Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 63
September 1, 2016
Did You Know: Washington bought teeth from enslaved people?
Did you know that George Washington bought teeth from some of the people enslaved at Mount Vernon? (1st in a series)
The only remaining full set of Washington’s dentures are displayed at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. (Photo Courtesy: Mount Vernon Ladies Association)
George Washington had terrible teeth. But his dentures were never made of wood. They were made of metal, bone, ivory –and human teeth. And yes, records show that he paid some of the enslaved African-American people at his plantation for their teeth. It is not known if these teeth were ever used.
Read more about Washington’s relationship with the enslaved people of Mount Vernon, and the role slavery played in his presidency: In the Shadow of Liberty. (Available for preorder in book and audio; in stores on 9/20)
In the Shadow of Liberty (Available for pre-order and in stores on 9/20)
August 30, 2016
Who Said It? (8/29/2016)
Frederick Douglass in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass circa 1847, age approximately 29 years. Source National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
“Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her among other things, that it was unlawful as well as unsafe to teach a slave to read…. ‘A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master –to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.'”
“I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty –to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.”
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Yale University Press, 2001; pp. 31-32)
Frederick Douglass successfully escaped slavery on September 3, 1838.
Learn more about Douglass at the Frederick Douglass National Historic site (National Park Service).
Douglass’s life is also discussed in Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, and In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (available 9/20).
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (Book and Audio available on Sept, 20, 2016)
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)
August 22, 2016
Who Said It (August 22, 2016)
Paul Jennings, an enslaved teenaged servant, working in the Madison White House when the British sacked Washington D.C. on August 24, 1814.
“…in the meantime, a rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House and stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay there hands on.”
Born into slavery on James Madison’s Montpelier plantation, Paul Jennings was taken to the White House in 1809 at about age ten as a servant. He witnessed the burning of the White House by the British in 1814 and many other extraordinary events. He served as Madison’s enslaved valet until James Madison died in 1836. Long after Madison’s death, Paul Jennings gained his freedom and provided the first published account of a servant working in the White House, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison (1865).
Read more about Paul Jennings and his life as the enslaved servant of James and Dolley Madison in the forthcoming book, IN THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives.
August 8, 2016
COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2016: “In the Shadow of Liberty”
The first prepublication reviews are in for In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery. Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives. (Holt Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House Audio, September 20, 2016)
UPDATED AUGUST 8, 2016
The latest advance review has come in from School Library Journal, which in a Starred Review called the book
Compulsively readable….
Read the complete School Library Journal review here.
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (Holt Books & Random House Penguin Audio-Sept. 2016)
In a *Starred Review, Booklist said,
“A valuable, broad perspective on slavery, paired with close-up views of individuals who benefited from it and those who endured it.” Booklist
And Kirkus has just called the book,
“An important and timely corrective.” Kirkus
In the Shadow of Liberty will be published by Holt Books for Young Readers on Sept. 20, 2016.
August 7, 2016
Don’t Know Much About® the Tonkin Resolution
What was the Tonkin Resolution?
Photograph taken from USS Maddox (DD-731) during her engagement with three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, 2 August 1964. (Courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Cente)r
On August 7, 1964, Congress approved a resolution that soon became the legal foundation for Lyndon B. Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War. (New York Times story)
It came in August 1964 with a brief encounter in the Gulf of Tonkin, the waters off the coast of North Vietnam. where , the U.S. Navy posted warships loaded with electronic eavesdropping equipment enabling them to monitor North Vietnamese military operations and provide intelligence to CIA-trained South Vietnamese commandos. One of these ships, the U.S.S. Maddox was reportedly fired on by gunboats from North Vietnam.
Lyndon B. Johnson (March 1964)
(Photo: Arnold Newman, White House Press Office
Coming as it did in the midst of LBJ’s 1964 campaign against hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater, President Johnson felt the incident called for a tough response. Johnson had the Navy send the Maddox and a second destroyer, the Turner Joy, back into the Gulf of Tonkin. A radar man on the Turner Joy saw some blips, and that boat opened fire. On the Maddox, there were also reports of incoming torpedoes, and the Maddox began to fire. There was never any confirmation that either ship had actually been attacked. Later, the radar blips would be attributed to weather conditions and jittery nerves among the crew.
According to Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, “Even Johnson privately expressed doubts only a few days after the second attack supposedly took place, confiding to an aide, ‘Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.’”
Johnson ordered an air strike against North Vietnam and then called for passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This legislation gave the president the authority to “take all necessary measures” to repel attacks against U.S. forces and to “prevent further aggression.” The resolution not only gave Johnson the powers he needed to increase American commitment to Vietnam, but allowed him to blunt Goldwater’s accusations that Johnson was “timid before Communism.”
