Unknown America Read online

  * In the 1850's the US War Department imported camels into Texas twice because they thought they'd come in handy for the Indian Wars.

  * Texas is the only state that entered the Union by treaty rather than territorial annexation. Prior to the treaty the lone star state was considered an independent republic.

  Utah

  Weird UT: A teacher in Utah was fired for writing a blog post about Homophones. The Principal believed it would associate the school with homosexuality.

  * On May 10, 1869 the first transcontinental railroad was completed when the Union and Central Pacific joined at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory.

  * Approximately 60% of the state's residents are members of the Mormon Church.

  Vermont

  Weird VT: The tallest building in the state is an 11 story Apartment Building. It is the shortest “tallest building” in any state in the nation.

  * During the American Revolution, Vermont declared it's independence separately from the original 13 colonies, although the Continental Congress refused to recognize it.

  * Vermont was finally admitted to the union as the 14th state in 1790, after 14 years as an independent republic.

  * On October 5, 1789 congressman Matthew Lyon was indicted under the Sedition Act for criticizing President John Adams in a letter he had written to Spooner’s Vermont Journal. Although convicted and sentenced to four months in jail, Lyon was re-elected while incarcerated.

  Virginia

  Weird VA: In 1966 a School Board in Hanover banned “To Kill a Mockingbird” for being immoral. The books Author, Harper Lee set up a fund to educate the school board as she believed them to be illiterate.

  * On October 19, 1781, following three weeks of continuous bombardment, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington in the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia. Essentially bringing the American Revolution to an end.

  * Virginia’s borders have expanded and contracted numerous times since it's inception. In 1792, nine counties known as the Kentucky District of Virginia entered the union as the state of Kentucky, and in 1863 western counties of Virginia were approved to enter the union as the state of West Virginia.

  * The mansion that sits high atop Arlington National Cemetery was once the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee who abandoned the home at the onset of war. In 1864 the estate was established as a national cemetery with the first interred there being Union Soldiers.

  Washington

  Weird WA: Washington did not officially ban sex with animals until 2005 when a man ruptured his colon at an animal brothel.

  * Granted statehood in 1889, Washington is the only state named after a President.

  * In an attempt to honor her father, a Civil War veteran who had raised six children by himself after his wife died in childbirth, Spokane resident Sonora Smart Dodd garnered support for the first state wide Father’s Day celebration on June 19, 1910. Afterward, Dodd continued to press for a national observance; although the idea was backed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Father’s Day did not become a federal holiday until 1972. Of course since it always falls on a Sunday, few people are aware of the official status of the day.

  West Virginia

  Weird WV: Huntington West Virginia, with a population of 50,000, has more pizza joints than the rest of the state has gyms.

  * When the state of Virginia voted to secede from the Union during the Civil War the people of the western region of the state opposed the decision and organized to form their own state, West Virginia, in support of the Union. Congress granted statehood to West Virginia on June 20, 1863.

  * The Greenbrier, a luxurious resort in the Allegheny Mountains, was used at the outset of World War II to house diplomats from Germany, Italy and Japan until American diplomats detained overseas could be returned home safely in exchange.

  * In 1942, West Virginia enacted a law that required students and teachers to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. When Walter Barnette refused to do so on the grounds that it contradicted his religious beliefs he was expelled from school. On June 14, 1943, the US Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that forcing individuals to salute the flag was a violation of their freedom of speech and religion.

  Wisconsin

  Weird WI: The plastic Flamingo lawn ornament is the official bird of Madison, Wisconsin.

  * Wisconsin earned the nickname “Badger State” because its earliest white inhabitants were itinerant lead miners who burrowed into the hills for shelter rather than waste time and resources on more permanent structures.

  * Enraged by the recent passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Alvan Bovay convened a meeting at a schoolhouse to create a new political party that would defend against the expansion of slavery. It was during this meeting, on March 20, 1854, that the Republican Party was established.

  Wyoming

  Weird WY: (As of publication) There are only two escalators in the entire state.

  * Wyoming was the first US state to allow women to vote under the suffrage movement. An achievement that represented one of the early victories of the American woman’s rights movement. (New Jersey had always given women the right and for that matter non citizens as well. More on this in the chapter UNKNOWN POLITICS)

  * Devils Tower, a natural rock formation resulting from a volcanic intrusion and a sacred site for many Plains Indians, was designated the first national monument in the US by President Theodore Roosevelt on September 24, 1906.

  CHAPTER TWO

  UNKNOWN AMERICANS

  Fascinating Americans that the history books mostly ignored

  or whose stories they just got wrong

  Maudie Hopkins

  Hopkins who died on August 17, 2008 was believed to be the last publicly known surviving widow of a Civil War veteran.

