Index | Page 4 of 43 | What It Means to Be American

Can the North Acknowledge Its Own Role in American Slavery?

Historians and Activists Pushed Philadelphia and New York to Commemorate Places Where Enslaved People Lived and Died

by Marc Howard Ross
May 30, 2019

Soon after the American Revolution, Philadelphia was the temporary capital of the United States. From 1790-97, President George Washington lived in a large house a block from Independence Hall, in what is now Independence National Historical Park. The house was torn down in 1832. Most modern-day Philadelphians knew nothing about it until recently.

That changed in 2002, when Independence National Historical Park was undergoing renovations, and a freelance historian named Edward Lawler Jr. published an article about the house and its …

The Charming French Product Designer Who Made Mid-Century America Look Clean and Stylish

From Refrigerators to Coca-Cola to Air Force One, Raymond Loewy’s Distinctive Curves Sold Products—and Himself

by John Wall
May 22, 2019

Raymond Loewy, the legendary American product designer and businessman, isn’t familiar to consumers today, but in the latter half of the 20th century he was a household name for his practice of applying the principles of what he called “cleanlining” to create starkly memorable designs. The 1934 Sears refrigerator; the packaging for Lucky Strike cigarettes; the Exxon logo; dozens of car models for the Studebaker Automobile Company—all were Loewy’s designs. Following his credo that “the loveliest curve I know is …

The Flamboyant 19th-Century Creole Aristocrat Who Built New Orleans’ First Suburb

Bernard Marigny Is Famous as a Swashbuckling Gambler, but His Real Estate Developments Shaped the City’s Character

by Scott S. Ellis
May 16, 2019

In the New Orleans pantheon of colorful personalities, Bernard Marigny is one of the caricatures: an arch-Creole with a sword in one hand and deck of cards in the other. His persona was said to be that of “swashbuckling gambler, duelist, and playboy.” High living and careless with money, his best-known but apocryphal trait was lighting his cigars with $100 bills. Less remarked upon, but far more significant, were his roles as real estate developer, politician, and slave holder.

Indeed, …

The 1950s Were Not a Golden Age for Detroit’s Autoworkers

The Industry’s Booms and Busts Brought Instability That Kept Workers From Getting Ahead

by Daniel J. Clark
May 9, 2019

In the popular as well as the political imagination, the 1950s were a golden age for American industrial workers, especially for the hundreds of thousands who toiled in Detroit’s auto factories. The story holds that lucrative contracts negotiated by the United Automobile Workers resulted in rising wages and improved benefits like pensions and health care. A blue-collar elite emerged: primarily white male, industrial wage earners who stepped up into America’s middle class and bought homes in the suburbs, eagerly purchased …

The Consumer Age Turned Americans Into Gamblers

When the Economy Shifted From Production to Consumption, How You Spent Money Mattered More Than How You Earned It

by David G. Schwartz
May 2, 2019

Today legal gambling in the United States is widely accepted and more prevalent than ever. But as recently as the 1950s, gambling was seen as a fundamentally un-American way to make a living. This shift in attitudes towards gambling—which took about a half-century to achieve—spoke to generational shifts in American beliefs about morality and capitalism.

While Americans have always loved to gamble, the 19th century saw a strong pushback against the lottery promoters and bookmakers who had made gambling possible. The …

The One-Armed Geologist Whose Daring Colorado River Descent Made the Grand Canyon Famous

John Wesley Powell's Expedition Opened the West. He Then Devoted His Life to Protecting It

by John F. Ross
April 25, 2019

In May 1869, ten men climbed into four small, wooden rowboats to attempt what no one had dared before: descend the Colorado River through the unknown, frightening confines of the Grand Canyon. The leading explorer of the day, John C. Frémont, called it a suicide mission.

But no one could dissuade the expedition’s leader, scientist and Civil War hero John Wesley Powell, from exploring the last largely unexplored section of continental America, a 100-by-300-mile swathe of labyrinthian canyonland of the …

The Dazzling 1830 Defense of a Strong Federal Government

New England Statesman Daniel Webster Found Religion in Centralized National Power When it Served His Region’s Interests

by Christopher Childers
April 18, 2019

For generations, school children memorized the ending to Daniel Webster’s “Second Reply to Hayne,” delivered during the famous Webster-Hayne debate of January 1830. This most-famous-of-debates began in a modest fashion, with an argument over westward expansion and morphed into a discussion of tariffs and then nationalism versus states’ rights. Over time, the discussion came to symbolize something much more about American unity, as Webster’s soaring defense of nationalism and American nationhood, crowned with the words “Liberty and Union, now and …

Inspired by Luxury Yachts, Station Wagons Were Once the Height of Mid-20th-Century Design

Before the Minivan and SUV, American Families Rode in a Vehicle Fashioned for Comfort and Room for All

April 11, 2019

Today SUVs clog American roads, but in the middle of the 20th century, the station wagon ruled supreme. Built for growing postwar families—with a distinctive nod toward style and luxury—the iconic car with the “wayback” democratized driving for families across the United States.

In dozens of photographs assembled in the self-published Looking Backward: America’s Love Affair with the Station Wagon, Southern California-based co-authors John Jordan and Will Bodine recall the days when wagons were targeted mainly to the wealthy (the …

The Black Scholar Who Gave Up Her Family to Earn Her Ph.D.

In the Early to Mid-1900s, Historian Marion Thompson Wright Had to Contend With the Prefeminist Rules and Culture of Howard University

by Graham Russell Gao Hodges
April 4, 2019

Marion Thompson Wright is best known as the first female African-American to earn a doctorate in history. Her 1940 dissertation, defended at Teachers College at Columbia University—The Education of Negroes in New Jersey, a history of segregated schools in the North—remains relevant today. Wright had a distinguished academic career at Howard University from 1940 until her death in 1962, serving as book review editor for the Journal of Negro Education and creating the university’s student advising program. In 1953, she …

When American Politicos First Weaponized Conspiracy Theories

Outlandish Rumors Helped Elect Presidents Jackson and Van Buren and Have Been With Us Ever Since

by Mark R. Cheathem
March 28, 2019

From claims that NASA faked the moon landing to suspicions about the U.S. government’s complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Americans love conspiracy theories. Conspiratorial rhetoric in presidential campaigns and its distracting impact on the body politic have been a fixture in American elections from the beginning. But the period when conspiracies really flourished was the 1820s and 1830s, when modern-day American political parties developed, and the expansion of white male suffrage increased the nation’s voting base. These …