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the House unanimously after only forty minutes of debate. In the Senate, there were only two voices in opposition. What Congress did not know was that the resolution had been drafted several months before the Tonkin incident took place. In June 1964, on LBJ’s orders, according to journalist-historian Tim Weiner,
“Bill Bundy, the assistant secretary of state for the Far East, brother of the national security adviser, and a veteran CIA analyst, had drawn up a war resolution to be sent to Congress when the moment was ripe.” (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, p. 280)
Congress, which has sole constitutional authority to declare war, had handed that power over to Johnson, who was not a bit reluctant to use it. One of the senators who voted against the Tonkin Resolution, Oregon’s Wayne Morse, later said,
“I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution.”
After the vote, Walt Rostow, an adviser to Lyndon Johnson, remarked,
“We don’t know what happened, but it had the desired result.”
In January 1971, Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution as popular opinion grew against a continued U.S. military involvement in Vietnam
Since Vietnam, United States military actions have taken place as part of United Nations’ actions, in the context of joint congressional resolutions, or within the confines of the War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act) that was passed in 1973, over the objections (and veto) of President Richard Nixon.”
The War Powers Resolution came as a direct reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as Congress sought to avoid another military conflict where it had little input.
“The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Limits of Presidential Power” National Constitution Center
In 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) issued a report reviewing the Tonkin incident in which it said “no attack had happened.” (Weiner, p. 280)
The National Endowment for the Humanities website Edsitement offers teaching resources on Tonkin and the escalation of the Vietnam War.
Read more about Vietnam, LBJ and his administration in Don’t Know Much About® History, Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents. The Vietnam War and the Tonkin Resolution are also covered in a chapter on the Tet offensive of 1968 in THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR.
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion Paperback-April 15, 2014)
Don’t Know Much About® History: Anniversary Edition (Harper Perennial and Random House Audio)
Now In paperback THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah
August 6, 2016
August 6-“Hiroshima Day”
The Atomic Bomb Dome-Hiroshima (Photo Courtesy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered)
On August 6, 1945, the New York Times asked:
“What is this terrible new weapon?”
(Source, New York Times, August 6, 1945: “First Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan”)
The story followed the announcement made by President Truman:
“SIXTEEN HOURS AGO an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam” which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.”
August 6, 1945
President Harry S. Truman
(Photo: Truman Library)
(“Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima”: Truman Library and Museum)
The first atomic bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. President Truman, who had taken office upon the death of President Roosevelt on April 12 without knowledge of the Manhattan Project or the atomic bomb’s existence, was alerted to the success of this test at a meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam, a city in defeated Germany. (See this recent post on Potsdam)
The atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. A second device, a plutonium bomb, was used on the city of Nagasaki on August 9. Japan surrendered on August 14.
Almost since the day the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, critics have second-guessed Truman’s decision and motives. A generation of historians have defended or repudiated the need for unleashing the atomic weapon.
What history has confirmed is that the men who made the bomb really didn’t understand how horrifying its capabilities were. Of course, they understood the destructive power of the bomb, but radiation’s dangers were far less understood. As author Peter Wyden tells it in Day One, an account of the making and dropping of the bomb, scientists involved in creating what they called “the gadget” believed that anyone who might be killed by radiation would die from falling bricks first.
In less than one second, the fireball had expanded to 900 feet. The blast wave shattered windows for a distance of ten miles and was felt as far away as 37 miles. Over two-thirds of Hiroshima’s buildings were demolished. The hundreds of fires, ignited by the thermal pulse, combined to produce a firestorm that had incinerated everything within about 4.4 miles of ground zero.
The estimated death toll was eighty thousand people killed instantly in Hiroshima; as many as 90 percent of the city’s nurses and doctors also died instantly. (By 1950, as many as 200,000 had died as a result of long-term effects of radiation.) The death toll in Nagasaki also reached 80,000 by the end of 1945.
Today should not be a day to argue about the politics of the bomb. It should be a day of solemn remembrance of these victims. And of contemplating the horrific power of the weapons we create.
The City of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum offers an English language website with a history of Hiroshima and the effects of the bombing.
You can read more about Hiroshima and the dropping of the atomic bombs in Don’t Know Much About History and more about President Truman in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents and in The Hidden History of America At War.
Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)
Now In paperback THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion paperback-April 15, 2014)
July 26, 2016
Don’t Know Much About Executive Order 9981
[Repost; originally posted 7/26/2013]
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued an Executive Order that ended official discrimination in the United States military.
[image error]
After Truman’s order. the U.S. military was desegregated and integrated units fought in Korea. (Photo: U.S. Army-November 1950)
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.
Coming in an election year, it was a daring move by Truman, who still needed the support of southern segregationists. It was also a controversial decision that led to the forced retirement of the Secretary of the Army when he refused to desegregate the Army.
As historical documents go, “Executive Order 9981” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Emancipation Proclamation” or “New Deal.” But when President Harry S. Truman issued this Executive Order, he helped transform the country. This order began the gradual official process of desegregating America’s armed forces, which was a groundbreaking step for the American civil rights movement. (It is worth noting that many of the arguments made at the time against integration of the armed services –unit cohesion, morale of the troops, discipline in the ranks– were also made about the question of homosexuals serving in the military, a policy effectively ended when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was overturned in 2011.)