  Born in Baxter County, Arkansas she married William M. Cantrell, who was 86 when they wed, on February 2, 1934, when she was 19. Cantrell had enlisted in the Confederate States Army at age 16 in Pikeville, Kentucky and served in General Samuel G. French's Battalion of the Virginia Infantry.

  It was not uncommon for young women in Arkansas to marry former Confederate soldiers mainly to receive their pensions upon their deaths. However in 1937 the state passed a law that prevented these women from receiving these pensions.

  Conception Picciotto

  Conception, known to many as Connie, was a Spanish immigrant and was the primary guardian of the anti-nuclear-proliferation vigil stationed along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC.

  Picciotto spent more than 30 years of her life outside the White House, usually sleeping in a tent, “to stop the world from being destroyed.”

  Through her presence and hand written signs, she said she hoped to remind others to take whatever action they could to help end wars and stop violence, particularly against children.

  A diminutive woman always clad in a helmet and headscarf, Picciotto was a curious and controversial figure in DC. Fellow activists lauded her as a heroine. Critics dismissed her as foolish and perhaps mentally unstable. Ms. Picciotto thought the US Government responsible for many of her physical ailments. She died on January 25, 2016. (I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Connie Picciotto while escorting an elementary school trip to DC. She was indeed very unique if somewhat misguided in her efforts.)

  MYTH BUSTER ALERT!

  Claudette Colvin

  Before there was Rosa Parks there was Claudette Colvin.

  Despite her obscurity, Colvin was a pioneer of the African American Civil Rights movement. On March 2, 1955, it was actually Colvin and not Rosa Parks that was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation by refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery Alabama.

  For many years Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. Fearing the optic that because Colvin, who was just 15 years old and as some reports claim pregnant by a married man, might t
arnish the movement, Rosa Parks was chosen instead. Words like “feisty,” “mouthy,” and “emotional” were used to describe Colvin, while the older Parks was viewed as being calm, well-mannered, and studious.

  Because of the social norms of the time and her youth, the NAACP leaders worried about using Colvin to symbolize their boycott of the Montgomery Bus System. Rather they opted for Parks, who did refuse to change seats on a Montgomery bus, although after Claudette Colvin and others before her. (It's worth mentioning that Rosa Parks was also – a time - Secretary of the local NAACP and a known political activist in Montgomery. Which despite her contributions to the cause of civil rights, does cast a somewhat different perspective on this event than the history books have fully detailed).

  Elizabeth Graham

  And before there was Claudette Colvin, there was Elizabeth Jennings Graham.

  In the 1850s horse-drawn street cars were a popular mode of transportation, in large cities like New York. These privately owned vehicles could deny service to anyone and for any reason. On Sunday, July 16, 1854, Graham was running late to church and boarded a street car. The conductor ordered her to get off, but she refused. Eventually a police officer removed her from the street car.

  Graham’s story inspired African American New Yorkers to stand up for their rights and fight against racial discrimination in public transportation. The story received national attention – especially when Graham filed a lawsuit against the street car driver and the Third Avenue Railroad Company. Her lawyer, Chester A. Arthur, would later go on to become President of the United States.

  In 1855, Graham won her case and the court declared that African American persons should have the same right of access to the transit system. As a result The system in New York was desegregated by 1861. One-hundred years before Colvin and then Parks refused to give up their respective seats on buses in Alabama.

  Molly Pitcher

  Although not her real name, most sources identify the real Molly Pitcher as a woman named Mary Ludwig. Mary's first husband was William Hays. During the Revolutionary war Hays served as a gunner in the Continental Army. It was not uncommon at that time for wives to be near their husbands in battle and help as needed.

  June 28, 1778 was a brutally hot day in Freehold, New Jersey where Hays was fighting in the Battle of Monmouth. His wife Mary was there as well, and she made countless trips to a nearby spring to fill pitchers of cold water for soldiers to drink and to pour over their cannons to cool them down.

  As legend has it the soldiers nicknamed her Molly Pitcher for her tireless efforts. When Pitcher's husband collapsed at his cannon position and was unable to continue with the fight, Molly dropped her water pitcher and took his place manning the weapon throughout the remainder of the battle until the Colonists achieved victory.

  According to the National Archives, there was a documented witness to Pitcher's heroic acts who reported a cannon shot passing through her legs on the battlefield leaving her unscathed. For her bravery and heroic service Molly Pitcher was awarded a $40 annuity. She died in Pennsylvania in 1832 at the age of 78.

  James Gordon Bennett

  As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, Bennett invented the modern American newspaper. He was a Scottish-born American editor that shaped many of the methods of modern journalism.

