With a ridiculous catalogue of surnames whirling around my brain due to my immersion in American ethnological history, I notice names in the news. A month ago the West Virginian documentary film-maker Morgan Spurlock died from complications associated with cancer at the relatively young age of 53. While Spurlock was a playwright, writer, and […]
Rosalie Jean Willis. Wedding day. January 1955. Just a young sixteen-year-old girl from West Virginia, charmed by a charismatic young man first christened “Charles Milles Maddox” – Charles taking his mother’s surname rather than that of his biological father Walker Henderson Scott. Charles would go on to become a “religious leader”, better-known by the […]
I’ve never run a survey or metrics check for figuring-out the average age of my readership. I do not know the average age of my podcast listeners. So just in case a large segment of BWWW‘s audience is too young to be aware of it, when I was a child it was still illegal […]
About 16 million American men and women served during WWII. Of these 16 million, about 1 million were African-Americans. Nearly half a million were Hispanic- or Latin-Americans. Including indigenous Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipinos, and other ethnic minorities, perhaps 1 in 7 service members were from what would be considered a “non-white” background according to […]
Years ago, my amateur interest in genealogy began to morph into “Big Data Genealogy” as a way to investigate American history and ethnicity beyond my own immediate family. Part of this project then became about attaching notes and mini-biographies to the people being investigated. Were they on the wrong side of the law? Did […]
Just a reminder of the ridiculous and messy internal contradictions which make-up American identity. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Christian Socialist named Francis Bellamy in 1892. Yes, you read that right. A socialist. “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with […]
Do you really like history? Do you like it in an abstract sense, or when its hot breath is on your neck? Is American history about “important people” chopping-down cherry trees, signing declarations, and declaring wars? Or should history be about the very real, and much more numerous (and mostly forgotten) common people who […]
As someone who tries to be a reasonably humble human being, I much prefer writing a social critique when it applies to an idea rather than a person. When a person in the public eye shares an idea or notion, and that idea or notion is inaccurate or downright wrong, it is […]
Our most recent episode, “Pre-Deliverance, Part 3” was the first time we saw over 1000 downloads within a couple of days of being released. This growth gives the lie to a widespread belief in some quarters that there is no audience for long-format history programmes. As the writer/producer of “Before We Were White”, I […]
How apt that the tool most commonly used by millions of smart-asses to leave millions of smart-alecky comments on social media is called a smartphone. The unambiguous use of the word “smart” to mean “intelligent” is rather recent. The word “smart” actually has its roots in the Old English “smeart“, which finds its source […]
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