Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 41

June 24, 2024: WesternStudying: Hopalong Cassidy

[75 years agothis week, the firstnetwork TV Western, HopalongCassidy debuted. Few genres havebeen influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’ll AmericanStudyHopalong and other Westerns—add your responses & analyses in thecomments, pardner!]

On how theTV show built on an established character, and two important ways it changedthings.

When HopalongCassidy premiered on NBC onJune 24th, 1949, it did so as an extension of nearly a half-centuryof cultural representations of the character. Hopalongwas originally created in a 1904 short story by author , who wouldover the next thirty-five years write 28 novelsand numerous additional stories about the character. Even more popular were the 66 films produced between1935 and 1948 (for an average of nearly five films per year, if you’re counting),all starring William Boydin the title role. So when Boyd bought the rights to the character from Mulfordand to the films from producer Harry Sherman, sold those rights to NBC, and beganplaying the character in the TV series in June 1949 (and in aradio show that launched around the same moment), he knew that he and theshow would have a built-in, longstanding, and multimedia audience, making thisfirst TV Western not nearly as much of an unknown quantity as that phrase mightsuggest.

While the charactermight not have been new in 1949, the genre of the TV Western unquestionablywas. Even though the first few episodes were edited versions of existingHopalong films (before original TV episodes began to be produced and aired), theystill aired once a week in a scheduled time slot on a national television network.And I would argue that this represented a significant evolution in the existingform of storytelling known as the serial—not the 19th century genreof serializedprint publications that audiences could acquire and then read when and howthey wanted; nor the early 20th century genre of film serials that required goingto a movie theater to catch the new episode; but a serialized TV show, graduallyreleased installments that every audience member would watch in their own home butall at precisely the same time (particularly in that early era before later evolutionslike reruns and home video). Phrases like “appointment television” and “must see TV” emerged downthe road to describe particular shows or time slots, but in truth thoseconcepts were never more relevant than for this first generation of TV shows,which audiences had to see at that precise moment or risk missing out on thatpart of the story entirely.

Perhaps thatserialization contributed to the immense popularity of the Hopalong TVshow, or perhaps it was just the built-in audience for the character by then—butwhatever the case, the show was indeed a mega-hit, and that popularity led toother significant cultural shifts. To cite one of the most individuallystriking examples, in 1950 the character of Hopalong Cassidywas the first licensed image featured on a children’s lunchbox, and shortlythereafter sales for the AladdinIndustries lunchboxes overall rose from 50,000 to 600,000 per year. That’s justthe tip of the iceberg of the more than $70 million worth of Hopalong products producedin 1950 alone, much of it directly targeted kids as the primary audience—asillustrated by the reference to “Hopalong boots” as a desired present in MeredithWilson’s hit song “It’sBeginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” (1951). Kids had no doubt been partof the audience for Western films (and books, and radio shows, and etc.)throughout the genre’s history, but the TV show’s popularity nonetheless reflecteda potent evolution and emphasis of that children’s entertainment side to thiscultural form.

NextWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?

June 22-23, 2024: Kyle Railton on the Simpson Trial

[On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whosestories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, andoverall, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Simpson trial figures.Leading up to this special weekend post from one of my favorite young AmericanStudiers!]

Hey everyone, my name is KyleRailton and I am an upcoming senior in high school. As you can tell by my lastname, I am the son of the legendary professor Ben Railton, and writing for mydad’s blog has been on my bucket list for a while, so it is an honor to get thechance! I have been semi-interested in the O.J. Simpson trial for some time,hearing occasional things about how he was guilty, the lawyers messed up, thegloves, etc., but I only became very invested in the past year, when I began aschool project about the case. It was in my American Legal Studies class, and Ichose to read The Run of His Life, the book by Jeffery Toobin, whichquickly fascinated me about every aspect of the case: the media, lawyers,drama, and especially the defendant–O.J. Simpson.  