  With a capital investment of $500, Bennett published the first of a four-page Herald on May 6,1835 from a cellar. He made the paper a great commercial success by devoting attention particularly to the gathering of news and was the first to introduce many of the methods of modern news reporting. He published the first Wall Street financial article to appear in any American newspaper; was the first to establish correspondents in Europe and was the first to obtain reports in full by telegraph, of long political speeches. During the Civil War he maintained a staff of 63 war correspondents and was a leader in the use of illustrations. It can be argued that James Bennett was the Godfather of the modern American news media.

  Margaret Higgins Sanger

  Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term “birth control,” opened the first birth control clinic in the United States and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger is also one of the most controversial figures of the American landscape.

  An entire book could be written on Sanger's controversial beliefs and activism. In February of 1917 the first issue of Sanger’s journal, The Birth Control Review, was published. She was the Review’s editor until 1929 and used her editorials to promote birth control and eugenics. For Sanger these issues were inseparable.

  The Positive eugenics movement promoted the idea of improving the human population by encouraging “fit” people to reproduce. Negative eugenics, conversely, attempted to “improve” the human population by discouraging “unfit” people from reproducing.

  The “unfit” people included the poor, the sick, the disabled, the “feeble-minded,” the “idiots,” the “morons,” and the “insane.” (It's worth noting the “unfits” Sanger spoke of were similar in malady to those German Dictator Adolph Hitler also desired to eliminate.)

  Sanger believed that discouragement from reproducing should include the use of force if need be. It has been reported that Sanger also believed that Negative Eugenics should be employed to control the Black population primarily in the inner cities. (Sharing similar beliefs - the Nazi's engaged in the sterilization of Black children. They even had a name for the sterilization team. It was called Commission Number 3.)

  One of Sanger's more memorable and troubling quotes was: “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of it's infant members is to kill it.”

  Rosetta Tharpe

  Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and recording artist. Tharpe has been referred to by many as the Godmother of Rock and Roll. A pioneer of mid-20th-century music, she attained popularity in the 1930's and 1940's with her Gospel recordings. Her music was characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock-and-roll audiences. Later being referred to as “the original soul sister.” Tharpe influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

  Frank Wills

  Wills was working as a security guard at the Watergate hotel in 1972 when he discovered tape propping a door open in the hotel and called the police. This discovery led to the Watergate scandal where GOP Operatives were found to have electronically bugged the Headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The scandal would eventually compel President Richard Nixon to resign. While the reason why is not totally clear, Wills lost his job shortly after the incident. He had difficulty finding work after the Watergate scandal with one potential employer citing a fear of losing federal funding if they hired him. Wills lived the rest of his life in relative poverty and obscurity. He died in 2000 in his home state of Georgia.

  MYTH BUSTER ALERT!

  Betsy Ross

  So you thought you knew this one… But not so fast!

  One of American history’s most persistent legends involves Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress who supposedly sewed the first American flag. As the story goes, in 1776 Ross was commissioned to sew the flag, which then featured a circle of 13 stars, by a small committee that included George Washington. Ross supposedly produced her famous flag a few days later and even changed the design to make the stars five-pointed rather than six-pointed.

  While versions of this story continue to be taught in American classrooms, most historians dismiss it as a falsehood. Newspapers from the time make no reference to Ross or the meeting, and Washington never mentioned her involvement in creating the flag. In fact, the Ross legend didn’t even make it's first appearance until 1870, when her grandson, William Can
by, related it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. But outside of showing affidavits from family members, no convincing evidence to support Canby's claim has ever surfaced. While true Ross made American flags in the late 1770's, the story of her being the creator of the very first flag is likely untrue and the real creator of the first star-spangled-banner is lost to history.

  Family vs. Freedom – The story of Harriet Hemings

  Harriet Hemings was the only daughter of our third President, Thomas Jefferson and one of his slaves Sally Hemings. Although the story of their relationship has been retold time and again, very little is known of the lives of their children. The recurring tryst between Jefferson and Hemings produced three sons and a daughter. Jefferson promised Sally that he would free all of her children by the age of 21 and Harriet was no exception. Jefferson knew all too well what fate and/or lifestyle awaited any Black person at that time, especially former slaves. But Jefferson was confident Harriet would thrive provided she revealed little about her previous life as a slave. The biggest asset Harriet had in her favor was that she was light skinned, with which one might suggest “Caucasian” features.

  But Harriet's appearance alone would not be enough allow her to integrate into White society. Knowing her slave past would be a stain on her reputation and standing regardless her lineage. She had to completely divorce herself from her past. So endowed with $50 from Jefferson, Harriet Hemings boarded a train and disappeared, never to be heard from again.