Unsung History

Kelly Therese Pollock
  • 4.8 (82)
  • HISTORY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Unsung History

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

  1. Florence Price & the Black Chicago Renaissance

    5 DAYS AGO

    Florence Price & the Black Chicago Renaissance

    On June 15, 1933, the all-white, all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Florence Price’s award-winning Symphony Number 1 in E minor, the first institution of its caliber to play the work of a Black woman composer. It was a monumental achievement, but not one that Price achieved alone. She was supported by a sisterhood of Black women who created an environment in Chicago in which composers and performers like Price and Margaret Bonds could find success. Joining me in this episode is musicologist and concert pianist Dr. Samantha Ege, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and author of South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Dr. Samantha Ege performing Nora Holt’s Negro Dance, composed in 1921; the composition is in the public domain, and the recording is used with the permission of Dr. Ege. The episode image is a portrait of Florence Price, circa 1940, taken by George Nelidoff; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. Additional sources: “Now Hear This ‘Florence Price and the American Migration’ [video],” PBS with host Scott Yoo, April 15, 2022.“About Florence,” International Florence Price Festival.“How Women of the Chicago Black Renaissance Changed Classical Music Around the World,” by Stephen Raskauskas, WFMT, April 10, 2018.“The Curious Case of ‘Naughty Little Nora,’ a Jazz Age Shape Shifter,” By Samantha Ege, The New York Times, November 12, 2024.“Nora Holt: The Most Famous Woman You've Never Heard of,” by Imani Perry, The Atlantic, December 1, 2021.“Maude Roberts George facts for kids,” Kiddle Encyclopedia.“A trailblazing Black, female composer’s work is revived by Opera Philadelphia,” by Peter Crimmins, WHYY, January 31, 2023.“Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist,” Georgetown University Library Booth Family Center for Special Collections.“History of NANM,” National Association of Negro Musicians.“125 Moments: 072 Price’s Symphony in E Minor,” Chicago Symphony Orchestra.“The Rediscovery of Florence Price: How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction,” by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, January 29, 2018.“The Chicago Black Renaissance is Harlem’s radical counterpart,” by Crystal Hill, The TRiiBE, February 10, 2022. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    42 min
  2. The Women Physicists who Fled Nazi Germany

    DEC 9

    The Women Physicists who Fled Nazi Germany

    As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, life became increasingly hostile for women scientists, especially women of Jewish descent, but also those who expressed anti-Nazi sentiments. The sexism in academic that had held them back in their careers also made escape from Germany difficult, as they didn’t look as strong on paper as their male counterparts. But four women physicists – Hertha Sponer, Hildegard Stücklen, Hedwig Kohn, and Lise Meitner – managed to flee, taking their scientific knowledge and rugged determination with them to the United States and Sweden. Joining me in this episode is writer Olivia Campbell, author of the forthcoming book, Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Classical Piano (Sad & Emotional)” by Clavier Clavier from Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Hedwig Kohn in her laboratory, 1912;” the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. Additional Sources: “Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945,” Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles.“Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” Holocaust Encyclopedia.“Albert Einstein’s Little-Known Correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois About Equality and Racial Justice,” by Maria Popova, The Marginalian.“Hertha Sponer,” Duke University Department of Physics.“Dr. Slucklen Retires In September,” Sweet Briar News, Volume 29, Number 24, 16 May 1956.“Hedwig Kohn, April 5, 1887–1964,” by Brenda P. Winnewisser, Jewish Women’s Archive.“Interview of Hedwig Kohn by Thomas S. Kuhn on 1962 June 7,” Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,College Park, MD, USA.“Google Honors Pioneering Physicist Hedwig Kohn Who Fled Nazi Germany,” by Madeline Roache, Time Magazine, April 5, 2019.“Lise Meitner,” Atomic Heritage Foundation.“Lise Meitner – the forgotten woman of nuclear physics who deserved a Nobel Prize,” by Timothy J. Jorgensen, The Conversation, February 7, 2019.“Why the ‘Mother of the Atomic Bomb’ Never Won a Nobel Prize,” by Katrina Miller, The New York Times, Originally published October 2, 2023, and updated November 8, 2023. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    46 min
  3. The Women who Entered the Federal Workforce during the Civil War Era

