Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 62

October 28-29, 2023: October 2023 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

October2: LGBT Histories: The Society for Human Rights: An LGBT History Monthseries kicks off with three contexts for America’s first gay rightsorganization.

October3: LGBT Histories: Harvey Milk: The series continues with the complexitiesof any historical event, and the vital broader issues nonetheless.

October4: LGBT Histories: 1950s Discriminations: Two horrific 50s decisions andwhether we can find light in such dark moments, as the series remembers on.

October5: LGBT Histories: Stonewall: The undeniable significance of violence forcivil rights movements, and the need to remember beyond it.

October6: LGBT Histories: 1970s Advances: The series concludes with three 1973moments that helped advance the movement.

October7-8: LGBT Rights in 2023: A special weekend follow-up on progress,regression, and a crucial fight here in 2023.

October9: Vice President Studying: Aaron Burr’s Trial: For the 50thanniversary of Spiro Agnew’s resignation, a VP series kicks off with takeawaysfrom the most controversial VP.

October10: Vice President Studying: Andrew Johnson’s Nomination: The seriescontinues with one good and one horrific thing about a crucial wartime VPchoice.

October11: Vice President Studying: Henry Wilson’s Book: How a Vice Presidentialpublication helps us rethink an entire administration, as the series rolls on.

October12: Vice President Studying: John C. Calhoun and Spiro Agnew: A significantdifference between the two VPs who resigned, and a linking thread.

October13: Vice President Studying: Dick Cheney’s Power: The series concludes witha key explanation for a Vice President’s unprecedented power grabs.

October14-15: Vice President Studying: Kamala Harris: Another special weekendfollow-up, this one on a couple ways the current VP represents real andmeaningful progress.

October16: Basketball Stories: James Naismith: With the WNBA season concluding anda new NBA season upon us a basketball series tips off with contexts for thesport’s iconic inventor.

October17: Basketball Stories: Chamberlain and Russell: The series continues witha clear distinction between two iconic greats, and why it’s not quite so clear.

October18: Basketball Stories: Magic: Genuine low and high points for the legendaryLaker, as the series dribbles on.

October19: Basketball Stories: The Harlem Globetrotters: Couldn’t feature abasketball studying series without sharing my recent Saturday Evening Post column on the Globetrotters!

October20: Basketball Stories: WNBA Stars: The WNBA too often plays second fiddleto the NBA, but as the five greats in this series concluding post illustrate,it’s always had plenty of star power as well.

October23: New Scholarly Books: A Seat at the Table: A series on great recentpublications kicks off with a vital new anthology co-edited by frequent GuestPoster Hettie Williams.

October24: New Scholarly Books: Resistance from the Right: The series continueswith an important recent book that helps us understand the longstanding andmost dangerous threat to higher ed.

October25: New Scholarly Books: A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Awonderful new bio that reminds us of the best of our Congressional leaders, asthe series reads on.

October26: New Scholarly Books: The Vice President’s Black Wife: Coming up withtitles for public scholarly books ain’t easy, so when one gets it right, it’sreally worth celebrating.

October27: New Scholarly Books: Democracy Awakening: And the series and monthconcludes with the most successful scholarly book of the year from our mostprominent public scholar.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

October 27, 2023: New Scholarly Books: Democracy Awakening

[It’s beena bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great newscholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting greatnew scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere inbetween, in comments!]

On the onehand, when a scholarly book by a public historian reaches #1on the New York Times bestseller listit clearly doesn’t need a blog mention from me (or anyone). But on the otherhand, that is an achievement very, very much worth highlighting and celebratingeverywhere—and as someone who has been talking with the wonderful Heather CoxRichardson about public and online scholarship since she was first creating theidea for the great We’re History site, Icouldn’t be more excited that her latest book, DemocracyAwakening: Notes on the State of America, has taken her voice and workto even one more level of well-deserved prominence. Clearly I don’t need totell y’all to check out this book, but I do need to say that it’s one of thosethings that gives me hope for the future, as long as we can keep learning andtalking about the past.

OctoberRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?

October 26, 2023: New Scholarly Books: The Vice President’s Black Wife

[It’s beena bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great newscholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting greatnew scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere inbetween, in comments!]

As someonewho has struggled at times to come up with catchy book titles, and who hasrecently changed the title of hiswork in progress, I’m always impressed when a scholarly author can come upwith a title that is both extremely catchy yet at the same time truly captureskey subjects of the project (ie, isn’t just clickbait, understandable as thatgoal always would be). No recent publication manages that difficult balancebetter than Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’ TheVice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn—that titlesounds like a sleazy campaign attack ad, and indeed this figure was used in preciselythose ways to destroy the career of Martin Van Buren’s VP Richard MentorJohnson; but it’s also a genuine reflection of the nuanced layers of Chinn,Johnson, their marriage, and the many early 19th century historicaland cultural issues to which Myers connects them in this fascinating book. Comefor the title, stay for the whole thing!

