Unsung History Kelly Therese Pollock

In 1971, a group of performers calling themselves the Free Theatre Associates (FTA), including Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, began putting on popular antiwar shows for audiences of active-duty GIs. Over 10 months they performed near military bases all over the United States and in the Pacific Rim. The Pacific Rim tour led to a documentary, which was released briefly in July 1972 and then quickly yanked from theaters. To help us learn about the FTA, I’m joined by theater historian Dr. Lindsay Goss, Assistant Professor in the School Of Theater, Film And Media Arts at Temple University and author of F*ck the Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War.

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 “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,” composed by Al Piantadosi with lyrics by Alfred Bryan; the performance by the Peerless Quartet in New York City on January 6, 1915, is in the public domain and is available via the LIbrary of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Jane Fonda and Michael Alaimo in the FTA Show 1971;” the image is available via CC BY-SA 3.0 and can be found on Wikimedia Commons. 

Additional Sources:
“The Vietnam War: Reasons for US involvement in Vietnam,” BBC.“U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.“Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.“Vietnam: An unpopular war, but an important legacy,” by Kenneth Dodd, Kessler Air Force Base, January 27, 2016.“The Vietnam War,” Iowa PBS.“GI Movement Special Section“ coordinated by Jessie Kindig, Antiwar and Radical History Project, University of Washington.“How Coffeehouses Fueled the Vietnam Peace Movement,” by David L. Parsons, The New York Times, January 9, 2018.“FTA! Behind the Scenes on the Anti-war Show Tour in Asia,” by Elaine Elinson, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.“FTA [video],” directed by Francine Parker, 1972.


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In 1912, a group of wealthy and influential German Jews in uptown New York funded an effort to root out organized crime on the lower East Side, then the most densely populated neighborhood on Earth, home to half a million people, many of them recent Jewish Russian immigrants. As a result, a Jewish investigator and a Jewish lawyer joined the NYPD and pulled together a group of cops who refused to be paid off. The Incorruptibles, as the vice squad came to be known, quickly quashed the criminal element, but as war loomed in Europe, the attention and funds of the uptowners shifted abroad, and the Incorruptibles folded. Crime, of course, remained, and Jewish organized crime in New York only grew as the Prohibition Era dawned.    

Joining me in this episode is writer Dan Slater, author of The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld.

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 “Havdole gut Schabes,” performed by Lizzie Einhorn Abramson in 1910; audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photo of Arnold Rothstein, taken on November 1, 1919, which appeared in several newspaper stories about the Black Sox scandal; it’s in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:
“The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898 to 1906,” Library of Congress.“The Lower East Side,” Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History, Library of Congress.“Uncovering the History of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” by David von Drehle, Smithsonian Magazine, August 2006.“‘Ten Thousand Bigamists In New York’: The Criminalization Of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics,” by Mia Brett, The Gotham Center for New York City History, October 27, 2020.“SAY SLAYERS DIDN'T RESEMBLE GUNMEN; Defense Rests After Calling Some of Those Who Saw the Murder of Rosenthal,” The New York Times, November 16, 1912.“Abraham Shoenfeld Papers,”American Jewish Historical Society.“An Assassin’s Bullet Took Three Years to Kill NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor,” by Rose Eveleth, Smithsonian Magazine, September 11, 2013.“How Arnold ‘the Brain’ Rothstein Modernized the Mob,” by Angela M.H. Schuster, Avenue Magazine, May 22, 2020.“Ninety Years Later, Arnold Rothstein Murder Still a Mystery,” by Christian Cipollini, The Mob Museum, November 6, 2018.


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In 1974, Republican governor Ronald Reagan appointed educator Dr. Claudia Hampton, a Democrat active in her local NAACP, as the first Black woman trustee to the board of California State University. For the next twenty years Hampton would be known as the affirmative action trustee as she advocated for policies and budgets that would help support and diversify the CSU faculty, staff, and students. To discuss Dr. Hampton’s legacy, and the history of affirmative action in California, I’m joined in this episode by Dr. Donna J. Nicol, the Associate Dean of Personnel and Curriculum and professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at California State University Long Beach and author of Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action.

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 "Blue Feather," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is a photograph of Dr. Claudia Hampton at an unidentified graduation ceremony, used on the CSU website. 

Additional Sources:
“Claudia H. Hampton; First Woman to Head CSU Trustees,” by Myrna Oliver, Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1994.“Trustee Emerita Claudia H. Hampton,” California State University.“Honoring the Voices of Our Ancestors,” California State University.“Watts Rebellion,” History.com, Originally posted on September 28, 2017, and Updated on June 24, 2020.“25 Years After the Watts Riots : McCone Commission’s Recommendations Have Gone Unheeded,” by Darrell Dawsey, Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1990.“Higher Education Guidelines for Executive Order 11246,” Office for Civil Rights (DHEW), October 1972.“Affirmative Action Reversal: Understanding the History and Implications,” by Jennifer Pierce, University of Minnesota, June 30, 2023.“Here's what happened when affirmative action ended at California public colleges,” by Emma Bowman, NPR, June 30, 2023.


