Patricia Burroughs has the story — you New Englanders are way, way behind.
Palo Duro Canyon during inversion, Winter 2001, site of the first Thanksgiving celebration in what would become the United States, in 1541. Go here: www.visitamarillotx.com/Gallery/index3.html, and here: www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/paloduro/
Update, 11/27/2006: Great post here, “Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving.”
10 Comments | 
Accuracy, Geography - Physical, History, Texas, Thanksgiving | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Scouring sources for good history books for the list of all-time great history books, I was looking at the New York Times reviews, of course.
The list from the Times of “notable” history books just for 2006 is lengthy, and impressive. (The paper thoughtfully includes similar lists back to 1997.)
What do you think, Dear Reader? Are some of them worthy of the All-time list? (Notice that The Worst Hard Time is included in the list.)
History books listed below the fold.
Leave a Comment » | Books, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It is the day before Thanksgiving, a holiday generally associated with the English colonists of New England. What better time to re-run a piece on the Mayflower Compact and its religious implications? Originally, this desultory ran here, on July 26, 2006.
Dispatches from the Culture Wars features a set of comments on an interview right-right-wing pundit John Lofton did with Roy Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court who lost his job when he illegally tried to force his religion on the court and on Alabama. This year Moore ran for governor of Alabama, losing in the primary election.
One of the grandest canards in current thought about U.S. history is that the Mayflower Compact set up a theocracy in Massachusetts. Lofton and Moore banter about it as if it were well established fact — or as if, as I suspect, neither of them has looked at the thing in a long time, and that neither of them has ever diagrammed the operative sentence in the thing.
The Mayflower Compact was an agreement between the people in two religiously disparate groups, that among them they would fairly establish a governing body to fairly make laws, and that they would abide by those laws. Quite the opposite of a theocracy, this was the first time Europeans set up in the New World a government by consent of the governed.
That is something quite different from a theocracy. Read the rest of this entry »
10 Comments | America's founding, Bad Quotes, Bogus history, Good Quotes, History, History Revisionism, Religious Freedom, Thanksgiving, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Timothy Egan wins awards for his reporting and writing on a regular basis these days, it appears. He was part of a 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter team who reported on racial attitudes in America for the New York Times. Last week his book on the Dust Bowl won the National Book Award for Nonfiction: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Houghton-Mifflin).
This period is not well understood by Texas history students, according to the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests of the past few years. Here’s a new book that should be incorporated into lesson plans for 7th grade Texas history courses, who will be coming into the Dust Bowl period sometime after the first of the year on most calendars.
Egan reads an excerpt of The Worst Hard Time for NPR here, and the site includes a link to the first chapter and other NPR stories on the Dust Bowl.
Other sources for lesson planning for this period should include Woody Guthrie’s biography Bound for Glory (book and movie), Steinbeck’s series on the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath (both book and movie), and Of Mice and Men (book and movie and more movies).
Leave a Comment » | Books, Dust Bowl, Great Depression, History, Lesson plans, TAKS, TEKS, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Looking for books to put on my ad hoc list of top history books, for giving or getting, I took at look at the list of Pulitzer Prize winners in the history category, a list of books that dates back to 1917. (You may make nominations for the list here — please do!) Prizes for the past dozen or so years are all books I liked and have found useful. Some of the books, like Acheson’s winner from 1970, grew to be classics in some circles. But I was struck by how many of the books seem to have sunk from view.
Where are they now?
Here’s the Pulitzer website for the prize itself, where you can find lists for all the prizes; I reproduce the complete list of winners in history, below the fold.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
From the History Matters site at George Mason University, a quiz about quotes attributed to presidents — formatted, ready for classroom use. Only three out of the seven are accurate? There are some surprises.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Good Quotes, History, Lesson plans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Gift-giving time beckons. Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan, Samhain, New Year’s Day — with a few exceptions, we will find ourselves looking for gifts for people we know and love, or people we know and work with, over the next few weeks. If you were to give a rather timeless gift, a book of history for the ages, what would it be?
I’m stealing ideas again, this time from Discover, the magazine that recently published its list of the 25 greatest science books of all time (that is a link to the introduction, written by Nobelist Kary Mullis; here is the list itself). (Tip of the old scrub brush to Larry Moran at Sandwalk, too.)
If you were to pick from a list of the greatest history books ever written, what would those books be? I hope you’ll share nominations for the top history books in the comments. Enlighten us to your reasons for picking the book, too.
Thinking out loud here: There would be a mix of old and new. Some books might be very short, some would be thousands of pages, perhaps in several volumes. I think a long-enough list would include some of these:
Well, any list I assemble solo would be a bit quirky.
