169 The Myth of Black Confederates
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
Release Date: 09/17/2019
199 Who Was Alexander Hamilton?
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
In this episode of ITPL, we focus on Alexander Hamilton. You may have noticed that Hamilton has become the hottest Founder in recent years – and it’s all due to the smash Broadway hit, “Hamilton: The Musical.”
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198 The Civil War Draft Riots
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, we take a look at a significant but often overlooked event during the Civil War, the Draft Riots of July 1863. Protests against drafting men into the Union Army broke out in many places, but the worst occurred in New York City. For four days rampaging crowds tore the city apart, destroying property and leading to the deaths of more than 100 people, including 11 African Americans who were lynched. To this day, the Draft Riots remain the largest civil uprising in US history.
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197 Brutality & Lawlessness: America's First Great Police Scandal
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at the first great police scandal in US history. It occurred in the mid-1890s in New York City when an investigation into the NYPD exposed widespread corruption and brutality. To tell us about this scandal, I speak with historian Daniel Czitrom author of New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era. It’s a story that makes clear that policing in the US has always been controversial.
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196 The Molly Maguires
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at a legendary labor uprising by a mysterious group known as the Molly Maguires. They were Irish and Irish American coal miners in Pennsylvania in the 1870s who used vigilante violence to fight back against the powerful and exploitative mine owners. But in the end, the mine owners used their dominance over the political and legal establishment to see to it that 20 men, most of whom were likely innocent, were executed by hanging. Feature Story: The Molly Maguires Hanged On Thursday June 21, 1877 – 143...
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195 Where Have You Gone, Robert F. Kennedy?
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week I speak with author Larry Tye about his biography, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of A Liberal Icon (2016, Random House). Tye is the author of many best-selling biographies and he’s at his best in this new look at RFK. One of the myths he’s eager to dispel is the notion that there were two, polar opposite Bobby Kennedys – the bad boy in the 1950s who worked for Sen. Joseph McCarthy and later waged war on organized labor and the saintly good guy in the mid-1960s who fought for social justice.
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194 The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 + This Week in US History
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at one of the most deadly incidents of anti-black violence in US history: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. White mobs rampaged through Tulsa, Oklahoma’s African American neighborhood and burned it to the ground, killing between 100 and 300 black residents in the process. The incident was quickly covered up and driven from public memory. But in the 1990s activists and scholars began to unearth the shocking truth.
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193 The Pullman Strike of 1894 + This Week in US History
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at the Pullman Strike of 1894. It began as a protest over wage cuts in the midst of a severe economic depression and quickly grew to virtually paralyze the nation’s railroad system. Eventually, President Grover Cleveland sent in the military and smashed the strike. The workers lost the strike, but they did gain a new spokesperson – socialist Eugene Debs – who would play an influential role in American society in the decades to
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192 The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with historian Nancy Bristow about her book, "American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic." In November 1918, even as millions of Americans and Europeans celebrated the end of World War I, their communities were being ravaged by a global influenza pandemic. Over the course of almost three years, somewhere between 50 and 100 million people were killed in the pandemic, including nearly 700,000 Americans.
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191 Coxey’s Army and the Original March On Washington + This Week in US History
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at the original March on Washington. “Coxey’s Army” was a group of 500 men who amidst a terrible economic depression in 1894, marched from Ohio to the nation’s capital to demand that Congress provide employment through public works projects. They were turned away, but many of the Populist ideas that inspired them were enacted into law in the coming decades.
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190 The Story of Earth Day + This Week in US History
In The Past Lane - The Podcast About History and Why It Matters
This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at the origins of Earth Day 50 years ago this week, and the two high profile environmental disasters in 1969 that helped to inspire it, the Santa Barbara, CA oil spill and the an oil fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH. In the years that followed, the US enacted landmark environmental legislation ranging from the Clean Air Act to the Endangered Species Act.
info_outlineThis week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, I speak with historian Kevin Levin about his new book, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. The story behind this myth that tens of thousands of free and enslaved black men fought on behalf of the Confederacy is fascinating. And in light of recent conflicts over the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments, it’s a very timely and important book that examines why the myth was developed in the late 1970s and how it has been used to argue that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War.
In the course of our discussion, Kevin Levin explains:
How the Black Confederate myth emerged in the 1970s in response to the civil rights movement and new historical scholarship that emphasized slavery as the cause of the Civil War.
How the Confederate military effort relied on the labor of tens of thousands of African Americans – but as enslaved workers, not soldiers.
Why many white Confederates brought enslaved men to accompany them as servants during their service in the Civil War.
How and why historic photographs and official government records are either misinterpreted or willfully misrepresented as “evidence” of Black Confederate soldiers.
How the Black Confederate myth has found its way into history textbooks and public history exhibitions.
And why the current popularity of the Black Confederate myth reveals how Americans have not yet come to terms with race, slavery, and the Civil War.
Recommended reading:
Kevin Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (UNC Press, 2019)
Douglas R Egerton, Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America
Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps
More info about Kevin Levin - website
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Music for This Episode
Jay Graham, ITPL Intro (JayGMusic.com)
Kevin McCleod, “Impact Moderato” (Free Music Archive)
Andy Cohen, “Trophy Endorphins” (Free Music Archive)
Blue Dot Sessions, “Sage the Hunter” (Free Music Archive)
Jon Luc Hefferman, “Winter Trek” (Free Music Archive)
The Bell, “I Am History” (Free Music Archive)
Production Credits
Executive Producer: Lulu Spencer
Technical Advisors: Holly Hunt and Jesse Anderson
Podcasting Consultant: Dave Jackson of the School of Podcasting
Podcast Editing: Wildstyle Media
Photographer: John Buckingham
Graphic Designer: Maggie Cellucci
Website by: ERI Design
Legal services: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too
Social Media management: The Pony Express
Risk Assessment: Little Big Horn Associates
Growth strategies: 54 40 or Fight
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