Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 68

How One President Helped Save College Football

There are no “tackling dummies” in the Ivy League, one might assume.

Photo credit: Jim Cole AP via the New York Times

As the college and professional football world continue to address the growing concern over severe injuries, football coaches in the Ivy League are moving to eliminate full-contact hitting from practices, reports the New York Times.

The latest controversies over concussions and other injuries are nothing new. More than 100 years ago, college football – was faced with possible extinction as the game had grown so violent and corrupt. But a football-loving President helped save the sport.

Theodore Roosevelt (Photo Source: NobelPrize.org)

More than a century ago, before there was a true professional league, cash payments were made to “amateur” college athletes. Coaches gave orders to take out rivals on the field. In the sport’s primitive era, body blows, concussions, spinal injuries and even blood poisoning — the result of on-field savagery that included late hits, punching, kneeing, eye-gouging and vicious blows to the windpipe — often proved fatal. In 1905, these abuses and catastrophic injuries were so widespread, and public disapproval of them so deep, the game faced extinction. Football was saved, in part, by the intervention of the American president.

President Theodore Roosevelt, a fan of the sport –he was too small to play at Harvard– wanted to make sure that the game survived. Using his “bully pulpit,” Theodore Roosevelt stepped in. I wrote the story of how he did it in this New York Times Op-Ed, “Schools of Hard Knocks.”

Some other presidential football tidbits: Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to play for Army but could not and became a cheerleader. Gerald Ford was a highly touted offensive lineman at Michigan who turned down pro offers.

Read more about Theodore Roosevelt, Ike and Ford in…

Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion paperback-April 15, 2014)

Who Said It? (2/29/2016)

President Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (March 4, 1865) Photo Courtesy of the Library of C0ngress

 Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. 

Source and complete text: The Avalon Project-Yale University

Read more:

Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)

Don’t Know Much About® History: Anniversary Edition (Harper Perennial and Random House Audio)

Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion Paperback-April 15, 2014)

The Hidden History of America At War-May 5, 2015 (Hachette Books/Random House Audio)

“Two Societies, One Black, One White”

On Feb. 29, 1968, President Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move “toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” (New York Times account.)

 

Grand Rapids Michigan-1967

 

Responding to a series of violent outbursts in predominantly black urban neighborhoods, President Lyndon B. Johnson established an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders on July 28, 1967.

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

Later known as the Kerner Commission after its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, the Commission issued a stark warning in 1968:

“Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal”

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.

The Kerner Commission’s warnings still ring true: “Moving Toward Two Societies…Separate and Unequal.” 

Read more about the unrest of the Civil Rights era in Don’t Know Much About® History. The crucial role of race in the American military is also treated in The Hidden History of America at War. (May 5)

The Hidden History of America At War-May 5,2015 (Hachette Books/Random House Audio)

Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)

 

Who Said It? (2/22/2016)

 President George Washington, “Letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island” (1790)

Happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” 

The complete text and story of Washington’s letter to the Touro Synagogue can be found at the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom.

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732.

Don’t Know Much About® Ansel Adams

Burning leaves, autumn dawn, Manzanar Relocation Center, California Source: Library of Congress
Digital ID: (digital file from original print) ppprs 00308 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppprs.00308

(Revision of post originally published in 2012)

Born today –February 20 in 1902– a man who changed how we see the world, Ansel Adams. 

It was the photography that launched a thousand calendars, posters, and greeting cards. You have seen his ethereal outdoor photography –maybe even if you did not know it.

But his birthdate follows by one day the anniversary of one of his most important subjects, the Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II –the policy created on February 19, 1942 by FDR’s Executive Order 9066.

In 1943, Adams photographed Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp. The Library of Congress offers an online exhibit of Adams’ wartime photos of Japanese Americans.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Ansel Adams, photographer, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-ppprs-00257

Of the photographs, Adams wrote, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment…

 

In earlier posts, I have written more about Executive Order 9066 and photographer Dorothea Lange’s work documenting the internment of Japanese Americans

Adams died at age 82 on April 22, 1984. Here is his New York Times obituary.