As I continued to learn more aboutthe case, a couple of parts of the case bothered me the most. I will prefacethis by stating that I do believe that O.J. committed the crime, despite themistakes from the prosecution and the alternate theories proposed by the dreamteam. Firstly, I believe that the trial did not deliver justice, as America’sjustice system is supposed to do, implied by the name. One of the main focusesof the American Legal elective I took this past school year was to study whatjustice was, and how courts are expected to promote justice through applicationof the law. However, I saw this entire case, specifically the outcome, as notproper justice, because many external factors influenced the not guiltyverdict. For example, the media played a crucial role since the discovery ofNicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, negatively affecting and manipulatingperceptions of the trial to the public, even before the jury was selected. Manypeople saw the police as “mistreating” O.J. Simpson when rather the LAPD hadtreated O.J. Simpson like royalty many times in the past, and he was close withmany officers. Additionally, race was almost certainly a deciding factor in thecase, which was exacerbated by the media and constant coverage of the case.While it is obvious that Mark Furhman was extremely racist–a Nazi even–and theLAPD has a horrific history of racial prejudice and police brutality, thesefacts had nothing to do with O.J. Simpson’s case. As mentioned in Toobin’sbook, they were specifically used as the “race card” to get Simpson free. Thereason I see this as a massive injustice is because there is lots of racialprofiling in the court system and police forces across America, but this casewas not an instance of racist police officers framing an African American man.Now, it is completely understandable why many would believe that the LAPDframed O.J., but this use of the “race card” only opens the world up tocriticism when actual racist incidents come, as they too often do because then Americansclaim that it is just another use of the “race card.” I remember a hilariousquote from a show I watched with my family based on the O.J. trial, which goessomething like, “O.J. Simpson is the first defendant to get acquitted becausehe is Black!” Race has never been a black-and-white subject in America, andwhile it is unfortunately impossible to change the past and convict O.J.Simpson, it is possible to build and grow as a nation, which starts withlearning from the history of America’s complicated justice system. 

[Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?]

June 21, 2024: Simpson Trial Figures: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman

[On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whosestories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, andoverall, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures.Leading up to a special weekend post from one of my favorite youngAmericanStudiers!]

On two ofthe many reasons to better remember the victims.

Firstthings first: we don’t and shouldn’t need any reason to better remember the twopeople murderedin June 1994 beyond that simple and horrible fact. They and their familiesand loved ones were by far the most profoundly and tragically affected by thiscase, and there’s nothing more important to say than that. I’m going to leavethis first paragraph short in order to make those points as clearly andconcisely as I can.

Beyondthose individual and most important reasons to include Nicole Brown Simpson andRon Goldman in a series like this one, it’s also the case that betterremembering them helps add significant issues into the conversation. WithNicole, the most prominent such issue is an absolutely crucial and (due to manyof the factors I’ve written about this week) at times frustratingly minimized one:domesticviolence. While they were overshadowed by the Mark Fuhrman recordings(which certainly were horrific in their own ways, as I discussed in Tuesday’spost), the multiple recordingsof Nicole calling 911 to report OJ’s incidents of domestic violencecomprised one of the most blatant representations of these issues in our collectivehistory, and were (or at least damn well should be) impossible to ignore. In recentyears, increasing attention has been paid to the fact that the vast majority ofmassshooters have histories of domestic or intimate violence that predate andseem clearly related to the explosions of mass violence, and in its own way theOJ trial overall and Nicole’s story specifically foreshadowed and can add tothis 21st century conversation.

WhileNicole’s murder was thus frustratingly and tragically predictable given thatprior and escalating history of domestic violence, RonGoldman’s murder could not have been more random, an incredibly horrificinstance of “wrong place at the wrong time.” There are plenty of details of Goldman’s life and identitythat would be worth highlighting to better remember him, from the overtlyinspiring (such as his volunteer work with children suffering from cerebralpalsy) to the tragically unfulfilled (such as his ambitions to open his ownrestaurant). But I would say the very fact of the randomness of Goldman’smurder, especially when linked to those details of his individual identity andlife, makes an important point in its own right: that every victim of violence,such as all those killed in mass shootings, represents a fully, complicatedly,vitally three-dimensional human, with all the different layers, small and big,mundane and inspiring, that comprise us all. I’m not sure there’s a betterreason to do everything we can to limit violence of all kinds, nor a betterindividual representation of those tragic realities than Ron Goldman.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?

June 20, 2024: Simpson Trial Figures: Kato and Kardashian

[On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whosestories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, andoverall, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures.Leading up to a special weekend post from one of my favorite youngAmericanStudiers!]

On how thetrial shaped two forms of celebrity culture, and an important alternative.

