History Archives - Page 9 of 32

Martin Luther King Jr.: “The Other America”

On April 14, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Stanford University. During this time, which was about one year before King’s death, Dr. King’s movement addressed a range of issues, including race, Vietnam, poverty, and economic justice. This speech at Stanford would become known as “The Other America” speech, and King would continue to give various speeches on the theme for the next year.

In the speech, King explained: “But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

Yet, near the end of the speech, King still spoke of hope. “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward Justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right, “No lie can live forever.” We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne — Yet that scaffold sways the future.” With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”

A transcript of this speech is available here.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt and “the Four Freedoms”

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the U.S. Congress in a State of the Union address, asking for support to help European nations struggling against Adolf Hitler’s government in Germany. At the time, the U.S. was still about a year away from declaring war. As part of his speech, Roosevelt stated that the U.S. had an obligation to protect universal freedoms, and he listed “four freedoms” that United States citizens shared with people of the world.

The four freedoms he listed were: the freedom of speech and expression, a person’s freedom to worship God in the way of one’s choice, the freedom from want, and freedom from fear. In the recording below, Roosevelt gives the speech that references these four freedoms.

Roosevelt’s speech inspired painter Norman Rockwell to do a series of paintings depicting the four freedoms. And, after World War II and after Roosevelt died, his widow Eleanor Roosevelt invoked these four freedoms as she pushed for the passage of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

United Nations “Four Freedoms” flag via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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The Cowboy Philosopher Will Rogers

On November 4, 1879, William Penn Adair Rogers was born on a ranch in Cherokee Indian territory. His birthplace was near what is now Oologah, Oklahoma. The family called the young boy by the name “Will,” and he would grow up to be beloved by the country as Will Rogers.

In 1898, the young man left home to work as a cowboy, and in 1902 began his show business career when he joined Texas Jack‘s Wild West show as a trick roper and rider. Before long, Rogers realized that audiences loved his humor and cowboy philosophy, eventually becoming a national celebrity through movie roles, magazine and newspaper articles, and in-person and radio appearances.

Bacon, Beans, and Limousines

Rogers’s honest humor struck a chord with America as it went into the Great Depression. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover’s Organization on Unemployment Relief asked him to address the nation. Rogers delivered what became known as his “Bacon, Beans, and Limousines” speech, where he addressed unemployment and the causes of the Depression.

Check out this video of the October 18, 1931 speech from the Will Rogers Memorial Museums.

Death

Will Rogers, however, did not get to see the end of the Depression, as he passed away on August 15, 1935. Rogers was an advocate for the early aviation industry, and he died in a plane crash while traveling in Alaska with renowned aviator Wiley Post. Many mourned the passing of one of the most beloved Americans whose life overlapped with another rising Oklahoma philosopher, Woody Guthrie (1912-1967).

TV and Film

The weekly television show Man of the Year paid tribute to Will Rogers when it looked back on the year 1935. The interesting episode featured a lot of video footage of Rogers. The show covereed the life of Will Rogers, and he host introduced humorists Steve Allen and Fred Allen to discuss the importance of the cowboy philosopher. [2024 Update: Unfortunately, this video is no longer available.]

Several actors have portrayed Rogers in movies, including Keith Carradine (who also played Woody Guthrie in a film). I recall first learning about Will Rogers from the 1952 film called The Story of Will Rogers, where Will Rogers, Jr. portrayed his father.

Many today may not know much about Will Rogers, but he was significantly influential in his time and worth remembering on this anniversary of his birth.

Public domain photo via Library of Congress. What is your favorite Will Rogers story? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Harry Shearer’s New Series on Richard Nixon

Actor Harry Shearer, famous for his work in This Is Spinal Tap, Saturday Night Live, and The Simpsons, is tackling a new character with his YouTube mini-series, former president Richard M. Nixon. In the new series, entitled Nixon’s the One, Shearer portrays Nixon by following transcripts of actual audio recordings of Nixon. The results are both illuminating and funny.

Shearer and Nixon scholar and author Stanley Kutler listened to Nixon recordings to find segments that reveal Nixon’s everyday life. Shearer explained to CBS that he always felt that portrayals of Nixon missed something about the man. Shearer sees him as “this strange, self-torturing, self-destroying guy who was, in my point of view, darkly comic.” These new episodes attempt to capture that tragic and comic part of Nixon.

This segment of Nixon’s the One gives a hidden-camera view of Nixon talking to Henry Kissinger about John F. Kennedy.

