During WWI, DC resident and German sympathizer, Anton Dilger, orchestrated a series of biological warfare attacks on animals coming from the east coast of the U.S. to aid the Allies in the Great War. https://t.co/alfVKNH3D2 During WWI, DC resident and German sympathizer, Ant…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 31, 2022
What happened when WMAL tried to pull famous jazz DJ Felix Grant’s show “Album Sound” from the airwaves in 1979? Large-scale backlash ensued by Washingtonians with the station receiving some 700 letters and 200 phone calls in protest. https://t.co/fRKF2iYtlv What happened wh…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 30, 2022
Following a 12 year stint in the DMV as the director of the Marine Corps Band, John Philip Sousa left the District to go to Chicago to lead a new military band, titled “Sousa’s Band.” Washingtonians were devastated but still sent Sousa off with a bang! https://t.co/EhCeQ152ul …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 30, 2022
Detail from a 19th century stereoview photo of the old Patent Office Building, now the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, on F Street NW. Seventh Street crosses in the foreground. The Old Post Office (now Hotel Monaco) is out of frame to the left. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 30, 2022
How did a 1938 conversation between FDR and Henry Ford go at the White House? No one knows. Before and after the meeting, both Ford and representatives of the administration declined to comment on the monumental rendezvous of government and industry. https://t.co/yzDtKoUyM5 …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 30, 2022
Today in History - July 30 https://t.co/HULpEtIhRw On July 30, 1932, United States Vice President Charles Curtis declared, "I proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles, celebrating the tenth Olympiad of the modern era." Continue reading. Automobile manufacturer Henry…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 30, 2022
Circa 1910 postcard of the Genl Philip Sheridan statue on Sheridan Circle. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, it was erected in 1908. In the background is the Jospeh Beale House at 2301 Mass Ave NW, designed by Glenn Brown and built in 1909, now the Egyptian ambassador's residence. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Actress Helen Hayes did her part to desegregate the National Theater in DC by performing at an integrated theater in MD. After the run’s success, Hayes wrote an editorial in the Post proclaiming the city was ready for the end of segregation. https://t.co/xEOTXy9jcN Actress H…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Zeta Ophiuchi: A Star With a Complicated Past via NASA https://t.co/B6fTcDTq1F https://t.co/ZwlAZMDLQ3
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Join us for our next virtual orientation on Aug 9 at 3:00pm which will provide an introduction to the fire insurance maps housed at the Library of Congress, with a special focus on the maps created by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company! Register here: https://t.co/60vXq0WHkx …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Back before electricity ran the world, the first streetcars in the District were pulled by horses. It was not until the end of the 19th century that the horses were taken out of the equation and replaced by electric lines. https://t.co/7UR7VPbspa Back before electricity ran …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Today in History - July 29 https://t.co/hRVJflZGPm On July 29, 1858, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (the Harris Treaty). Continue reading. Don Carter, one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time, was born in St. Louis, Missouri…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
Here are five standout pieces we read this week. You can always visit our editors’ picks or our Twitter feed to see what other recommendations you may have missed.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
Kelsey Vlamis | Insider | July 22nd, 2022 | 6,612 words
On an attempt to summit Alaska’s Denali, the tallest peak in North America, Adam Rawski fell 1,000 feet down the Autobahn, a dangerous slope that has claimed more lives than any other part of the mountain. Incredibly, he survived. But as Kelsey Vlamis recounts in this story, there’s much more to that day. How did Rawski end up climbing with three strangers? Why weren’t they roped for protection? The physical conditions alone on Denali — the high altitude, the extreme cold, the exhaustion — are a challenge for even the most seasoned mountaineers. But Rawski’s party also included a mix of inexperience and overconfidence, and was plagued by a lack of communication and odd team dynamics. Inevitably, their expedition was a total recipe for disaster. I’m not at all into mountain climbing, but Vlamis’ account of this adventure-gone-wrong gripped me ’til the end. —CLR
Brian Feldman | Defector | July 19th, 2022 | 3,407 words
