Franklin was in his own era and remains down to ours one of the most impressive as well as influential Americans, and a significant element to that impressiveness would have to be his scientific curiosity and innovativeness. On the long list of Franklin inventions at their hyperlinked article, of course the lightning rod stands out (my boys are already fascinated by Franklin’s bold and quite successful kite experiment, as was I at their age), but I might have to highlight the Franklin stove instead; invented by Franklin when he was only in his 30s, this home innovation significantly improved the ability of Franklin’s fellow Americans to heat their homes efficiently, simply, and with much less smoke or disturbance.Thomas Jefferson (with whom my issues are also well-documented) wasn’t nearly the scientific mind that Franklin was; but he was certainly another of the most intelligent, well-read, and well-rounded Americans of theirs or any era, and he likewise developed and supported more than his fair share of inventions and innovations. Anyone who has visited Jefferson’s home of Monticello can attest to the unique and impressive seven-day clock calendar located in the house’s main hall, and it certainly reflects both the artistry and the outside-the-box thinking of Jefferson’s inventions. But given the voluminous quantity (and impressive quality) of Jefferson’s writings, I would have to highlight instead his polygraph; not the contemporary device made famous by Meet the Parents, but a very innovative machine for instant copying of any document written within the device. Yet while Jefferson was one of the first Americans (or figures anywhere) to own a polygraph, and did a great deal to help with its development (leading it to be closely associated with him to this day), it was not his own invention: the machine was first invented by an Englishman, John Isaac Hawkins, and then further developed and marketed by American artist Charles Willson Peale.Franklin and Jefferson’s respective roles in the invention of these particular devices represents one way I would more generally differentiate the two men. While this is certainly an oversimplification, I believe it’s possible to say that Franklin was in many ways more a groundbreaking influence on his peers and period, while Jefferson was often particularly adept at distilling trends and ideas into new and influential forms. Both types are important to any era (and a founding one in particular), and indeed I would argue that, appropriately enough, Jefferson’s might be more suited for a politician and Franklin’s for a scientist and philosopher. Yet there’s another way to differentiate the two inventions and, perhaps, the two men linked to them: Franklin’s was far more democratic, intended for widespread use in many homes; while Jefferson’s was more designed for elite use, by those figures who would be writing a good deal and would want those writings shared and saved for posterity. Both men were among their era’s elites in every sense, to be sure; but despite Jefferson’s agrarian ideology, I would argue that it was Franklin and his inventions (as well as many of his other efforts) that most thoroughly benefited the American people as a whole.Next inventive post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?

November 7-8, 2015: Five Years!

Five years ago this week, I launched this blog. There’s plenty I could say about those five years and how the blog has developed, changed, and (I hope and believe) improved immeasurably over that time, as well as all it has meant to my scholarly writing and work, career, teaching, relationships, and life. But rather than indulge in quite that much navel-gazing, I wanted to use this anniversary to highlight instead five other blogs that have been influential and inspiring to me along the way. Some are more presently active than others, and all have been featured in this space before; but they’re all well worth your time in any case, and it’s a pleasure to highlight them once again.1)      The American Literary Blog: Despite its somewhat more specific focus, Rob Velella’s blog on 19th century American literature remains the closest parallel to my own blog that I’ve found. And much more importantly, every post is a combination of fun, informative, surprising, and engaging. A model for me to this day!2)      Civil War Memory: I don’t imagine there are many AmericanStudiers who haven’t checked out Kevin Levin’s longstanding and award-winning blog by now. But if you haven’t, you certainly should! Kevin combines responses to current events, historical scholarship, and engagement with his peers and colleagues as well as any writer I know, and in all those and other ways continues to inspire my own work.3)      Deep Down in the Classroom: Run by my former Temple University grad colleague and her colleagues at the Montclair University First Year Writing Program, Deep Down represents the best kind of pedagogical blog: practical yet philosophical, evolving yet grounded, helpful yet challenging. I’ve tried to include my teaching more and more in this space as it has grown, and it’s pedagogical blogs like Deep Down that have helped guide the way.4)      Race Files: I’ve written quite a bit in this space about my gradual move into public scholarship, and indeed no space has been more important in that evolution than this blog. As I’ve tried to engage more and more overtly here with current events and public debates, without losing the curiosity and openness and analytical engagement that I hope have been part of this blog all along, successful and multi-faceted public scholarly blogs like Race Files have been hugely inspiring to me. 5)      Ta-Nehisi Coates: In the five years I’ve been writing this blog, Coates has gone from a journalist and blogger with a small but rabid following (this AmericanStudier included) to one of the most famous writers in America. But when I read his second book, Between the World and Me , it still felt very much like I was reading his blog. That’s about the highest praise I can give the book, and is a style for which I strive in my own current and future book projects as well. I’ll get there, with the help of these and many other inspiring writers and blogs!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. I’ve asked it before but will ask it again: I’d really love for you to say hi (in comments or by email) and, if you’d like, let me know a bit about what brought you to the blog, what you’d like to see here, and what your own AmericanStudies interests are. Gracias!