Last bookrec tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?

October 25, 2023: New Scholarly Books: A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington

[It’s beena bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great newscholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting greatnew scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere inbetween, in comments!]

The recentclusterfuck (pardon my French, but there really is no other word that works)around the Speaker of the House is just the latest of so many reminders that ourcurrent Congress has almost entirely ceased to function as a governing body,and certainly seems unable to address in any consistent or successful way themyriad crises facing the nation and world. In such a moment, it’s even moreimportant that we remember the historical figures who have embodied the best ofthat governing body and have helped achieve significant progress on such importantissues. A great new biography focuses on one such figure and achievement: WillMcLean Greeley’s AConnecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Senator George P. McLean Birdman of theSenate. Senator McLean advisedfive presidents and played a role in countless early 20thcentury histories, but it was his sponsorship of the MigratoryBird Treaty Act of 1918, one of America’s first and most influentialconservation laws, that Greeley rightly highlights as a truly exemplary legacy.I can’t imagine a more important moment to revisit and be inspired by suchlegacies, nor a book that can help us do so more powerfully than Greeley’s!

Next bookrec tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?

October 24, 2023: New Scholarly Books: Resistance from the Right

[It’s beena bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great newscholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting greatnew scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere inbetween, in comments!]

One of themost frustrating misunderstandings in our current social and politicalconversations (a very competitive category, of course) has to do with where andfrom whom the threats to free speech in higher education are coming: many ofour narratives suggest those threats come from the “intolerant left”; while Iwould argue that the far, far more widespread and influentialsuch threats come from conservative critics. And that’s not a newphenomenon, as historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd argues in her vital new book Resistancefrom the Right: Conservatives & the Campus Wars in Modern America. Shepherdconnects mid-20th century debates and forces to our own moment andclimate with nuance and complexity, while making an unassailable case for what’sreally been happening in and to higher ed for more than half a century. If youread one book about higher education this Fall, make it Resistance from the Right!

Next bookrec tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?

October 23, 2023: New Scholarly Books: A Seat at the Table

[It’s beena bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great newscholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting greatnew scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere inbetween, in comments!]

Readers ofthis blog are already familiar with the awesome Dr. Hettie Williams, who hascontributed not one,not two,but threeexcellent Guest Posts (tying her for the all-time lead!). Which makes meeven more excited than I already would have been to highlight her phenomenalnew collection ASeat at the Table: Black Women Public Intellectuals in US History and Culture,co-edited with Melissa Ziobro and published by the University Press ofMississippi (and featuring a number of chapters by Hettie herself, among manyother awesome contributors including another AmericanStudies Guest Poster TanyaRoth). That a number of the chapters also intersect with my own recent andongoing work on AfricanAmerican critical patriotism is just the icing on the cake, and puts A Seat at the Table in conversation withother exemplary recent works like the 1619 Project. For all those and manyother reasons, this is my must-have Fall 2023 scholarly publication!

Next bookrec tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?

October 20, 2023: Basketball Stories: WNBA Stars

[With a new NBA season upon us, a seriesAmericanStudying some of basketball’s many interesting figures, stories, anddebates. Leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on the bball stories,histories, debates, and contexts you’d highlight—share ‘em in comments or by email, please!]

Before ColinKaepernick began his protests in the summer of 2016, WNBA starswere already doing so; but as is too often the case, we don’trecognize these female athletes as fully as we do their male counterparts. So Iwanted to make sure to end this NBA and bball series by highlighting andbriefly AmericanStudying a handful of the many phenomenal WNBA stars, past andpresent, on and off the court:

1)     SherylSwoopes: Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Rebecca Lobo were the first threeplayers signed to the WNBA when it launchedin 1996, and honestly any one of them could occupy this spot on my list. ButSwoopes was the first signed, and I’m highlighting her in particular for thatreason and because of this sentence from her Wikipedia page: “She returned only six weeks after givingbirth to her son to play the last third of the WNBA inaugural season and ledthe Comets in the 1997 WNBA Championship.” If that doesn’t sum up the badasseryof WNBA stars and female athletes everywhere, I don’t know what could.

2)     CynthiaCooper-Dyke: While Swoopes was a big part of that inaugural Houston Cometschampionship team, Cooper-Dyke was the unquestionable centerpiece of theirdynasty (the Comets won the first four WNBA championships), winning tworegular-season MVPs and all four Finals MVPs in the process. What makes thatresume even more impressive, however, is that Cooper-Dyke had finished hercollege career at USC a full decade earlier, after the 1985-86 season. Shespent the next decade playing on European teams, and then signed with theComets at the age of 34, making her stunning subsequentdominance of the league that much more striking still.