    DEC 2

    The Women who Entered the Federal Workforce during the Civil War Era

    As the federal workforce grew during the Civil War, department heads began employing women, without any explicit authorization from Congress that they could do so. When Congress finally acknowledged the employment of women in federal departments in 1864, it set their salary at $600 a year, half of what the lowest-paid men clerks were making. Surprisingly, though, a few years later Congress debated – and nearly passed – a resolution requiring equal pay for women employed by the federal government, something that wouldn’t become law for nearly another century. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jessica Ziparo McHugh, author of This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War-Era Washington, D.C. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “I Love the Ladies,” composed by Jean Schwartz, with lyrics by Grant Clarke, and performed by William J. Halley on May 18, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Among the Greenbacks – The Cutting and Separating Room the Treasury Building – Washington,” from Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capitol, as a Woman Sees Them, by Mary Clemmer Ames, 1873. Additional Sources: “History: A legacy of service to the Nation since 1861,” The U.S. Government Publishing Office.“History of the Treasury,” U.S. Department of the Treasury.“Behind the Scenes in Washington: Being a Complete and Graphic Account of the Credit Mobilier Investigation, the Congressional Rings, Political Intrigues, Workings of the Lobbies, Etc. ... with Sketches of the Leading Senators, Congressmen, Government Officials, Etc., and an Accurate Description of the Splendid Public Buildings of the Federal Capital,” by James Dabney McCabe, Continental Publishing Company, 1873.“Gendered Merit: Women and the Merit Concept in Federal Employment, 1864-1944,” by Cathryn L. Claussen, 40 Am. J. Legal Hist. 229 (1996).“FACT SHEET: On Equal Pay Day, the Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Actions to Continue Advancing Pay Equity and Women’s Economic Security,” The White House, March 12, 2024. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    43 min
  4. The Northern Manufacturers of Southern Plantation Goods

    NOV 25

    The Northern Manufacturers of Southern Plantation Goods

    Plantation owners in the Southern United States regularly furnished their enslaved workers with goods – clothing, shoes, axes, and shovels, that had been manufactured in the North. Many Northern manufacturers specifically targeted the Southern plantation market, enticed by the prospect of selling cheap goods on a regular schedule. While in some cases the Northern manufacturers supported surprising politics – joining the Republican Party and donating to Abolitionist causes – they had no qualms about making their money in an industry adjacent to the slave economy. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University and author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Relaxing Enchanted Piano” by Mikhail Smusev from Pixabay and is used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Brogans, Manufacturer Little & Co., third quarter 19th century,” Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1955; image is in the public domain. Additional sources: “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” by Matthew Desmond, The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.“Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875,” by David Jaffee, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. “8. The Market Revolution,” The American Yawp.“Industry and Economy during the Civil War,” by Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service.“In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol,” by J. Freedom du Lac, The Washington Post, January 20, 2012.“Antebellum Tariff Politics: Regional Coalitions and Shifting Economic Interests,” by Douglas A. Irwin, The Journal of Law & Economics 51, no. 4 (2008): 715–41.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    48 min
  5. Lily Dale

    NOV 18

    Lily Dale

    In 1879, a group of Spiritualists purchased 20 acres of land, halfway between Buffalo, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. The gated community they created, now a hamlet of Pomfret, New York, became known as Lily Dale. Each summer, people came to Lily Dale (and still come) to speak with the dead through Lily Dale’s many licensed mediums. In its early years, modern Spiritualism, which began with the young Fox sisters (Maggie and Kate), often intersected with Women’s Suffrage, and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony were frequent visitors to Lily Dale. Joining me in this episode to help us understand more about Lily Dale and Spiritualism more generally is Dr. Averill Earls, Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College, Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast, and one of the authors of Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Night Whisper,” by  by Sergio Prosvirini, Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photograph of “The Lily Dale Museum,” by Plazak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, and available via Wikimedia Commons. Additional Sources: Lily Dale Assembly“In Good Spirits: Lily dale, New York, is a curious little village where the still-quick commune with the once-quick,” by Bil Gilbert, Smithsonian Magazine, May 31, 2001.“Lily Dale, the Town That Speaks to the Dead,” by Bess Lovejoy, Mental Floss, August 26, 2015.“This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself,” By Anna Kodé, The New York Times, October 27, 2023.“The Art of Belief: On Talking to the Dead in Lily Dale,” by Laura Maylene Walter, LitHib, March 23, 2021.“In the Joints of Their Toes,” by Edward White, The Paris Review, November 4, 2016.“The Mystery of the Three Fox Sisters,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Psychic Science, October 1922.“The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism,” by Abbott Kahler, Smithsonian Magazine, October 30, 2012.National Spiritualist Association of Churches. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    44 min
  6. Isabel Kelly

