1968. Charleston, South Carolina.
Fannie Lou Hamer, who Lyndon Baines Johnson allegedly called “that ignorant woman,” speaks:
“People is not just walking out like they used to do in the past—walking up and shooting a man down and getting maybe two or three hundred people carryin’ out and lynching you…”
“But it’s in a more settled way now.
They let you starve to death. Not give you jobs.”
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In 1775, hundreds of enslaved men in Virginia fled their plantations and joined the British in exchange for a single promise: freedom. They formed the Ethiopian Regiment—the first Black fighting force of the American Revolution. This is the story of how they marched under a banner that read Liberty to Slaves, and what became of them in a single, searing year.
Caption: Troiani, Don. Brave Men as Ever Fought. Museum of the American Revolution, Philadelphia.
1/15
#histodons #history #education
From 1860 to 1912, Democrats won the White House only twice, while losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College two other times.
The country was intensely partisan and divided over tariffs and immigration. Sound familiar?
https://theconversation.com/a-warning-for-democrats-from-the-gilded-age-and-the-1896-election-250887
#USPolitics @histodons #Histodons
Very early #OnThisDay, 30 April 1944, New Zealander Nancy Wake parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported French Resistance to Nazi occupation.
Nick-named 'the white mouse' by the Gestapo, she is never captured. She died in 2011.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons
Very early #OnThisDay, 6 Apr 1944, Lillian Rolfe and Violette Szabo separately arrive in occupied France to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SEO). Rolfe is a wireless operator, Szabo a courier.
Szabo returns to the UK at the end of April but goes back to France in June 1944 and is captured. Rolfe is captured in July 1944.
They are executed together, by shooting, in Ravensbrück concentration camp in Feb 1945.
#History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons #EuropeanHistory
#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1959, Mary K Hawes initiates a project to create the first universal programming language for computers used by businesses and government. Grace Hopper led the team that then created COBOL. Some mainframes are still using it.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1968, Barbara Jane Harrison dies trying to rescue trapped passengers in an airplane fire at Heathrow.
She was later awarded the George Cross for bravery: she remains the only individual woman to receive the GC in peacetime.
#WomenInHistory #History #AviationHistory #Histodons
1/9
📜 The Wild Man of the Revolution, Samuel Adams.
I wrote an essay about Samuel Adams and why I think he was punk rock. I'm convinced he'd love the band Fugazi and that he'd sing their lyrics while tossing tea in Boston harbor.
#OnThisDay, 29 April 1945, French women vote for the first time.
Newsreel: https://www.ina.fr/video/AFE86003075
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #EuropeanHistory #Histodons
"I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own."
#OnThisDay, 10 Apr 1864, army surgeon Dr Mary Edwards Walker is captured by the Confederates during the US Civil War. She later receives the Medal of Honor.
As well as serving in the Civil War, and being a dress reformer who preferred to wear trousers, she was also a suffragist who declined to take her husband’s name when they married.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
Peter Salem was born into bondage in Massachusetts, a man owned, unnamed, unseen by the nation that would soon claim to fight for liberty. And yet, at Bunker Hill, in the chaos of battle, he would fire a single shot that struck down a British major—and force his name into a history that tried to forget him.
1/18
#History #Histodons #BlackMastodon #Education #Politics
Re-enanactor. Photo by Kenneth Bohrer at American Revolution Photos..
Very early #OnThisDay, 12 Apr 1944, Odette Wilen parachutes into France to work as a wireless operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supports the French resistance.
Wireless operators were at the greatest risk of discovery, as their position could be triangulated whenever they were transmitting messages back to London.
Wilen evades capture by minutes and escapes over the Pyrenees. She lives until 2015.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 13 Apr 1985, Danuta Danielsson hits a neo-Nazi with her handbag in Växjö, Sweden. Yes, that photo by Hans Runesson.
Danuta had been born in Poland in 1947, after her Jewish mother had survived a concentration camp.
#EuropeanHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 15 Apr 1960, Ella Baker convenes a conference of 126 independent student protest groups. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) forms as a result. SNCC coordinated and assisted direct-action challenges to segregation in the USA.
Baker was a civil rights activist for five decades, and advocated grassroots activism. She also criticised the misogyny she encountered within the movement.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1967, Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon as a registered runner, despite the organiser physically trying to stop her.
She ran it again in 2017, 50 years later.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
When he died, there were no flags, no procession, no cannon fire. William “Billy” Lee was always there—riding with Washington in war, walking beside him in peace. He served at Cambridge, Valley Forge, Yorktown—silent, indispensable. But when the story of Washington was told, Billy was left out of the frame. His life was one of duty without recognition, loyalty without reward.
1/20
#history #histodons #education #Politics #BlackMastodon
"Billy Lee, Portrait in Tar." 2016. Titus Kaphar.
#OnThisDay, 20 Apr 1902, Maria Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie refine radium chlorine. The discovery leads to Marie being the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.
The Academy originally planned to award only Pierre and Henri Becquerel. Pierre insisted that Marie should also be included.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomenInSTEM #NobelWomen #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 9 May 1922, the International Astronomical Union formally adopts Annie Jump Cannon's stellar classification system. The principles in it still underpin modern classification.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Astronomy #WomenInSTEM #AmericanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 22 April 1969, Bernadette Devlin makes her maiden speech in the House of Parliament in London. An Irish Republican, she had rejected their tradition of abstention in order to take her seat. She remained an MP until 1974.
"I've never worked so hard in my life than when I was US Treasurer. I knew I had to make good on behalf of American women."
#OnThisDay, 3 Jun 1949, Georgia Neese Clark Gray becomes the first woman to be Treasurer of the USA.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 15 May 1946, Camilla Williams makes her operatic debut as Cio-Cio San with the New York City Opera. She is the first Black woman to sign a contract with a major US opera company.
Read more: https://carvehername.org.uk/eight-famous-women-singers/
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #BlackHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 16 May 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei reaches the summit of Everest. She is the first woman to make it to the peak of the world's highest mountain.
New reading material arrived! I am looking forward to #reading this, but I am notoriously bad at regularity, so please don't expect a full review any time soon :D
"Supernote by Jim Davidson, U.S. Secret Service Special Agent - Retired. Inspired by an untold true story".
It's a beautifully presented hard cover #book with a story I'm looking forward to getting into!
#Numismatics #History #Histodons #Bibliophile #Book #Books #TrueCrime #Crime @bookstodon @numismatics @histodons
#OnThisDay, 18 May 1953, pilot Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AviationHistory #Histodons
This past week, 99 years ago, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois.
On November 12, 1989, on 60 Minutes, Harry Reasoner asked him if Black musicians were better at jazz and blues because of slavery. The question could’ve gone sideways.
What Davis said—quietly, precisely—was about rhythm, memory, race, and the meaning of swing. #music #Jazz #Histodons #history #blackmastodon #photography #blackandwhite
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Image: Miles Davis, Hackensack, New Jersey, 1954, photo by Francis Wolff.