What sort of criteria should be used to judge the books? Must they all be well-written? Should their effects on history and policy makers be considered? Should they be lyrical? I wonder, for example, about something like Homer’s Iliad. If effect on policy makers is a criterion, does the Bible qualify for a spot? Caesar’s diaries of the campaign in Gaul are famous, but who reads them any more? Do some books, or sets, make the list on the legs of the massive sales they racked up, partly because of a book club promotion (think Will and Ariel Durant)?
Make a nomination, please.
18 Comments | Books, Curricula, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I have nothing new or enlightening to add to the discussion about whether George Washington actually added “so help me, God” to his oath of office when he assumed the presidency of the United States. So let me merely point you to History is Elementary, where the issue is covered very well.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, America's founding, Good Quotes, History, History Revisionism, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
History Carnival 43 is up at Axis of Evel Knievel. Well, over there they call it “History Carnival XLIII,” but there’s not much Roman history involved.
Without pointing to too many posts, let me just urge you to go take a look. The Carnival lists many good posts, listing history and talking about history. You’ll do well to see for yourself.
I also want to thank D at the Axis of Evel Knievel for the link to the post on this blog about the newly released collection of Dorothea Lange’s photos of the Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II. The book, and the issue, deserve a wide audience. Especially among Texas high school kids, whose tests show they need to know more about the Japanese internment, and World War II in general. Especially, they need to know more before they march off to war, or march off to court to defend systems that allow our government to summarily imprison people who are otherwise peaceful.
Leave a Comment » | History, Japanese American internment, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s amazing what is not available on video for use in the classroom.
Texas kids have to study the “Grito de Dolores” in the 7th grade — the “Cry from Dolores” in one translation, or the “Cry of Pain” in another (puns in Spanish! Do kids get it?). Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo made the speech on September 16, 1810, upon the news that Spanish authorities had learned of his conspiracy to revolt for independence. The revolution had been planned for December 8, but Hidalgo decided it had to start early.
This date is celebrated in Mexico as Independence Day. Traditionally the President of Mexico issues an update on the Grito, after the original bell that Father Hidalgo used is rung, near midnight.
Hidalgo himself was captured by the Spanish in 1811, and executed.
It’s a great story. It’s a good speech, what little we have of it (Hidalgo used no text, and we work from remembered versions).
Why isn’t there a good 10- to 15-minute video on the thing for classroom use? Get a good actor to do the speech, it could be a hit. Where is the video when we need it?
Statue of Father Hidalgo in Dolores, Mexico
4 Comments | Education, History, History video sources, TAKS, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Education, Father Hidalgo, freedom, Grito, History, Mexico, Mexico's Independence, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I stumbled on an interesting film project, to tell the story of Iraq veterans readjusting to life in the U.S. after duty in Iraq. On this day after Veterans’ Day, you may be looking for ways to honor vets. Donating to the completion of this movie is one way. You be the judge.
The film’s working title is “Reserved to Fight,” focusing on one of the first Army Reserve units called to duty in Iraq, and what happens to four of the members of the unit upon their return. The unit is Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines, whose home is Salt Lake City, Utah. The film’s director is Chantelle Squires, a film student at Brigham Young University. Film production classes there are generally top-notch. The project will be well done, and the content should be compelling in almost any production.
We need not wait for a latter-day Clint Eastwood to chronicle these events 50 years from now, as he has done for veterans of Iwo Jima in the film Flags of Our Fathers. (See my earlier posts here, and here.) I hope to see more efforts to record this war’s history, in any medium.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Utah Boy.
6 Comments | Current History, History, History video sources, Iraq, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Unpublished photos of the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II were found in the National Archives.
Dorothea Lange took the photos, but they were forgotten in the archives — they did not show the view that the government wanted to be shown, some speculate, and so were not widely disseminated.
The pictures are being published for the first time, in Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (W. W. Norton).
The New York Times carried some of the photos and a story about the book.
Lange, who died in 1965, showed families who had abandoned their homes and property. Because they couldn’t bring their belongings with them, they were often forced to sell them to speculators at reduced prices. In harrowing images that uncomfortably echo the Nazi round-ups of Jews in Europe, Lange’s photographs document long, weaving lines of well-dressed people, numbered tags around their necks, patiently waiting to be processed and sent to unknown destinations.
“There is no way to really know how much they lost,” Mr. Okihiro said in an interview, but he cited a 1983 study commissioned by a Congressional committee estimating that, adjusted for inflation and interest, internees had lost $2.5 billion to $6.2 billion in property and entitlements. Mr. Okihiro writes that one man, Ichiro Shimoda, was so distraught he tried to commit suicide by biting off his own tongue. When that failed, he tried to asphyxiate himself. Finally he climbed a camp fence, and a guard shot him to death.
