Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sisters. Pia Marie Winters Jordan. NewSouth Books, 2023. 128 pages.
When Pia Jordan was growing up in Maryland, she knew her mother had been a military nurse. She had briefly seen the contents of a trunk from those days, including a dry-rotted uniform and a scrapbook of photos. She knew that some of her mother's oldest friends were from those days, and she called them Aunts. However, her mother almost never talked about her service. It wasn't until her mother grew ill and Pia was cleaning out her apartment that things really clicked into place when she rediscovered the scrapbook.
Pia's mother had been one of 28 black women pioneers who joined the Army Nurse Corps in WWII and staffed the hospital at the Tuskegee Army Flying School, the training ground of the Tuskegee Airmen. Pia's career was in broadcast journalism, and she was even a professor of broadcast journalism, so her rediscovery launched her on a mission of a dozen years or so. She began researching the story of the Tuskegee nurses, visiting archives and museums and interviewing surviving nurses and airmen. She found that the nurses' story remained largely untold. Her goal was, and still is, to make a documentary. In the meantime, Memories was just published in mid-June. It's one of the great stories finally being told. It's also a great reminder to collect stories from the people in your life before they're gone.
1981 tv dramatization
The Children's Story. James Clavell. Blackstone Publishing, 2022. Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal October 1963. Published in 1981 by Delacorte Press. Audible Audiobook version, 2022. 114 pages.
James Clavell wrote some of my favorite historical novels, Shogun, King Rat, Tai-Pan, so I listened to The Children's Story audio book when it was released last fall. The "novelette" was first published in 1963, a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is a reflection of the Cold War. It is a dystopian work in the same vein as Sinclair Lewis' famous 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here. However, Lewis' work at 450 pages has a much broader scope.
The Children's Story takes place in just 25 minutes as a young revolutionary teacher, an agent of an unnamed conquering power,( understood to be Soviet ) takes over an elementary classroom and uses a deconstruction of the Pledge of Allegiance to make her new wards pliable totalitarian subjects.
Clavell was inspired when his six year old daughter came home from school eager to recite the Pledge, which she had memorized in school that day. He realized, upon questioning, that she had no idea what most of the words meant. This led him to consider the real meaning of patriotism and inspired him to create the teacher who used the same exact Pledge, along with candy, songs, and praise, to win all of her students over to her side, less than a half hour after they had seen their old teacher forcibly led away in tears.
Alan Prendergast book talk
Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan. Alan Prendergast. Citadel, 2023. 320 pages.
1920s Denver was still the Wild West in many ways. Maybe there weren't shootouts, gangs robbing banks and trains, cattle rustlers, and horse thieves, but it was wild nevertheless. Government officials and police officers were corrupt, and it seemed that most were on the take. The real power in the city was in the hands of a few men who controlled illegal gambling and gift operations and took huge sums of money from naive visitors to the city. There were grifters and con-men everywhere. One is quoted in the book saying that all the greatest swindlers in America summered in Denver and wintered in Florida (There goes history, echoing again.) Scams ranged from rigged shell and card games on the street to elaborate sting operations, like those in my favorite old western TV series, Maverick.
Then along came Phillip Van Cise. He shocked the Denver establishment by winning the office of District Attorney and making good on his promise to clean up the city. When the Klan moved in, he targeted it as well. (Many don't realize that three of the strongest states for the 1920s KKK were Indiana, Colorado, and Oregon.)
Gangbuster is not an action-packed, shoot-em-up book about the Old West. A lot of the "action" is in the courtroom and D.A.'s office, but it was a good read, and it was refreshing to learn about an upstanding white man in the 1920s. Sometimes, it seems there were far too few.
Clinton 12 Documentary
A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation. Rachel Louise Martin. Simon & Schuster, 2023. 384 pages.
Sad. Depressed. Angry. Incredulous. Reflective. A Whole Lot of Sad, Depressed, Angry. There's no way around those feelings when reading this book. Have you ever heard of Clinton Tennessee's racial violence in the mid 1950s? It's not in history book versions of the Civil rights movement. Clintonites have maintained an impenetrable wall of silence about it, but Rachel Martin finally tells the story almost 70 years later.
Clinton was actually the first school district in America under a federal court order to desegregate following Brown v. Board. In the fall of 1956, the nation's full attention was on the Clinton 12, a year before anyone had heard of the Little Rock 9. 12 incredibly brave black students enrolled in Clinton High School, 12 in a total student body of less than 900; there were only a few dozen black families in town. They were met with protestors and abuse, but also with a supportive principal and faculty, and even some students. One black girl was nominated for student council by her homeroom. The entire football team stepped up to serve as bodyguards and to stand guard at school entrances. A few other white kids showed small signs of support.
Eventually, though, hate won. The year was hell, and every participant was scarred for life. Segregationists went so far as to attempt to murder white law officers and national guardsmen, not to mention the black families. Bombers, attackers, protestors --- all were convinced they were doing God's will and enforcing God's plan. And even those white "allies"? They acted solely to follow the law because they believed in law and order. NOT ONE believed in equality.