3)     DawnStaley: Not gonna lie, this is something of a homer pick: I grew upwatching Dawn Staley work her point-guard magic at the University of Virginia, and havebeen a huge fan ever since. She went on to make great contributions to both theUS National Team and the WNBA, but it’s really as a coach that Staley hasdistinguished herself from other WNBA stars: literally, as Staley begancoaching the Temple University women’s bball team while she wasstill in the WNBA; and then through her subsequent successes, with Temple, withher currentcoaching job at the University of South Carolina, and with the US NationalTeam. She’s the first person to win theNaismith Award as both a player and a coach, which just about says it all.

4)     Maya Moore and Renee Montgomery: I’m groupingthese last two stars together because of the similar reason why I’mhighlighting them: each left a promising WNBA career over the last few years inorder to pursue social justice work and activism. Moore did so in2019, putting her career with the Minnesota Lynx on hiatus to work forcriminal justice reform, as illustrated by her successful efforts for the release ofher partner Jonathan Irons from prison. Montgomery did so in2020, retiring from the WNBA in order to take partin that year’s protests and activisms for racial justice and equity. Thesetwo inspiring stars have extended the legacy of those 2016 protests and remindus that WNBA athletes have long contributed to well more than the world ofsports stardom.

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what do you think? Other bball stories, histories, or contexts you’dshare (in comments or by email)?

October 19, 2023: Basketball Stories: The Harlem Globetrotters

[With a new NBA season upon us, a seriesAmericanStudying some of basketball’s many interesting figures, stories, anddebates. Leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on the bball stories,histories, debates, and contexts you’d highlight—share ‘em in comments or by email, please!]

I couldn’tshare a BasketballStudying series and not include mySaturday Evening Post Considering Historycolumn from his past March on the Harlem Globetrotters, a legendary teamthat featured one of my week’s subjects (Wilt Chamberlain) but also and especiallyconnect to so much of 20th century American history. Check out thatcolumn if you would, and share any responses, here or by email, for the weekendpost!

Last bballstory tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other bball stories, histories, or contexts you’d share?

October 18, 2023: Basketball Stories: Magic

[With a new NBA season upon us, a seriesAmericanStudying some of basketball’s many interesting figures, stories, anddebates. Leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on the bball stories,histories, debates, and contexts you’d highlight—share ‘em in comments or by email, please!]

On genuinelow and high points for the legendary Lakers star, and what they bothexemplify.

I’vewritten before, in thispost as well as in the chapter on AIDS epidemic histories andliterature in my fourthbook, that Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement of his HIV-positivestatus marked a pivotal turning point in public conversations about thedisease. I certainly believe that’s the case (and am of course not alonein arguing the point), but at the same time it’d be important notto let a desire to consider the historical big picture lead us to skip tooquickly past what the moment meant for Johnson and his family. Even if we leaveaside the moment’s personal (such as Johnson’s subsequent confessionsof serial infidelity) and professional (his immediate, although not permanent,departure from theNBA) ramifications for Johnson, his wife Cookie, and their youngfamily, in 1991 HIV and AIDS were still (and understandably, given thestatistics) perceived as death sentences. While Johnson has been able tobattle the disease quite successfully (it seems) for the three decades sincehis announcement, that subsequent history shouldn’t cloud our perspective onwhat his diagnosis and situation meant, for him and everyone around him, in1991. It was as painful and frightening a moment as any faced by an Americanathlete or celebrity in the era.

WhileJohnson’s battle against that HIV diagnosis has continued for these 30subsequent years, his moves forward from that moment and toward another careerhigh point began much more rapidly than that. In 1994, less than three yearsafter his announcement, Johnson and his Johnson Development Corporation announcedtheir plan for Magic Johnson Theatres, a line of movie theaters that would openin and provide entertainment options, as well as jobs and revitalization, forurban communities. The first such theater, the Magic Johnson Crenshaw 15, opened inSouth Central Los Angeles in 1995; a second, the AMC MagicJohnson Harlem 9, opened in New York in 2000, and morefollowed in Cleveland, Atlanta, and other cities. While Johnson’s achievementswill always be defined first by his basketball stardom and successes, it’s fairto say that on the court he was one of a number of great players, present andpast (if a unique one to be sure)—whereas his theaters represent a moredistinctive and singular vision and achievement, within their communities andin American business overall. Although many of the theaters have changedownership in the decades since, they establisheda new model for both locations and styles of movie theaters (and other urbandevelopments)—and in any case, as with Johnson’s HIV announcement, subsequentevents shouldn’t elide what this moment in Johnson’s life and career meant atthe time.