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Josephine McCarty, née Fagan, aka Mrs. Virginia S. Seymour, dba Emma Burleigh. M.D., was many things: mother, teacher, saleswoman, spy, lobbyist, and abortionist. And in 1872 she was also an accused murderer, after eyewitnesses saw her fire a pistol on a public streetcar in Utica, New York, killing one man and wounding another. Historian R.E. Fulton, author of The Abortionist of Howard Street: Medicine and Crime in Nineteenth-Century New York, joins the podcast this week to discuss how Josephine was both extraordinary and completely ordinary and what her life can tell us about the changing arena of medicine and law and the role of women in both in the late 19th Century United States.

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 “Sad Violin,” by Oleggio Kyrylkoww from Pixabay and is available for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is "Walking dress ; Fichu for afternoon ; Bonnet," 1872; via the New York Public Library Digital Collections; laid on top of a "Lithograph of Albany, New York in 1879," in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:
“THE UTICA CAR MURDER.; Coroner's Inquest on the Body of Henry R. Hall--Circumstances of the Killing,” The New York Times, January 21, 1872.“Mrs. Dr. Emma Burleigh :the mysterious death of Margaret Campbell critically examined, with a review of the testimony, verdict of the jury, comments of the press, etc.,” by T. D. Crochers, Albany, NY, 1872; available via the Harvard Law School Library.“Medical Education in the 19th Century,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine, December 18, 2023."The Entry of Women into Medivine in America: Education and Obstacles 1847-1910,” by Meryl S. Justin, Hobart and William Smith Colleges.“Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War,” by Karen Abbott, Harper Perennial, 2015.“Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America,” by Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay, American Sociological Review, 2004, Vol. 69 (August:498–518).“Abortion was once common practice in America. A small group of doctors changed that,” by Ramtin Arablouei and Rung Abdelfatah, NPR All Things Considered, June 6, 2022.

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In 1817, the second state prison in New York opened in Auburn, situated on a fast-flowing river so waterpower could be used to run machinery in the factories that would be housed in the prison. In a new practice of incarceration that would come to be known as the Auburn System, the prisoners labored in silence during the day for the profit of the prison, stayed in solitary confinement every night, and lived under the constant threat of brutal violence from the guards. One prisoner, a man named William Freeman, who was locked up for a crime he swore he didn’t commit, demanded that he be compensated for his labor when he was released, and when no one would listen, he sought payback instead, committing a horrific crime.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Robin Bernstein, the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit.

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 “Bleeding hearted blues,” song and lyrics by Lovie Austin, with vocals by Bessie Smith and piano by Fletcher Henderson, recorded in New York City on June 14, 1923; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is an illustration of prisoners at Auburn wearing striped outfits and moving in lockstep from Historical Collections of the State of New York: Containing a General, by John Warner Barber, Henry Howe, published in 1845 and available via Google Books.


Additional Sources:
“Geology of the Finger Lakes | Journeys Through the Finger Lakes [video],” PBS.“The Deserted Village,” by Oliver Goldsmith, 1770, via Poetry Foundation.“Both Sides of the Wall: Auburn and Its Prison,” The Cayuga Museum of History and Art.“19th Century Prison Reform Collection,” by Katie Thorsteinson, Cornell University Library.“People v. William Freeman, 1846,” Historical Society of the New York Courts. “People v. William Freeman (1847),” Cornell Law School“The trial of William Freeman for the murder of John G. Van Nest,” reported by Benjamin F. Hall, Derby, Miller & Co., 1848.“NY's New License Plates Will Still Be Made By Prisoners Earning 65 Cents An Hour,” by Christopher Robbins, Gothamist, August 23, 2019.

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As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods included quilts, sometimes quickly-made utilitarian bedcoverings, but also artistic quilts worthy of exhibition. Quilts were featured in other New Deal Projects, too, like the WPA Handicraft Projects, part of the Women’s and Professional Projects Division. Throughout the Great Depression, the programs of the New Deal created a supportive and innovative environment for the art of quiltmaking.  

Joining me in this episode is historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Janneken Smucker, Professor of History at West Chester University and author of A New Deal for Quilts.

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 “A Mazurka played on harmonica,” performed by Aaron Morgan and recorded as part of a WPA project by Sidney Robertson Cowell on July 17, 1939, in Northern California; the recording is available via the Library of Congress.The episode image is “Grandmother from Oklahoma and her pieced quilt. California, Kern County,” take by Dorothea Lange in February 1936 through the U.S. Farm Security Administration; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. 

Additional Sources:
“The Works Progress Administration,” PBS American Experience.“Works Progress Administration (WPA),” History.com, Originally posted July 13, 2017, and updated September 21, 2022.“Question 22: 1940 Census Provides a Glimpse of the Demographics of the New Deal,” by Ashley Mattingly, Prologue Magazine, National Archives, Summer 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2.“Women and the New Deal,” Living New Deal.“Women’s Work Relief in the Great Depression,” by Martha H. Swain, History Now, February 2004“WPA sewing project kept Hoosier women working through the Great Depression,” by Dawn Mitchell, Indy Star, January 19, 2018.“‘We Patch Anything’: WPA Sewing Rooms in Fort Worth, Texas,” Living New Deal, May 27, 2013.“Frugal and Fashionable: Quiltmaking During the Great Depression,” The Quilt Index.“WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project,” Milwaukee Public Museum.


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