November 6, 2015: Dead Presidents: FDR

[In honor of Warren Harding’s 150th birthday on November 2nd, a series AmericanStudying the lives and deaths of presidents who passed away while in office. Leading up to a special weekend post on a very different anniversary—my blog’s fifth birthday!]On public perceptions, private realities, and the influential health of a president.I could spend this first paragraph writing my own version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1921 polio diagnosis and all that followed, both in his personal life and health and in his political career; but I can’t imagine I’d do a better job covering all those bases than did Roosevelt Library & Museum intern Amy Berish in this concise and impressive article for the library’s website. So check out that article if you would, and I’ll meet you back here for a couple additional thoughts!Welcome back! In her article, Berish touches but doesn’t dwell on the complicated question of Roosevelt’s attempts to limit (indeed, eliminate altogether) public perceptions of his debilitating illness. As this article illustrates, so successful were Roosevelt’s attempts to keep photos or other images of him in a wheelchair from reaching the public that the discovery of an 8-second video of Roosevelt in the wheelchair was a major historical find. Roosevelt’s stated reason for this secrecy, that he did not want Americans to perceive him as too weak or helpless to do his job (the same reason why he attempted to walk in public as much as possible, despite the great challenge presented by that action), certainly makes sense, particulary in an era of Depression and World War. But at the same time, it’s difficult to argue that he did not recognize that a more full awareness of his ailment might have damaged or ended his political career—I’m not sure that I agree with those who make the case that we could never elect a wheelchair-bound politician in our media-satured age, but they might well be right.At the same time, I most definitely agree with those who argue that Roosevelt’s illness certainly contributed to his perspective and character in ways that were vitally important for his leadership, particularly in those dark decades. He was a descendent of a very prominent and wealthy family, and yet was (to my mind) better able to connect with Americans from all strata of society than nearly any other political figure in our history. No doubt his complicated but still inspiring marriage to the even more impressive Eleanor Roosevelt contributed to that side to his perspective, but I have to imagine that dealing with his illness for more than two decades played a prominent role as well. Whether or not that illness was connected to the cerebral hemorrhage that tragically ended Roosevelt’s life in April 1945—and it likely was, but so too were the stresses of the war and all the crises with which he had dealt in his three-plus terms as president—, and without romanticizing a debilitating ailment, it could still be argued that Franklin Roosevelt’s physical struggles made significant and meaningful contributions to some of America’s most crucial successes and victories.Special post this weekend,BenPS. Thoughts on FDR? Other presidents you’d particularly want to AmericanStudy?

November 5, 2015: Dead Presidents: William McKinley

[In honor of Warren Harding’s 150th birthday on November 2nd, a series AmericanStudying the lives and deaths of presidents who passed away while in office. Leading up to a special weekend post on a very different anniversary—my blog’s fifth birthday!]On two reasons why I can’t entirely mourn our third assassinated president.Lest there be any confusion on this score, let me be clear that my opening sentence there is hyperbolic—I’m not in this post going to argue in any way that President McKinleydeserved to be assassinated or that his death was a good thing. Like those of Presidents Lincoln and Garfield before him, McKinley’s September 1901 assassination exemplified some of his era’s most prominent historical trends: in this case, both labor activism and anarchist revolutionary movements, as , was a self-proclaimed anarchist who saw himself as avenging the treatment of Slavic miners during the 1897 coal miners’ strike. So the McKinley assassination was historically meaningful and offers a compelling window into its era—but it was also just as tragic and unnecessary a killing as those prior assassinations, and again it’s important for me to stress that I’m not trying either to make light of his death or to frame it as a positive.Yet at the same time, neither can I say of McKinley’s death, in the early months of his second presidential term, what I have said in this space about Lincoln’s: that it was a historic tragedy which produced further, even more widespread negative effects in the years to come. For one thing, McKinley’s first term had featured a series of troubling and destructive policies and actions on issues of ethnicity and race, both abroad and at home. Atop that list would have to be the 1898 Spanish American War and especially its imperialistic goals and effects, as exemplified by the ongoing war in the Philippines against rebels resisting the American occupation of their nation. But just as troubling and imperialistic was the 1898 annexation of Hawaii, and the concurrent treatment of the nation’s exiled queen and native peoples necessitated by that action. And on the home front, it was a horrific moment of inaction that to me defines McKinley’s mishandling of racial issues: in the midst of the Wilmington coup and massacre and its weeklong orgy of violence against African Americans, an anonymous Wilmington woman wrote to McKinley with a desperate plea for help, imploring him to dispatch federal troops to save her community and city; and McKinley did nothing, leaving Wilmington’s white supremacist forces to complete their massacre unabated.I can’t say that Teddy Roosevelt, the vice president who succeeded to the presidency upon McKinley’s death and a man whose reputation was based in large part upon his actions both on the frontierand in the Spanish American War, would necessarily have done anything differently in these cases (although his dinner at the White House with Booker T. Washington suggests he might have when it comes to Wilmington, at least). Yet to my mind there’s no question that the most enduring aspects of Roosevelt’s nearly two terms as president, for the Progressive movement’s reforms and battles, would never have been the case if the far more conservative McKinley had completed his second term. In both his political allegiances and his policies, McKinley embodied Gilded Age America and its emphases and ideals; whereas in his support for the Progresive movement, Roosevelt could be said to have helped usher in a new era in American life, one that challenged those Gilded Age narratives and signaled new 20thcentury possibilities for the nation. As noted in that last hyperlinked article, McKinley’s close advisor Mark Hannadetested the choice of Roosevelt for the 1900 vice presidential nominee—one more reflection of the differences between McKinley and Roosevelt, and of why in many ways the latter’s first term almost certainly represented an improvement on the former’s second.Last dead president tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on McKinley? Other presidents you’d particularly want to AmericanStudy?