    NOV 11

    Isabel Kelly

    Isabel Truesdell Kelly earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture,” having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. After graduating she led excavations in Mexico and then began a career as an anthropologist with the US State Department, which had a growing interest in assisting the scientific and technological development of countries like Mexico as a way of maintaining a toehold in the region during the growing cold war with the Soviet Union. Joining me this week is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hermoso Mexico,” composed by R. Herrera, arranged and conducted by Guillermo González and performed by Banda González (Victor Band) on May 16, 1919, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Isabel T. Kelly portrait,” DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.  Additional Sources: “Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive,” Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries.“Isabel Truesdell Kelly,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.“Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas,” compiled and edited by Catherine S. Fowler and Darla Garey-Sage, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.“Isabel T. Kelly: Pioneer Great Basin Ethnographer,” by Catherine S. Fowler, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2016): 172–76..“With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology,” by Nicole M. Herzog and Suzanne Eskenazi, University of Utah Press, 2020.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    42 min
  7. The History of the Electoral College

    NOV 4

    The History of the Electoral College

    At the end of August 1787, after three long months of debate and deliberation, the Constitutional Convention had neared the end of its work. They were poised at that time to write into the Constitution that the President of the United States would be elected by the legislature, but at the last minute they referred the matter to the Committee on Unfinished Parts to resolve. It was that committee, guided by future president James Madison, that drafted a compromise Electors plan, answering the concerns of the small states and slave states who wanted to keep the advantages they held in the legislature but also, theoretically at least, avoiding the corruption likely in a system where the legislative branch chooses the chief executive. Of course, it didn’t take long for political actors – including some of the founders themselves – to find ways to exploit the system of Electors for their own ends. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Carolyn Renee Dupont, professor in history at Eastern Kentucky University and author of Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College--And Why It Matters Today. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Three Little Drummers from the George Washington Show,” by The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps,” performed by the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps on April 11, 2011; the audio is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode artwork is “Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground),” painting by Howard Chandler Christy; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. Additional Sources: “Constitutional Convention and Ratification, 1787–1789,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.“Electoral College History,” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.“Article II Executive Branch,” National Constitution Center. “12th Amendment: Election of President and Vice President,” National Constitution Center.“10 reasons why America’s first constitution failed,” by NCC Staff, National Constitution Center, November 17, 2022.“Why Was the Electoral College Created?” by Dave Roos, History.com, Originally posted July 15, 2019, and updated October 7, 2024.“How the Electoral College Became Winner-Take-All,” by Devin Mccarthy, Fair Vote, August 21, 2012.“Letter from James Madison to George Hay explaining views on Electoral College,” August 23, 1823.“Federalist No. 68,” Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History, Library of Congress. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    42 min
  8. Baseball & the Chinese Educational Mission of the 1870s

    OCT 28

    Baseball & the Chinese Educational Mission of the 1870s

    In the 1870s, 120 Chinese boys came to New England as part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The boys studied at prep schools and colleges, and while they continued their lessons in Chinese language and culture, they also learned about the culture of their adopted homeland, including the local sports, like baseball. By the mid-1870s, some of the Chinese students had formed a semi-pro baseball team called the Celestials that competed on the regional circuit. With growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, though, the Chinese government recalled the students. On their trip home, the Celestials had one last chance to play as a team, when an Oakland, California, team, challenged them to a game. This week I’m joined by Dr. Ben Railton, Professor of American Studies at Fitchburg State University and host of The Celestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, and recorded by Edward Meeker in September 1908; the recording is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is “The baseball players of the Chinese Education Mission,” from 1878, via the Thomas La Fargue Papers, MASC, Washington State University Libraries; the image is in the public domain. Additional Sources: “The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868,” Office of the Historian, United States of America Department of State.“Considering History: Baseball, Chinese Americans, and the Worst and Best of America,” by Ben Railton, The Saturday Evening Post, May 11, 2020.“Yung Wing, the Chinese Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut,” by Ben Railton, Connecticut History, May 1, 2022.“Yung Wing’s Dream: The Chinese Educational Mission, 1872-1881,” by Barbara Austen, Connecticut History, October 26, 2021.“My Life in China and America,” by Yung Wing, via Project GutenbergCEM Connections.“Chinese Educational Mission at MIT,” from an 2017 exhibit at MIT's Maihaugen Gallery.“Journeys 旅途: Boys of the Chinese Educational Mission,” Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.“Historical Context /历史背景/歷史背景: The Chinese Educational Mission (1872-1881),” Phillips Andover Academy.“Chinese Educational Mission, 1870s-1880s,” Phillips Exeter Academy.“The Workingmen’s Party & The Denis Kearney Agitation: Historical Essay,” by Chris Carlsson, FoundSF, 1995.“140 years ago, San Francisco was set ablaze during the city's deadliest race riots,” by Katie Dowd, SF Gate, July 23, 2017.“Chinese Exclusion Act (1882),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    44 min
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About

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

Information

  • Creator
    Kelly Therese Pollock
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2024
  • Episodes
    186
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024 Unsung History
  • Show Website
    Unsung History

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