Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 73

How History Gets Hidden

Fort Matanzas Courtesy National Park Service

People often ask me how history gets hidden. The answer is simple. It is all about the way we cover up the past to present a tidy version that makes for a nice travelogue. But that is how history gets buried in myth and misconception.

A perfect example is a current article at Smithsonian.com called “The Oldest City in the United States” — St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine was settled in September 1565, as the article points out, highlighting its 450th anniversary. But the article neglects –or obscures– the real reason that that Spanish came to Florida.

About a year earlier, French Protestants –or Huguenots– had started a colony called Fort Caroline, not far from present-day Jacksonville. The Spanish fleet sent to Florida was ordered to remove these “heretics” from territory that Spain claimed. The result was the massacre of the entire colony. Shipwrecked French sailors, caught in a hurricane, were later put to death at a spot now called “Matanzas” –the Spanish word for ‘slaughters.”

I told this story in my book America’s Hidden History –an excerpt from the book appeared in Smithsonian in 2008 as “America’s First True ‘Pilgrims'”

I like Smithsonian Magazine and have often contributed to the print and online editions in the past. But we have to expect more when we tell our history. Or else it is just another piece of “cherry tree” history.

Read the full account of the first “Pilgrims” in America’s Hidden History.

America’s Hidden History, includes tales of “Forgotten Founders”

 

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR-Speaking Calendar

 

List of Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

The lawn outside the Camden (Me.) Public Library and Camden Harbor

 

Thursday October 27       Camden Public Library Camden, Maine 7 PM

 

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah (May 5-Hachette Books/Random House Audio)

 

 

 

Sunday 9/13 Ash-Lawn Highland QUIZ SHOW! THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR-Speaking Calendar

 

 

List of Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

 

Statue of President James Monroe in the Garden at Ash Lawn-Highland

Ash Lawn-Highland Home of President James Monroe

 

September 13 Ash Lawn-Highland (Home of President James Monroe) 1-3 PM

THIS IS A FAMILY FRIENDLY EVENT CELEBRATING NATIONAL LITERACY MONTH. Ash Lawn-Highland is located a short distance from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

 

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah (May 5-Hachette Books/Random House Audio)

 

 

 

Why Labor Day? Check out this Ted-Ed animated video

“Why do Americans and Canadians Celebrate Labor Day?”

This  Ted-Ed animated video explains the history of the holiday and why it still matters today. (Reposted from 9/1/2014)

You can also view it on YouTube:

 

 

Read more about the period of labor unrest in Don’t Know Much About® History.

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

 

Who Said It? (8/31/2014-Labor Day edition)

(Reposted from 2014)

Abraham Lincoln (November 1863) Photo by Alexander Gardner

Abraham Lincoln, “First Annual Message to Congress” (“State of the Union”) December 3, 1861

 

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.

Source and Complete text: Abraham Lincoln: “First Annual Message,” December 3, 1861. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. 

Read more about Lincoln, his life and administration and the Civil War in Don’t Know Much About® History, Don’t Know Much About® the Civil War and Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents

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)

Sat 9/5 at Decatur Book Festival THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR-Speaking Calendar

 

 

List of Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

 

September 5  The Atlanta Journal Constitution Decatur Book Festival   11:15 AM

 

Statue of President James Monroe in the Garden at Ash Lawn-Highland

Ash Lawn-Highland Home of President James Monroe

 

September 13 Ash Lawn-Highland (Home of President James Monroe) 1-3 PM

THIS IS A FAMILY FRIENDLY EVENT CELEBRATING NATIONAL LITERACY MONTH. Ash Lawn-Highland is located a short distance from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

 

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah (May 5-Hachette Books/Random House Audio)

 

 

 

Pop Quiz: Which President signed Labor Day into law?

(Repost of a 2011 videoblog, directed, edited and produced by Colin Davis)

Answer: Labor Day was signed into law by Grover Cleveland in 1894

The end of summer, a three-day weekend, burgers on the grill, and a back-to-school shopping spree, right? And the most important question, “Can I still wear white?”

But very few people associate Labor Day with a turbulent time in American History. That’s what Labor Day is really about. The holiday was born during the violent union-busting days of the late 19th century, when sweat shop conditions killed children, when there was no minimum wage and when going on vacation meant you were out of work.

If you like holidays, benefits and a five-day, 40-hour work week, you need to know about Labor Day.

When Labor Day was signed into law by Grover Cleveland in 1894, it was a bone tossed to the labor movement. And it was deliberately placed in September to ensure that it would not recall the memory of the deadly rioting at Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May 1886. Europe’s workers, and later the Communist Party, adopted May Day as a worker’s holiday to commemorate the deadly Haymarket Sqaure Riot which came about during a strike against thee McCormack Reaper Company.

Although Labor Day did become federal law in 1894, most of labor’s successes –the minimum wage, overtime, the end of child labor – did not come about until the Depression-era reforms of the New Deal.