The OJtrial was such a media circus (to the point that the very phrase “mediacircus” has become almost synonymous with these events) that it not onlyfeatured a celebrity client and celebrity defense attorney (both of which Iwrote about in yesterday’s post), but also spawned a number of additional celebrities.There’s plenty of competition for which was the nuttiest—a list that includesthe judge, for crying out loud—but I would have to declare OJ’s vagabond houseguestKato Kaelin as the winner of that bizarre contest. I don’t know if Kato wasthe first person in American history to become and remain famousfor being famous, with absolutely no discernible talents or achievementsbeyond the fame itself. But he most definitely exemplified that trend at astill-early period in its development—and given the ways in which over the subsequentthree decades the genreof reality TV has created an entire cottage industry dedicated to producingcountless more such famous-for-being-famous individuals and communities,it’s fair to say that no legacy of the OJ trial was more culturally significantthan that of Kato Kaelin’s bizarre yet inarguable celebrity status.

I don’tthink any 21st century individuals better exemplify that famous-for-being-famoustrend than do the Kardashians, and it’s thus far from a coincidence that thatfamily’s rise to fame likewise began with the OJ trial. Entrepreneur and attorneyRobertKardashian wasn’t just a longtime friend of OJ Simpson’s who became part ofhis defense team; he was also a thoroughly private citizen who through thosecontexts and events became one of that moment’s most publicand famous figures. Or, more exactly and even more tellingly, whose ownfleeting such fame in 1994-5 helped open the door for multi-generational familialfame over the subsequent decades, for his ex-wife Kris Houghton (formerly Kardashian)(now Jenner) and their four children (Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian)to become one of the 21st century’s most wealthy and influentialmedia empires (I wish that felt more like hyperbole than it does). Individualfame like Kato Kaelin’s is striking but relatively powerless; Kardashian-levelfame brings with it a great deal of 21stcentury power.

That finalhyperlink is to Kim Kardashian’s podcastThe System, which highlights the case of a wrongfully-accused and-incarcerated individual (Kevin Keith) in an effort to change the criminaljustice system more broadly. When it comes to this week’s blog subject, obviouslythere are complicated OJ trial echoes around the phrase “wrongfully accused,”although I genuinely don’t imagine Kim is making that connection. But I wouldalso highlight one of the more strikingindividual scenes from The People v. O.J. Simpson, depicting RobertKardashian (David Schwimmer) at a Father’s Day brunch with his four kids.Kardashian’s fame is on the rise and his kids are excited, but he instructs them that “inthis family, being a good person and a loyal friend is more important thanbeing famous. Fame is fleeting, it’s hollow. It means nothing at all without avirtuous heart.” Of course the moment (a fictional one created by the show’swriters) feels deeply ironic given what would go to happen to those four kids.But I would argue that Kim’s podcast reflects the continued presence of thisalternative possibility, for this family and for all of us—not one that opposesfame or celebrity per se (they will always be part of our society), but one inwhich meaningful actions remain more important than fame.

Lastfigure tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?

June 19, 2024: Simpson Trial Figures: Johnnie Cochran

 [On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whose stories have agreat deal to tell us about America, then, now, and overall, so this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures. Leading up to a specialweekend post from one of my favorite young AmericanStudiers!]

On two distinctand even opposed sides to a legal career, and how they complicatedly cametogether in the OJ trial.

In his autobiographyALawyer’s Life (2001), Johnnie Cochran (1937-2005) writes about how ThurgoodMarshall’s victory in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) helped inspirehis lifelong legal activism. Marshall, Cochran writes, “confirmed that a singlededicated man could use the law to change society.” As Cochran’s own legalcareer began to take shape in the 1960s and 70s (particularly after he left theLos Angeles District Attorney’s office to start his ownprivate practice), he consistently represented African American clients whowere also underdogs, fighting against institutional racism and other layers to thewhite justice system and power structure. Whether he lost those cases (as with LeonardDeadwyler, killed by the LAPD while driving his pregnant and in-labor wifeto the hospital in 1966) or won them (as with RonSettles, a college athlete who died while in police custody in 1981 and whosefamily received a sizeable settlement from the city), Cochran establishedhimself over these decades as a preeminent voice using the law for both civilrights and challenges to the powers that be.

At the sametime, that evolving career gained Cochran prominence as a successful defenseattorney, a role that offered him opportunities to defend celebrity clients. Oneof the most famous and controversial such clients in the years before the OJtrial was Michael Jackson, whom Cochrandefended when he was accused of child molestation in 1993; Cochran wasinstrumental in helping Jackson settlethat case out of court with the accusers’ families. (Cochran’s final casewas another such famous celebrity trial, helping get Sean (P. Diddy) Combs acquittedon bribery and weapons charges in 2001.) The vast majority of those celebrity defendantswere likewise African American, a clear and important throughline in Cochran’slegal work and career to be sure. Yet by nature of their celebrity, wealth, networksof influence, and other factors, those defendants were much more part of thepower structure than opposed to it, and in a case like Jackson’s it’s fair tosay that Cochran also used the power structure to help Jackson reach that privatesettlement and avoid any legal repercussions to the troubling charges leviedagainst him.

