History marked by hope
It's not all doom and gloom, is it?
Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Each week, a member of our team (or a friend of the show) gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American history…
August 15
1945 - The Japanese surrender is announced, ending World War II
1969 - Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in New York State on Max Yasgur's Dairy Farm
2017 - Barack Obama's tweet "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." in response to Charlottesville violence becomes the most-liked tweet ever
August 16
1861 - President Abraham Lincoln prohibits Union states from trading with Confederate ones
1956 - Adlai E. Stevenson is nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate
1961 - Martin Luther King Jr. protests for Black voting rights in Miami, Florida
1975 - A woman by the name of Joan Little is acquitted of murder — the first case in which a woman is acquitted of a murder committed in self-defense against sexual assault.
August 17
1915 - A mob lynches Jewish businessman Leo Frank in Cobb County, Georgia, after his death sentence for the murder of a 13-year-old girl was commuted to life
1946 - George Orwell publishes "Animal Farm" in the United Kingdom
August 18
1909 - Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President William H. Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River.
1914 - President Woodrow Wilson issues a "Proclamation of Neutrality" a World War I grows in intensity.
1920 - The 19th amendment is ratified, guaranteeing American women the right to vote.
1969 - The Woodstock Music & Art Fair closes with Jimi Hendrix as the final act
1988 - Republicans nominate then-Vice President George H. W. Bush for President
1976 - Alex Haley’s sprawling epic Roots hits the bookshelves. It quickly caused a sensation — and controversy.
August 19
1922 - A massive food relief program is underway, with tons of American supplies headed for Russia
1976 - President Gerald Ford wins the Republican presidential nomination
August 20
1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declares the US Civil War over
1964 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Economic Opportunity Act, an anti-poverty measure totaling nearly $1 billion
August 21
1831 - Former slave Nat Turner leads an uprising
1959 - Hawaii becomes the 50th US state
2018 - Michael Cohen, then-President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, pleads guilty to charges including an illegal payment at the direction of Trump to women Trump had affairs with
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more. This week is Kellie Carter Jackson’s turn at the typewriter.
This week on connecting the dots, I’m choosing to be hopeful. There were a lot of dots that pinpointed wars (beginning or ending), lynchings, death, or regrettable leaders. And I get it, rarely does history mark time with unicorns and lollipops. But maybe with cherry trees and music festivals?? One of my favorite episodes was covering the 1909 gift of over 2,000 cherry trees from Yukio Ozaki, the Mayor of Tokyo to the nation’s capital.
I love going to Washington, D.C. in the spring just to see a spray of pink and white blooms crowning the national mall. It’s a reminder that history is both beautiful, fleeting, and yet perennial. Nature has a way of reminding us of our own humanity. Similarly, Woodstock topped off perhaps one of the hardest and most politically violent decades of the 20th century. There in New York State on Max Yasgur's Dairy Farm, over 460,000 people gathered for music, love and a celebration of ecstasy! The images that came out of Woodstock were iconic, no other outdoor concert has conjured the ultimate symbol for counterculture and wild joy. I mean Carlos Santana, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, say no more! Music is revolutionary.
Hope can even be found in court cases. In my Black Women’s History course I love teaching about a woman by the name of Joan Little who was acquitted of murder — the first case in which a woman is acquitted of a murder committed in self-defense against sexual assault. History shows us there is rarely justice for women when it comes to sexual assault, but Joan Little created a precedent for Black women, really all women. What I appreciate about her case is not just her acquittal, but that fact that Little was poor and had a criminal record. She was not a respectable Rosa Parks archetype. Her case proved all women, regardless of their station, are worthy of protection and justice. We can all cheer for that.
Lastly, we might all agree that Twitter/X has become a cesspool of toxicity run amuck! But in 2017, Barack Obama's tweet "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." in response to Charlottesville violence became the most-liked tweet ever. I’m not confident that a tweet like this today would find as much love, but it gives me hope that we are also not as far away as think from people who will refuse hate. As heinous as Charlotteville was, hate is still occupied by a minority. The majority of us want a world full flowers, music, peace, and justice. And when we experience it, it’s worth noting it down. History can also be marked by hope.
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