Back in 2015 — remember the innocence? — Vanity Fair ran a piece by Darryn King called “Ermahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd Girl.” I don’t know for sure whether this was the first longform journalistic investigation into a meme, but I do know that it was a) the first I remember, and b) an absolute joy. That said, I have to say that Brian Feldman’s recent Defector feature surpasses it. The meme in question isn’t even a meme in the current sense; it’s neither photo nor GIF, but a video clip. And that video clip of an errant fullcourt basketball shot connecting with a small child’s head, which has been circulating online since the heyday of Limewire and eBaum’s World, is so ancient, so pixilated, that identifying the people within it feels like a futile endeavor. Not for Feldman. In opposition of “Erhmagerddon,” the journalist-turned-software-engineer starts not with the solution, but with the mystery. He solves it, of course, but he also delivers an evocative tour of the internet as it used to be. To describe is to spoil, so I’ll let him take you the rest of the way. You’re in good hands. —PR
Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | July 19th, 2022 | 9,164 words
Always read Skip Hollandsworth. It’s really that simple. He’s one of the best storytellers in the business. Exhibit A: his latest piece about a possible serial killer in Fort Worth. It’s the best kind of true crime yarn, with no frills, no fuss, and no salaciousness. Hollandsworth’s portrayal of death, grief, and justice is humane at every turn. It features a rich cast of characters, a couple of left-field surprises — a trip to CrimeCon, for instance — and a fascinating face-to-face encounter with the killer in question, now serving time for the 1974 murder of a teenager named Carla Walker. I read this piece eating popcorn (literally). And as a writer and editor, I was taking mental notes. —SD
Tessa Somberg | The Cut | July 28th, 2022 | 3,760 words
New York legalized surrogacy in 2021. And what a time to do so: in the midst of a pandemic, on the precipice of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, during an upswing of anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry and panic over “family values” — in short, when so much about personal health and agency over one’s body feels more fraught than ever. Tessa Somberg profiles three women who chose to be some of the first surrogates in New York, and the result is as intimate and compassionate as you’d hope. “What’s more powerful to a woman,” asks Portia, one of the surrogates, “than the choice to do what she wants with her uterus?” What, indeed. —SD
Alison Espach | Outside | July 12th, 2022 | 3,687 words
“Sure,” you think. “I’m allergic to cold, too.” But this isn’t the always-need-a-sweater type of thing. It’s not that you feel cold; it’s that your body rebels against it. Itching. Swelling. Hives. And that’s just the beginning. When Alison Espach began experiencing the symptoms of what she later learned was cold urticaria, she doubted it too. Yet, the more she confronted the rare autoimmune response, the more she was forced to confront the long-past familial tragedy that may have been at its root. “Some people thought they were cured and woke up one day to find that they weren’t,” she writes. “When they least expected it, when they were out walking and a cold wind blew, their throat closed. I think of these people when I am packing for a hike, when I am headed by myself to the ocean. I wonder if I will become one of them. I wonder when tragedy will strike again.” A searching, confidently paced chronicle of a situation that’s somehow both unbelievable and all too relatable. —PR
Quote of the Day: "This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes." - Hannah Arendt
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
What role did the Washington Post play in the Teapot Dome Scandal? Members of the Harding administration stole money from the taxpayers. Because the owner of The Post was friends with Harding, Ned McLean did not print the story. https://t.co/jUmYXX5kT9 What role did the Wash…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 29, 2022
In 1993, homes in the Spring Valley neighborhood of DC were evacuated due to unexploded ordinances. How did mortar and artillery shells make their way into the ground here? During WWI, the land was used for military research of bombs and gasses. https://t.co/1S4JE01oB6 In 19…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
Before JFK made his home at the White House, he spent 14 years living in Georgetown. He spent a lot of time in this DC neighborhood, playing sports in local parks, going to church, and even supossidiy proposed to Jackie at a Georgetown restaurant. https://t.co/bq2i7jeyzo Bef…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
Vortices Near Jupiter’s North Pole via NASA https://t.co/O6UbvqQ9du https://t.co/0PFUuIVzaI
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
#DYK DC had its own “Jack the Ripper?” Instead of going after people, “Jack the Slasher” as he was dubbed, broke into homes across the city, and cut up textiles ranging from the fabric on furniture to clothing. https://t.co/34gAH7bMux #DYK DC had its own “Jack the Ripper?” I…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
Today in History - July 28 https://t.co/YFcfnkHGko On July 28, 1868, Secretary of State William Seward issued a proclamation certifying without reservation that the Fourteenth Amendment was a part of the United States Constitution. Continue reading. One of America's most p…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
“Before Elvis there was nothing,” John Lennon famously once said about his own musical awakening — but, as Presley himself frequently acknowledged, there would have been no Elvis without the blues. It’s no exaggeration to state that the blues underpins almost all modern music. Beyoncé, Kanye, Ed Sheeran: None of these artists would exist without it, and the musical ancestors of all three can be precisely traced back to the Deep South of the United States during the antebellum period.