Marbury, Madison, Marshall, and McConnell

John Adams, Second POTUS , official portrit (Source: White House Historical Association)

Dust off your Civics books.

As the fight over Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court absorbs the country, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to block any appointments by President Obama during his last year in office, it might help to look at history.

The simple fact is that the most consequential Supreme Court appointment in American history was made by a true “lame duck” President.

In its original sense, “lame duck” meant a president or other elected official whose successor had already been chosen.

John Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
(Reproduction courtesy of the Supreme Court Historical Society)

In 1801, after it was certain that president John Adams would not return for a second term, Adams nominated his Secretary of State, John Marshall, to the post to replace ailing Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth.

At the time of this nomination, President Adams was a true “lame duck” president, soon to be replaced by Thomas Jefferson, following a drawn-out vote in the House of Representatives. It was clear that Jefferson’s party would control both the White House and the Senate. But Adams named Marshall, a staunch Federalist of his own party, who was confirmed despite only six-weeks of legal training.

One of Marshall’s first and most significant decisions came in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison which established the power of federal courts to void acts of Congress in conflict with the Constitution.

 

 

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. . . . Thus the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void. . . .

From Chief Justice Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison

John Marshall went on to become the longest-serving and most influential chief justice in the history of the Supreme Court, hearing more than 1,000 cases and writing 519 decisions.

There have been more election year nominations, as discussed in this New York Times Op-Ed, “In Election Years, a History of Conforming Court Nominees.”

As John Adams himself said during the Boston Massacre Trial (1770)

“Facts are stubborn things.”

Read more about Marbury v Madison in Don’t Know Much About History

Don’t Know Much About® History: Anniversary Edition (Harper Perennial and Random House Audio)

 

“In the Shadow of Liberty”-Coming in September 2016

I am thrilled to introduce the Advance Reader’s Edition of my forthcoming book:

IN THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY — The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives

Set for release on September 20, 2016, the book will be published by Holt Books for Young Readers. The book offers narrative accounts of five enslaved people who were the legal property of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson. 

Contact Holt Books for Young Readers for review copies and publicity requests.

Books for Young Readers

Henry Holt and Company

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

To request an author for an interview, please email: byrpublicity@hholt.com.

If you would like to receive a catalog or a review copy of a book, please fax the request on your letterhead to 646-307-5247.

Who Said It? (2/15/2016)

Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order 9066” (February 19, 1942). This wartime order, issued a few months after Pearl Harbor, led to the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, as well as a number of Italian and Germans in America. The policy is considered one of the darkest stains on FDR’s legacy.

 

“Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.”

Photo Source: National Archives

 

Photo by Dorothea Lange of Japanese-American grocery store on the day after Pearl Harbor National Archives

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 granting the War Department broad powers to create military exclusion areas. Although the order did not identify any particular group, in practice it was used almost exclusively to intern Americans of Japanese descent. By 1943, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans had been forced from their homes and moved to camps in remote inland areas of the United States. (Source: FDR LIBRARY)

 

READ MORE IN DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY and DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

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)

 

 

 

Pop Quiz: Who invented Lincoln Logs?

Answer: John Lloyd Wright, son of the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Learn more at the National Park Service Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park

Read more about Lincoln in Don’t Know Much About History and Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents.

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)

Kenneth C. Davis-Speaking Calendar

List of Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

2016

•Friday April 29 Rutland Free Library  5 PM

10 Court Street Rutland, Vermont “Tables of Content”

•Tuesday May 3 Oregon Historical Society  “Mark O. Hatfield Distinguished Historians Forum” 7 PM

First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1126 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon  

In paperback May 2016 THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah

•Thursday September 22   Fraunces Tavern Museum (Time TBA)

54 Pearl Street New York City

•Thursday October 6 Northshire Bookstore (Saratoga Springs, NY) TIME TBA

424 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

•Friday October 7  Northshire Bookstore (Manchester, VT) TIME TBA

4869 Main ST, Manchester Center, VT 05255