One episode captures Nixon’s conversations as he prepares to give his speech to the nation announcing his resignation. As Nixon engages the reporters in small talk as he prepares to resign, the result is funny but also heartbreaking. Certainly, it captures the loneliness of Nixon at that moment. .

It should not be too surprising that the man who does the voice of Mr. Burns would help us see another side of President Nixon. Check out other segments of Nixon’s the One on YouTube. If you want to compare the resignation video to the real thing, see below.

Who is your favorite actor to portray Nixon? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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RFK (and Aeschylus) on MLK Assassination

Trailer for “11.22.63” Stephen King Miniseries

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Mingo Sanders and Teddy Roosevelt’s Dishonorable Discharge

While recently enjoying Ken Burns’s excellent documentary episodes The Roosevelts (2014), one of the stories about Theodore Roosevelt made me want to find out more. The narrator mentioned President Teddy Roosevelt’s handling of a black regiment in Brownsville, Texas. Roosevelt gave a dishonorable discharge to a black sergeant who had once shared his food rations with Roosevelt in Cuba. I became curious to find out more about this unnamed man who was treated so poorly. And with a little research I soon found his name was Mingo Sanders.

Sanders’ Early Service

Mingo Sanders, who had been born in March 1858 in Marion, S.C., enlisted in the Army on May 16, 1881. In 1888, he went to Missoula, Montana (there are conflicting stories whether or not he was married yet, in which case he brought his wife Luella). There, he served with Company B of the 25th Infantry.

In 1897, the 39-year-old Sergeant Sanders played an important role in helping Lt. James A. Moss test the military use of bicycles on a trip between Missoula and St. Louis. Sanders was older than the other men and was partially blind from an explosion during his long military service. But he earned the admiration of his men on the difficult 41-day journey.

Sanders Encounters Theodore Roosevelt in Cuba

Not long after the trip, the Spanish-American War broke out and the 25th Infantry’s commission in Missoula ended. Many of the men, including Sanders, were sent to Cuba.

Sanders and his colleagues would play a brave and important role in the capture of San Juan Hill, the battle that made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Despite all the credit given to Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, black soldiers made up about 25% of the U.S. forces in Cuba and played an important role in the battles.

It was in Cuba where Sanders first crossed paths with Roosevelt. On one occasion, Roosevelt went to Sanders and asked Sanders to give some of his unit’s hardtack rations to the Rough Riders.

Sanders continued to have a distinguished career. Eight years after his efforts in Cuba, he rescued five white prisoners during a conflict between the United States and the First Philippine Republic. For his work, he received a medal of honor.

The Dishonorable Discharge

Unfortunately for Sanders, his life would cross paths with Roosevelt’s responsibilities once again. In 1906, Sanders had served in the military for 26 years and was near retirement. That year, the 25th Infantry was stationed in Brownsville, Texas, where the town was not welcoming of the black soldiers. After some arguments in the town, on Aug. 13, 1906, someone or some people fired shots, killing a white bartender and wounding a police officer.

Some of the townspeople blamed the black soldiers. But their white officers insisted the men were all at the barracks at Fort Brown at the time of the shooting.

At this time Theodore Roosevelt was president. Amid rising racial tensions in the Brownsville area, he sent officers to conduct an inquiry. Through interviews with the men of the 25th Infantry, they found no witnesses.

Without any type of trial, President Roosevelt ordered the men to be given dishonorable discharges. Among the men was Mingo Sanders, the man who had once shared his food with Roosevelt. President Roosevelt waited until after Congressional elections in November 1906 to order the discharge, so that black voters would not abandon the party.

After the Discharge

In later elections, though, many used the Brownsville decision against Roosevelt. President Taft had even appointed Sanders to federal positions as sort of an anti-Roosevelt reminder. Sanders settled in Washington, D.C. with his wife, eventually dying on August 23, 1929 and then being buried at Arlington Cemetery, where his wife Luella was also buried in 1942.

In 1972, Congress would reopen the case of the Brownsville shooting. It absolved Mingo Sanders and his fellow soldiers of the shooting. President Richard M. Nixon signed a bill giving the men honorable discharges.

The following video from Montana PBS recounts the story of Sanders’s Montana unit that tested out the use of bicycles for soldiers. It also tells about Roosevelt’s order discharging Sanders and the other men. Check out The Bicycle Corps: America’s Black Army On Wheels (2000).