Labor Day was created to celebrate the “strength and spirit of the American worker.” But this holiday should remind us that — like so many things we take for granted — those victories for working people came at great cost, in blood, sweat and tears.

For more on the history of Haymarket Square, here is a link to the Chicago Historical Society’s web project.

“American Experience,” the PBS documentary series, produced a Homestead Strike piece as part of its film about Andrew Carnegie.

You can read more about the history of the trade union movement in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition 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)

Don’t Know Much About® Lyndon B. Johnson

(Repost of 2013 essay)

Lyndon B. Johnson (March 1964)
(Photo: Arnold Newman, White House Press Office)

 

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first address as President to a joint session of Congress (November 27, 1963)

The 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was born on August 27, 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas on the Pedernales River. Coincidentally, it is also the date on which LBJ accepted the 1964 Democratic nomination for President. (Senator Hubert H. Humphrey was his Vice Presidential nominee.)

In some respects, history and time have been kinder to Lyndon B. Johnson than his tortured Presidency –and certainly the critics of his day—would have possibly suggested. A power broker extraordinaire during his days in Congress, especially during his twelve years in the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson challenged John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 primaries, and then accepted Kennedy’s offer to become his Vice Presidential running mate. Johnson was credited with helping Kennedy win Southern votes and ultimately the election.

On November 22, 1963, history and America changed with Kennedy’s assassination. Johnson became President, taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy, the dead President’s widow standing beside him.

Driven by a rousing sense of social justice, born out of his youth and upbringing in hardscrabble Texas and Depression-era experiences, he had become one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most loyal New Dealers. First in a federal job, then in Congress and later as “Master of the Senate.” As President, Johnson set the country on a quest for what he called the “Great Society,” looking for ways to end the great economic injustice and bitter racial disparity that existed in America in 1963. But his vision for a “Great Society” was counterbalanced, and ultimately overshadowed by his doomed course in pursuing the war in Vietnam.

In the midst of the war, recently released White House tapes reveal  Johnson confided–

I can’t win and I can’t get out.

Fast Facts-

•Johnson was the first Congressman to enlist for duty after Pearl Harbor.

•Johnson was the fourth president to come into office upon the death of a president by assassination. (The others were Andrew Johnson after Lincoln, Chester A. Arthur after Garfield, and Theodore Roosevelt after McKinley.)

•Johnson appointed the first black Supreme Curt Justice, Thurgood Marshall.

The Johnson Library and Museum is in Austin, Texas.  Lyndon B. Johnson died at the age of 67 on January 22, 1973. His New York Times obituary.

Read more about Lyndon B. Johnson, his presidency and the Vietnam War and civil rights movement in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History.

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

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Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents
(September 18, 2012-Hyperion Books)

Don’t Know Much About the 14th Amendment

Since the 14 th Amendment is back in the news because of some Republican candidates’ views about its use and interpretation, I thought it would be useful to repost this.

(The original post of this piece is from July 2010 and was revised last year.)

 

Image Source: Supreme Court of the United States

On July 9, 1868, the states of Louisiana and South Carolina ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing the necessary three-fourths of the states to adopt this very significant Amendment as part of the law of the land.

One of the “Reconstruction Amendments” ratified in the wake of the Civil War, it had far-reaching consequences in American history, touching on every aspect of public and private life in America — from the schoolroom to the bedroom. And it still does. Think of a controversial court decision in our history and chances are the 14th Amendment is involved. It has been invoked in such major decisions as Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended segregation of public schools; Roe v. Wade (1973), which disallowed most existing restrictions on abortion; and Loving v. Virginia (1967), which ended race-based restrictions on marriage in America. It also provided the Constitutional authority for many of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s.  And the 14th Amendment has been central to the same-sex marriage debate. Here is an article from the National Constitution Center on 10 Supreme Court Cases about the 14th Amendment. The first two sections of the Amendment read as follows. The full text of the 14th Amendment can be found at the links to the National Archives and Library of Congress at the bottom of this post.

AMENDMENT XIV Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868. Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. *Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.

Its immediate impact was to give citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves. Creating national citizenship that was independent of state citizenship, the 14th Amendment reversed the 1857 Dred Scott decision which denied citizenship to most slaves.

In addition, the 14th Amendment forbids states from denying any person “life, liberty or property, without due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws.”

These clauses, usually referred to as “due process” and “equal protection,” have been involved in some of the most significant decisions in American history. You don’t need to be a Constitutional scholar to understand this Amendment and the profound impact it has had –and continues to have–  on every American’s life.

Here is a link to the National Archives US Constitution site

Here is a link to more information on the 14th Amendment from the Library of Congress

And this link from the National Constitution Center has more on the history of Amendment XIV

Who Said It? (8/10/2015)

Answer: President Franklin D. Roosevelt- Statement on Signing the Social Security Act (August 14, 1935)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, signing the Social Security Act (August 14, 1935) Photo Source and Key to Figures in photo: Social Security Administration website

 

Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

Source: “FDR’s Statements on Social Security”–Social Security Website