Any defenseattorney who practices for decades is going to have multiple, varied, and even opposedtypes of clients, of course. But these layers to Cochran’s career were particularlycomplicated in their relationship to each other, and nowhere was that complexitymore noteworthy than in the OJ trial. As I highlighted in yesterday’s post, Cochranand the team based a significant portion of their defense on the LAPD’s historiesof institutional racism and police brutality, linking Cochran’s legal activismto OJ’s status as a Black man accused (and potentially, they argued, framed) bythat power structure. Yet at the same time, as I wrote in Monday’s post, by the1990s OJ was a wealthy celebrity, and one who had a famouslyfriendly relationship with the police prior to his arrest. Cochranfamously noted that he worked “not only for the OJs, but also the No Js,” astatement that both reflects his overarching career ambitions and yet acknowledges(or at least implies) that this particular case diverged from those goals. Didthe OJ case also undermine those broader and inspiring civil rights efforts ofCochran’s? That’s a much bigger question than a blog post—one of many crucialones raised by this case.

Nextfigure tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?

June 18, 2024: Simpson Trial Figures: Mark Fuhrman

[On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whosestories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, andoverall, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures.Leading up to a special weekend post from one of my favorite youngAmericanStudiers!]

On alongstanding context for the trial’s most infamous figure, what he frustratinglyadded, and where it’s gone since.

As Ihighlighted at the end of yesterday’s post, the Simpson trial can’tbe separated from a very recent example of LAPD racism and brutality, theRodney King beating. Back in a2019 post I linked the Rodney King story to a pair of much earlier and evenmore sweeping LAPD horrors, and I’d ask you to check out that post and thencome on back for some further Simpson trial thoughts.

Welcomeback! That longstanding, if not indeed foundational, intersection of the LAPDwith stories of institutional racism and police brutality offers a crucial contextfor a story that came to dominatemuch of the Simpson trial: that lead detective MarkFuhrman was an inveterate racist who had brought that perspective intoevery part of his job, and thus (thedefense argued) could conceivably have framed Simpson for the murders. Thedefense could make that argument in large part because of a striking andshocking layer to this story: that there existed hours of recordings ofFuhrman spewing his racism and hate, drawn from a series of conversations(beginning in 1985 and all the way up to 1994) with screenwriter Laura McKinnywho was working on a script about police. Not unlike what I said in yesterday’spost about the cable news coverage angle of the arrest and trial, thismultimedia evidence for LAPD racism and corruption represented a significantevolution of prior histories, and unquestionably changed the course of thetrial and history as a result.

As youmight expect, Mark Fuhrman didn’t keep his job after those recordings were madepublic—even the LAPD apparently has its limits when it comes to racist cops (orperhaps to convicted perjurers, since Fuhrmanpleaded no contest to perjury charges stemming from the trial). In thedecades since he has become a prominent media commentator on all things lawenforcement and the justice system, writing books, hosting his own short-liveddaytime talkradio show, and, most tellingly I would argue, as a Fox News pundit(WARNING: that’s a direct link to a short video from Fox News). I call thatlast job most telling because over the three decades since the Simpson trial,police brutality and even racism have gone from clearly agreed-upon flaws ofthe system to, for a significant percentage of Americans it seems, necessary featuresof that system. To hear Mark Motherfucking Fuhrman callteenager Mike Brown “the aggressor” in the 2014 police shooting that led toBrown’s death is not just to find one’s self through the looking glass, but toget a particularly clear sense of how these conversations and issues havechanged over the last three decades.

Nextfigure tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?

June 17, 2024: Simpson Trial Figures: O.J. Simpson

[On June 17th,1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featureda number of individuals whosestories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, andoverall, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures.Leading up to a special weekend post from one of my favorite youngAmericanStudiers!]

On how OJreflected celebrity culture, how he changed it, and what can’t be captured bythat frame.