Another man, Kokubo Takara, died after being forced to stand in line in the rain as a disciplinary measure at Sand Island in Hawaii. At assembly points in Hawaii, Mr. Okihiro writes, some detainees were forced to strip naked and had their body cavities searched.
Upon arrival at the assembly centers — including the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, Calif., a former racetrack — the internees passed through two lines of soldiers with bayonets trained on them. Lange was not allowed to photograph the soldiers, but she did manage some stark images of the horse stalls where the families lived, pictures that are included in the book.
18 Comments | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, History, Japanese American internment, Patriotism, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
[Sad, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal appears to have taken down this story and photo] Photo by John Gurzinski from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Inside Thunderbirds Hangar at Nellis AFB, Airman 1st Class Michael Thayer, left, and Senior Airman David Prye demonstrate how to fold a U.S. flag.Inside the Thunderbirds Hangar at Nellis AFB, Airman 1st Class Michael Thayer, left, and Senior Airman David Prye demonstrate how to fold a U.S. flag. Photo by John Gurzinski, Las Vegas Review-Journal [Replacement photo]
Airman First Class Michael D’Ancona and Senior Airman Assad Pharr demonstrated how to properly fold an American flag during a special visit to Robbins Lane Elementary School in Syosset on May 23. (Syosset-Jericho Tribune, June 19, 2014; photo added here October 2014)
How did I miss this? The Las Vegas (Nevada) Review-Journal carried a story on July 4, 2006, on the Air Force’s efforts to replace the old, unofficial and misleading flag folding ceremony, with a new one. It has the script for the new ceremony.
The newspaper said:
Capt. Isham Barrett, Air Force action officer on Honor Guard policy, said the new script was developed because reference to the flag in the U.S. code “does not associate anything with any fold of the flag.”
“We don’t want to force a belief on somebody,” he said.
Barrett said the decision to develop a standardized script wasn’t prompted by someone complaining about religious connotations. “We can’t find anything in our files with regard to complaints,” he said.
Nevertheless, Christopher J. Andersen, an Army sergeant and member of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, wrote a letter in 2003, asking the U.S. Air Force Academy to remove the unofficial script from its Web site.
“In order to ensure this religious flag-folding ceremony is not portrayed as an official, government-sponsored flag-folding ceremony, I ask you to remove it from your .gov site,” wrote Andersen.
Andersen, who could not be reached last week, noted in his letter that the Air Force Academy removed the old script from its Web site after he complained.
Air Force leaders later set out to develop a script based on history rather than one that could be interpreted as contrary to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Combined with the Free Exercise Clause — “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — they prohibit endorsement of a national religion or a preference for one over another. They also preclude dominance of religion over nonreligious philosophies, according to a 1994 Supreme Court majority opinion.
The new standardized script based on history was approved by Air Force leaders in July 2005 and first appeared in revised Honor Guard protocol manuals in January.
Three cheers for the Air Force (yes, I’m biased, for family reasons).
Tip of the old scrub brush to Linda Case.
Update October 22, 2014: The new, Air Force-approved script for a flag folding ceremony is at the Betsy Ross site. Use it in good patriotic spirit, and in the spirit of accurate history.
9 Comments | Accuracy, Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism | Tagged: Accuracy, Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism, US Air Force | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Surely you saw this one coming, O you student of history?
(Mother Goose & Grimm by Mike Peters; cartoon published October 29, 2006; copyright 2006, Mike Peters – http://www.grimmy.com/comics.php)
Update, October 30, 2013: Image not licensed for use here. See Mike Peters’ website, here.
1 Comment | Cartoons, History, Newspapers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
There is a moral in this story. On Thursday, October 26, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald faced a woman proposed as an expert witness in the defense of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney accused of obstruction of justice.
The woman forgot history. Literally. She could not recall exactly what she had written in the past, and in a dramatic confrontation, she appeared to have forgotten that she had been cross examined by Mr. Fitzgerald in a trial before. Details from the Washington Post. How does her credibility stack up for the judge, do you think?
There were several moments when Loftus was completely caught off guard by Fitzgerald, creating some very awkward silences in the courtroom.
One of those moments came when Loftus insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald. He then reminded her that he had cross-examined her before, when she was an expert defense witness and he was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York.
Libby’s defense team declined to comment.
Santayana’s ghost isn’t exactly smiling, but did take note.
2 Comments | Accuracy, Ethics, History, Law | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 