But what exactly is the blues? We know it when we hear it, thanks to certain definable musical elements like chord progressions, yet arguments still exist as to the ancestry, lineage, and “true” nature of the genre. It’s an art form wrapped in myth and mythology, from the otherworldly provenance of Robert Johnson’s sublime gifts to Afro-Christian notions of evil and the poignant folklore found in the songs of Mississippi John Hurt. Yet this is part of the blues’ enduring appeal: Untangling the webs and uncovering truths, in a search for a genuine understanding of the history and origins of the blues, is almost a requirement for being a fan. Alongside hip-hop, reggae, and grime, this is music indelibly linked to the conditions from which it arose, an art form that also serves as social commentary, communal history, and cathartic release.
Blues songs speak of the joy and suffering of being alive. They also remind us of one of the darkest periods in human history, of the terrible depths to which we are capable of sinking should we abandon the notion that all people are equal in value. This is a message that, in all likelihood, will never cease to be relevant. A hundred years on from its birth, the blues continue to speak to the heart. The articles below collectively do a fine job of capturing the essence, meaning, history, and importance of this most singular sound.
Perhaps more than any other bluesman, Robert Leroy Johnson epitomizes the lasting allure and deep mythology of the genre. The legendary artist recorded just 29 tracks before dying at age 27, performing mostly in bars and on street corners across Mississippi in the 1930s. His physical presence feels as spectral as his music. Just two extant photos of the man exist, and very little firsthand information. Much of Johnson’s enduring fame centers on the perennial blues myth that the musician owed his guitar skills to the devil, to whom he traded his soul at a crossroads outside of Clarksdale. In fact, this particular tale predates Johnson, and has been attributed to many other bluesmen over the years, yet it sticks to Johnson like no other.
A thorough deconstruction of the man and his music can be found in Elijah Wald’s excellent book, Escaping the Delta, published by Harper Collins in 2004.
Digiacomo’s feature explores the continuing fascination and mystery surrounding this singular artist, though it does so obliquely: The incredible and convoluted story begins one day in 2005, when Steven “Zeke” Schein, a guitar expert and Delta blues obsessive, stumbles upon what he believes to be a never-before-seen photograph of Johnson. The ensuing tale illustrates in compelling prose the intriguing intangibility of the musician’s life and work.
With the eBay photo still on his computer monitor, Schein dug up his copy of the Johnson boxed set and took another look. Not only was he more confident than ever that he had found a photo of Robert Johnson, he had a hunch who the other man in the photo was, too: Johnny Shines, a respected Delta blues artist in his own right, and one of the handful of musicians who, in the early 1930s and again in the months before Johnson’s death, had traveled with him from town to town to look for gigs or stand on busy street corners and engage in a competitive practice known as “cuttin’ heads,” whereby one blues musician tries to draw away the crowd (and their money) gathered around another musician by standing on a nearby corner and outplaying him.
Jacqueline “Jackie” Kay is a remarkable figure. A writer who holds both an MBE and CBE for services to literature, her many other achievements include winning the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and becoming poet laureate of Scotland. All this despite the considerable challenges of her personal background.
In this moving piece, Kay talks fondly and with passion about the inspiration she found, as a gay Black girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, in the life and music of blues singer Bessie Smith. Kay transports us back to her formative years, welcoming the reader inside the mind of her younger self to encounter the feelings, strengths, and flights of fantasy that sprang from her internal relationship with the legendary singer. Later, in 1997, Kay would publish her own critically acclaimed biography of the artist: Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend.