At thetime of his 1994 arrest, O.J. Simpson was likely best known to many Americansfor his supporting role as DetectiveNordberg in the popular Naked Gun comedies;the third and final such film, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The FinalInsult (1994) had been released in theaters just a few months beforethe arrest. Simpson wasn’t the first famous athlete to act in a comedy from the filmmakersresponsible for the Naked Gun series,nor was he the first famous football player (or even running back) to parlaythat sports success intoan acting career. Indeed, if the rise of celebrity culture was a central elementof American society in the second half of the 20th century, sportscelebrities, and more exactly athletes who crossed over into other culturalmedia and broader overarching fame, were quite representative of that trend. Inthat sense Simpson in the 1980s and 90s was just an example of a much largerset of trends, and likely not one who would have particularly stood out fromthe crowd were it not for everything that happened in and after 1994.

When thoseshocking 1994 events transpired, however, O.J. Simpson’s brand of celebritychanged, and I would argue that this story likewise changed celebrity coverageand culture overall. The infamous white Bronco chase is anespecially telling case in point: this wasn’t a celebrity appearing on screen intentionally,in projects like films or TV shows that reflect choices and career and contributeto a crafted image; these were raw, unfiltered videos of a celebrity fleeingaccusations of (and arrest for) having committed a heinous crime, pursued bylaw enforcement, threatening his own life, surrounded by gawkers and paparazzialike, chaotic glimpses into the hardest and darkest realities of life to whichany of us might be connected. Of course there had been celebritycriminals and trials before, and public obsessions with figures like Bonnie& Clyde or Wild West outlaws.But this was perhaps the first 24/7cable news celebrity crime story, and so again I would argue that in thesemoments Simpson became and remained a distinctly different form of celebritythan we had ever seen before.

That newform of celebrity unquestionably influenced the trial as well, as I’ll continueconsidering in later posts in this series. But the Peoplev. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) TV show, which I recentlyrewatched with my sons due to the American Legal class connection you’ll hearmore about in the weekend post, starts with clips from a very different newsstory and its cable news coverage: the Rodney King beating,the acquittal of the officers involved, and the resultingLA riots. And I would agree with the show’s implication there (and willexplore layers to these themes in my next couple posts), that a great deal of whatunfolded in the Simpson trial had more to do with those contexts of race,justice, and community than it did with celebrity culture. In a justifiably famous moment from the show,O.J. Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) exclaims, “I’m not Black! I’m O.J.!” Buthowever famous Simpson had become, he was also still Black, and at the veryleast we can’t separate his celebrity from those communal contexts.

Nextfigure tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?

June 15-16, 2024: Ocean State Histories: Further Reading

[250 yearsago this week, Rhode Island banned theslave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littleststate’s story, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Ocean Statehistories, leading up to this special post on works through which you can learnmore about Rhode Island!]

On five worksthat should be on any Little Rhodey reading list.

1)     William McLoughlin, RhodeIsland: A Bicentennial History (1978): From what I can tell, there isn’ta more recent book-length history of the colony and state, and certainly notone as comprehensive as McLoughlin’s.

2)     John Barry, RogerWilliams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth ofLiberty (2012): I hope this week’s series has made clear how much morethere is to Rhode Island than just Roger Williams—but there’s no way to tellthe story of the Ocean State that doesn’t include its founder in a prominent role.Of the many bios and analyses, Barry’s seems particularly interesting in itssense of what it would mean to likewise see Williams as an American origin point.

3)     S.T. Joshi, IAm Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft (2013): Weird Taleexpert Joshi published a one-volume bio of Providence’s own Lovecraft in 1996,but apparently it was significantly cut from his original manuscript; this two-volumeedition captures the full scope of Joshi’s biography of the complex, dark inevery sense, foundational speculative author who is unquestionably Rhode Island’smost famous literary legacy.

4)     Christy Clark-Pujara, DarkWork: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (2016): I’ve writtenmultiple times in this space, including in Monday’s post on Roger Williams,about Wendy Warren’s NewEngland Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (2016). PerhapsWarren’s scope is broader than Clark-Pujara’s project (published in the sameyear), but that just means they complement each other, with Clark-Pujara ableto dive far more deeply into the histories and legacies of slavery in RhodeIsland.

5)     SowamsHeritage Area website (2017+): Scholarly and historical writing no longerhappen only in hard-copy publications, of course (and duh, since you’re readingthis blog). After I wrote this July4th column on Bristol in 2022, I was contacted by DaveWeed, the historian who runs the Sowams Heritage Area website and publishesits blog,newsletter, and other layers to this important local history work. I’velearned a lot from Weed and the site, and would recommend them to anyoneinterested in Rhode Island histories and stories—which, as I hope this week hasmade clear, are all of ours.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Ocean State texts or histories you’d highlight?