As a lover of Southern history and a member of the first ever desegregated first grade class ( in 1973!) in my small south Georgia town, this book hits hard.
Local segment about the Chadron race
American Endurance: Buffalo Bill, the Great Cowboy Race of 1893, and the Vanishing Wild West. Richard A. Serrano. Smithsonian Books, 2016. 272 pages.
In 1893, American eyes were firmly fixed on Chicago and the great Columbian Exposition and Word's Fair held to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the Americas. It was also the year that historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared that the American frontier had, in effect, been thoroughly conquered, and, in the process, American institutions, society, and culture had been shaped into a new and totally unique identity, making America, and Americans, exceptional. The West had been tamed. Native American resistance had been crushed, and most white Americans believed that the indigenous nations would soon be extinct. Railroads and telegraphs connected the coasts. Barbed wire signaled the end of the long cattle drives, and that meant cowboys would soon be riding into the permanent sunset themselves.
In Chadron. Nebraska, a few men decided to make one last grand gesture by sponsoring "The Great 1,000-Mile Cowboy Race" from Chadron to the Fair in Chicago. It all started as a joke, a hoax newspaper story planted by a cowboy about 300 cowboys planning to race. Soon, the joke exploded into something bigger than anyone had dreamed. On June 13, 1893, the hoax became real when nine riders lined up before a crowd of 3,500. When the pistol fired, there was no mad dash; the horses and riders just ambled off, according to witnesses.
The race might not have gotten as big as it did if not for Buffalo Bill Cody and his promotional skill. He took his Show to Chicago for the Fair but refused to give the Fair organizers the cut of his revenue that they demanded. Instead, he set up the Wild West Show next door. The race was a huge opportunity for self-promotion, and he took full advantage.
The result was one of the most exciting but least known events of the Wild West.
Creators book talk
The Jekyll Island Chronicles. Three Volumes. Jack Lowe, Steve Nedvidek, Ed Crowell, Moses Nester, and SJ Miller. Top Shelf Productions, 2016-2021. Graphic Novels.
Jekyll Island, located south of Savannah, is one of Georgia's Sea Islands or Barrier Islands. Occupied by the Guale and Mocama peoples until they were displaced by Europeans, and it became a contested area between French, Spanish, and British colonizers. Beginning in the late 19th century, America's wealthiest individuals, the likes of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Morgan, built "cottages" on the island and began vacationing there. Today, the state of Georgia owns the island, and it is an extremely popular summer vacation spot.
The Jekyll Island Chronicles is an award-winning graphic novel trilogy that combines history, "diesel punk," and superhero fantasy in the post-WWI years. The captains of industry meet on Jekyll to save the world from various anarchist villains and threats using the services of real-life and fictional characters that band together to maintain the political and social order. It's a fun ride!
Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime. Joe Pompeo. William Morrow, 2022. 352 pages.
On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and married choir member Eleanor Mills were found under a tree on an abandoned farm near New Brunswick, New Jersey. Hall's widow was a wealthy heiress with ties to the Johnson & Johnson dynasty. Locals were shocked, and rumors spread like wildfire. Local authorities were overwhelmed and made missteps in the investigation. Tabloid newspaper publishers saw their shot at increasing circulation and took over the investigation, hiring detectives, finding witnesses, and uncovering evidence. Soon, the story blew up into national news. It had all the hallmarks of a story with legs in the newspaper business: religion, love, sex, money, murder, prominent family, poor family, eccentric characters with mysterious backgrounds who often told conflicting stories, even an attractive and well-spoken teenaged daughter of Mrs. Mills who became the focus of a lot of stories.
A hundred years later, the case is still not definitely resolved, but Pompeo lays out the evidence. He doesn't really successfully make the case that this double murder marks the beginning of the American obsession with true crime. There were other cases before this one, including some that are actually still remembered. However, the book is an interesting account of the murders, the Jazz Age, and the tabloid wars of the decade.
Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution. H.W. Brands. Doubleday, 2021. 496 pages.
The American Revolution was really a "civil war" in two main respects. First, the colonists were thoroughly British before Lexington and Concord, and very few thought otherwise. Independence was a daunting prospect. Second, the Revolution divided colonies, towns, and families. All revolutions are led by minorities. As John Adams famously estimated, one-third of Americans were for independence, one-third were against, and one-third didn't care one way or the other. Some men and women staked their lives and fortunes on deeply held beliefs and values, while some chose sides based on expediency and prospects of personal betterment. Some chose their side based on ego or peer pressure. Meanwhile, some colonists just wished to be left alone to live their lives.
H.W. Brands is one of my favorite historians, but this book is a little misstep, in my opinion. It's not quite as readable and enjoyable as his other books. It's still packed with great history and primary source documents, but it focused too much on big names like George Washington, Ben Franklin and his son William, Thomas Hutchinson, and Benedict Arnold. I wanted more stories about more rank-and-file Americans on both sides who struggled to decide which side they were on. The book is still a good read, especially if you want to learn more about the Revolution and events leading up to it and don't know much about the men listed above.
No comments:
Post a Comment