In a Defense Department history of the integration of the Armed Forces, Brigadier General James Collins Jr. wrote in 1980:
The integration of the armed forces was a momentous event in our military and national history…. The experiences in World War II and the postwar pressures generated by the civil rights movement compelled all the services –Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps — to reexamine their traditional practices of segregation. While there were differences in the ways that the services moved toward integration, all were subject to the same demands, fears, and prejudices and had the same need to use their resources in a more rational and economical way. All of them reached the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give way to democratic concepts of civil rights.
Here is the text of the Executive Order 9981 (dated July 26, 1948)
A Chronology of events leading to the Order and more information can be found at the the Truman Library.
You can learn more about Truman in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and more about the Cold War and Korean War in Don’t Know Much About® History.
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion Paperback-April 15, 2014)
A First Lady on Who Built the White House
On the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, First Lady Michelle Obama had the audience riveted with her speech.
“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn,” she said. “And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.”
First Lady Michelle Obama (Photo Credit: Sam Hodgson for The New York Times)
But Michelle Obama is not the first FLOTUS to remark on who built the White House. In 1800, shortly after arriving in Washington to take up residence in the unfinished President’s House, Abigail Adams wrote to her uncle, Cotton Tufts, about the construction of the capital city and the new executive palace:
The effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window, who are employd with four small Horse Carts to remove some dirt in front of the house. the four carts are all loaded at the same time, and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their Shovels, Two of our hardy N England men would do as much work in a day as the whole 12, but it is true Republicanism that drive the Slaves half fed, and destitute of clothing…whilst the owner waches about Idle, tho his one Slave is all the property he can boast, Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place.
—Abigail Smith Adams to Cotton Tufts, 28 November 1800 (Source: National Archives)
Mrs. Adams found slavery morally distasteful and woefully inefficient. Although her husband, John Adams, had never enslaved any people, Abigail Smith Adams had grown up in a slaveholding household. She later became an outspoken opponent of slavery.
After the White House burned in 1815, it was rebuilt, again using enslaved labor. Read more about the history of slavery and the early presidency in the forthcoming In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (September 20, 2016)
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives (Holt Books & Random House Penguin Audio-Sept. 2016)
July 11, 2016
“Two Societies, One Black, One White”
(Revised post originally published on February 29, 2016)
Nearly 50 years ago, on July 28, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson established an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. He was responding to a series of violent outbursts in predominantly black urban neighborhoods in such cities as Detroit and Newark. (New York Times account.)
Time Magazine cover August 4, 1967
On Feb. 29, 1968, President Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, later known as the Kerner Commission after its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, issued a stark warning:
“Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal”
Governor of Illinois Otto Kerner, Jr., meeting with Roy Wilkins (left) and President Lyndon Johnson (right) in the White House. 29 July 1967 Source LBJ Presidential Library
The Committee Report went on to identify a set of “deeply held grievances” that it believed had led to the violence.
Although almost all cities had some sort of formal grievance mechanism for handling citizen complaints, this typically was regarded by Negroes as ineffective and was generally ignored.
Although specific grievances varied from city to city, at least 12 deeply held grievances can be identified and ranked into three levels of relative intensity:
First Level of Intensity
1. Police practices
2. Unemployment and underemployment
3. Inadequate housing
Second Level of Intensity
4. Inadequate education
5. Poor recreation facilities and programs
6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms.
Third Level of Intensity
7. Disrespectful white attitudes
8. Discriminatory administration of justice
9. Inadequacy of federal programs
10. Inadequacy of municipal services
11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices
12. Inadequate welfare programs
Source: “Our Nation is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal”: Excerpts from the Kerner Report; American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY)
and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).
Issued nearly half a century ago, the list of grievances reads as if it could have been written last week.
July 10, 2016
“Top 10 Political Conventions that Mattered Most”
Most of the drama is already gone from both parties’ presidential nominating conventions. That could change. But here’s a quick history of some of the most dramatic and important political conventions of the past.
Meeting of the Southern seceders from the Democratic Convention at St. Andrew’s Hall, Charleston, South Carolina, April 30, 1860. Illus. in: Harper’s Weekly, (1860 May 12). (Library of Congress)
National conventions, once riveting political theater that held America in suspense for days, have been reduced to a made-for-television, political promo for the two parties. Since primary elections now routinely determine the candidates, this quadrennial dog-and-pony show offers a ho-hum pageant, in which windy speeches are delivered, party platforms hammered out and often ignored, and delegates don silly hats and hold up handmade signs extolling the virtues of candidates, causes and home states. Once the scene of bare-knuckle politicking and backroom deals, the modern conventions now provide comforting tableaus –full of sound and fury, but mostly signifying nothing.
–The Top 10 Political Conventions That Mattered Most
Excerpted from this 2012 article at Smithsonian.com