So forJohnson, these two moments and stories reflect contrasting yet nearlyconcurrent low and high points, a particularly striking spectrum in a lifethat’s been consistently mercurial. If we take a step back and examine them inrelationship to the African American community, however, I would argue thatthey together represent a period of extreme social and cultural shifts on bothdestructive and productive levels. Johnson’s theaters offer one illustrationamong many—alongside films like Boyz in the Hood (1991), New Jack City (1991), and Menace 2 Society (1993) and the explosionin popularity of gangsta rap, among other examples—of how African Americanurban communities were becoming central to American popular culture in the1990s. Yet at the same time, such communities were facing significant newthreats, from the war on drugs and the rise ofmass incarceration to, yes, the AIDS epidemic; while the diseasewas largely associated with gay communities at the time of Johnson’sannouncement, by the end of the 90s it would be just as fully linked toimpoverished, and often AfricanAmerican, inner city communities. While Johnson’s personal battle withHIV certainly differs from that communal epidemic, the presence in his life andcareer of both that battle and an economic and cultural transformation of urbanspaces reflects a similar spectrum of danger and possibility for the AfricanAmerican community in this same period.

Next bballstory tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other bball stories, histories, or contexts you’d share?

October 17, 2023: Basketball Stories: Chamberlain and Russell

[With a new NBA season upon us, a seriesAmericanStudying some of basketball’s many interesting figures, stories, anddebates. Leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on the bball stories,histories, debates, and contexts you’d highlight—share ‘em in comments or by email, please!]

On a cleardistinction between two iconic greats—and why it’s not quite so clear as that.

Between1956 (when BillRussell was drafted by the Boston Celtics; WiltChamberlain was officially drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors threeyears later) and 1973 (when Chamberlain finished his last season with the LosAngeles Lakers; Russell had ended his playing career with the Celtics fouryears earlier), the National Basketball Association might as well have beenrenamed the Russell-Chamberlain Association. Russell and the Celtics won 11 NBAtitles in those 18 years (1957, 1959-66, and 1968-69), while Chamberlain andhis teams won 2 (with the Philadelphia 76ers in 1967 and the Lakers in 1972). Thediscrepancy between those two championship totals, and the fact that Russell’steams often beat Chamberlain’s in the playoffs en route to their titles (theCeltics were 7-1 in playoff series against Chamberlain teams), has led many NBA fansand basketball pundits to opine thatRussell clearly got the best of this truly unique rivalry. But while suchdebates are fun for fans and historians alike, the truth is that these are twoof the all-time great NBA players, and there must be room in any account of thesport for acknowledging and engaging with both men’s achievements andsuccesses.

Thoseon-court achievements are the most important part of Russell and Chamberlain’scareers and legacies—but if we turn our attention to their lives andpersonalities off the court, it would be difficult to imagine a morecontrasting pair. Russell was (and has largely remained in the decades sincehis retirement) notoriously prickly and private, not only with the media butwith fans and the public more generally, as illustrated (if in a particularlydivisive way) by his description of Boston asa “flea market of racism” and his initial desire to have his jerseyretired in an empty Boston Garden. Chamberlain was (and largelyremained until his 1999 death) famously gregarious and social, as exemplified(if in a particularly controversial way) by his claim (in his1991 autobiographyA View from Above) that he had slept with roughly 20,000women in his life. Those differences might help explain why Chamberlain onlycoached for a year (with theSan Diego Conquistadors of the American Basketball Association),while Russell not only coachedthe Celtics for the final four years of his playing career (becoming oneof the first African American coaches inprofessional sports in the process), but went on to coach two other teams inthe next two decades (the Seattle Supersonics in the mid-1970s and theSacramento Kings in the late 1980s).

Yet Iwould argue that those seemingly divergent details and lives also reveal asimilar influence and factor for both men. In the interview at that lasthyperlink, Russell argues that his time as the Celtics’ player-coach hadnothing to do with race or racial progress; yet as his comments on Boston andits fans reflect, Russell has consistently become—whatever his own overallgoals—a lightning rod of racial attitudes and debates in both the city and thesport. For his side, Chamberlain denounced the Black Panthers and openly supportedRichard Nixon in both 1968 and 1972, separating himself very distinctly fromAfrican American social movements of the era; yet from his college days at the University ofKansas on through everysubsequent stage of his career and life, Chamberlain bothexperienced direct instances of racism and was defined as a stereotypical blackman (never more so than in the aftermath of his sexual claims). Neither ofthese two titans of the sport can or should be reduced to his race, but neitheris it possible to separate them from that aspect of their identity, even wheneach has in some ways expressed a desire for such separation. Indeed, Russelland Chamberlain’s careers marked a significant step in the NBA’s continuedevolution toward being the mostcentrally African American sports league and community in America—one morereason to remember their iconic presences and legacies.

Next bballstory tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other bball stories, histories, or contexts you’d share?