June 14, 2024: Ocean State Histories: The Gilded Age

[250 yearsago this week, Rhode Island banned theslave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littleststate’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean Statehistories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learnmore about Rhode Island!]

On twoways to think about Rhode Island’s famous role in Gilded Age America.

Once againI’ll begin this post by asking you to peruse prior writing of mine, in this casemy September2013 blog series on Newport stories (inspired by my first visit to the historichome TheBreakers). If five posts is too much of an ask, you ]can focus inparticular on theFriday culmination, a post on the question of whether we should preservesuch Gilded Age mansions.

Welcomeback! In that Friday post I quoted the famous “white elephants” line from HenryJames’ “TheSense of Newport” (1906), an essay that he originally published in Harper’s and then turned into a chapterin his interesting travel and autobiographical book TheAmerican Scene (1907). James uses that phrase as part of a concludingparagraph in which he absolutely lambasts both the mansions and the Gilded Ageculture of embarrassing excess they reflect, building to his banger of a finalsentence for the essay/chapter, “The answer to which,I think, can only be that there is absolutely nothing to be done; nothing butto let them stand there always, vast and blank, for reminder to those concernedof the prohibited degrees of witlessness, and of the peculiarly awkwardvengeances of affronted proportion and discretion.” In our own moment ofexcess and McMansions and an even more flagrantly rich 1% and so on, we couldstand to reread and learn from James on those Newport white elephants.

As much asthe Newport mansions reflected specific Gilded Age contexts, however, it’sequally (if not indeed more) important to link them to the historicalanniversary that is the reason for this week’s Rhode Island Studying series. Forone thing, there’s no doubt that a good bit of the wealth of places likeNewport was inherited and generational wealth tied to the fortunes built by andthrough the slave trade and slavery in the colony and state (which didn’tabolish slavery itself until its 1843 Constitution). And for another thing, while ofcourse much of the wealth that build Newport’s Gilded Age mansions came fromindividuals and families who were not part of Rhode Island history, that onlymeant that they were even more consistently linked to national legacies ofslavery—as exemplified by theVanderbilts, the family behind The Breakers. So on both those levels, as anextension of Rhode Island history and a reflection of American history, GildedAge Newport was not something new so much as an embarrassing reminder of theworst of our foundational stories.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?

June 13, 2024: Ocean State Histories: The Slave Trade

[250 yearsago this week, Rhode Island banned theslave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littleststate’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean Statehistories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learnmore about Rhode Island!]

On twosignificant layers to Rhode Island’s groundbreaking1774 Act.

I wrote atlength about the history of the slave trade and slavery more broadly in RhodeIsland for thisSaturday Evening Post ConsideringHistory column, so in lieu of a full first paragraph I’ll ask you to checkout that column and then come on back for further thoughts.

Welcomeback! I’ve written a good bit overthe years, here and elsewhere,in relationship to variouscontexts, about how and why we need to better remember that slavery existedthroughout the colonies at the timeof the Revolution. While that was true for every New England colony, it wasdoubly true for Rhode Island given Bristol’s central role in the slave trade (aprincipal subject of that Postcolumn). Which makes it that much more important and impressive that it wasRhode Island which became the first colony to ban the slave trade, and which justas importantly did so, as thisarticle on the 1774 Act notes by quoting aJournal of the American Revolutionarticle from historian Christian McBurney, by “addressing the evils andinconsistencies of slavery as a whole, and not just the slave trade.” Giventhat fifteen years later the U.S. Constitution itself would only addressthe slave trade, and not slavery as a whole, Rhode Island here reallymodeled a far more sweeping and inclusive vision of community.

There werevarious factors which contributed to that moment and model, but certainly acentral one was the colony’s largeQuaker community. The most direct predecessor to the 1774 Act was a 1772formal denunciation of slavery by the Rhode Island Society of Friends, adenunciation co-authored by colonial leader Stephen Hopkins (who would alsodraft the Preamble to the 1774 Act). And just a few months, Hopkins an authoredan even more impassioned attack on slavery in adocument freeing his own enslaved person Saint Jago, writing that “keeping anyof his rational Creatures in Bondage, who are capable of taking care of, andproviding for themselves in a State of Freedom, is altogether inconsistent withhis Holy and Righteous Will.” Hopkins would go on to sign the Declaration ofIndependence on behalf of Rhode Island, reminding us that whileslaveholding was frustratingly part of the identities of too many AmericanFramers, opposition to slavery was likewise part of the Revolutionary moment,and nowhere more potently than in Rhode Island.

Last RhodeIsland history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?