On the front cover she was smiling. Every feature of her face lit up by a huge grin bursting with personality. Her eyes full of hilarity. Her wide mouth full of laughing teeth. On the back she was sad. Her mouth shut. Eyes closed. Eyebrows furrowed. The album cover was like a strange two-sided coin. The two faces of Bessie Smith. I knew from that first album that I had made a friend for life. I would never forget her.
Musician and writer Greg Brownderville takes a literal step back into the mythical blues landscape in this evocative piece about friendship, music, and an almost-forgotten way of life, when a chance encounter leads him to a blues-jam party hosted by a character who lingers large in the author’s memory.
For many blues aficionados, nothing matters more than “authenticity,” whatever that nebulous term is taken to mean. This article discusses that, for sure, but the love and passion at the heart of this essay is to be discerned in thoughts about friendship, community, and the true warts-and-all history of a music that will forever be entangled with the socioeconomic conditions from which it arose.
Pudding slung her arm around me and shouted, “J. R.! If this boy can blues, remember: I’m the one invited him. If he can’t blues, it’s all your fault for handing him this guitar.” J. R. howled a boisterous laugh. But then he said with a serious, almost-preacherly voice, “Listen. We tickled to have this young man here tonight. I believe we done found us a new friend in blues.”
The current state of the blues landscape continues to provoke arguments, introspection, and fears. Some would even contest that “real” blues is a thing of the past, its present-day protagonists serving up a distilled version of an art form forever frozen in time. Such conditions make this piece by renowned music critic Touré a fascinating read, as he documents a visit to the 32nd International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee.
For an in-depth look at one of the most feted of current bluesmen, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, see Carlo Rotella’s Washington Post profile of the man and his craft.
While Memphis in recent years has become home to a celebrated rap movement, Touré discovers a city in which the blues are very much alive and kicking. Fans will find much to celebrate and find themselves able to take a hatful of hope from this beautifully written piece, which covers blues from all angles, from the deeply personal to the highly pragmatic. To hear modern advocates speak with such passion, knowledge, and reverence is as inspirational as it is moving.
“The blues is an antipsychotic to keep my people from losing their minds,” she begins. “It started with the moans and groans of agony, the slave roots of it all.” Then she sings, “There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names! There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names!” She shoots us a coldblooded look.
Wright Thompson grew up in Clarksdale, a town in Mississippi that strongly asserts its claim as “the birthplace of the blues.” It certainly has a wealth of history to back this up: Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, and a host of other musicians were born there, and the town remains an enticing draw for modern blues fans.
I suspect that this article, in which Wright Thompson and his young family take a short trip through the Mississippi Delta, will resonate with many. COVID has changed some more than others, but for all of us, the world will never be quite the same. Here, Thompson explores how blues music — full of life, longing, hope, and pain — resonates across the decades. The blues frequently evoke suffering and heartbreak, but it should be remembered that it is, at its core, a purging, and in many ways a purifying force.
I’ve been thinking recently about how these specific blues could be the soundtrack for a country trying to emerge from quarantine in one piece. A friend I trust told me that sentiment sounds like a kumbaya, and I know what he means. There is real pain and irreducible violence in the music. It records a very particular history.
Two “kings” meet here in this illuminating piece — an excerpt of de Visé’s book King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King — which does a fine job of capturing the magic and majesty of two stars from different sides of the blues line. Presley’s music and heritage is every bit as caught up in the blues as B.B.’s. To modern eyes and ears, the legacy of Elvis can seem problematic. For some it is a clear-cut case: Elvis stole Black music. The reality is far more nuanced. Presley was very much aware of his overwhelming debt to the blues, an art form he loved and admired above all others, and this piece offers a telling glimpse into the complicated and bigoted world of the music industry in ’50s/’60s America.
B.B. himself is one of the few “classic” bluesmen to have extended his professional work into the modern age. He began his career at the tail end of the ’40s, and played his final live show in 2014. A living link to the past and revered by countless musicians from the ’60s onwards, King remains one of the greatest exponents of electric blues. There is another vital link here: Producer Sam Phillips, the man who “discovered” Elvis, also produced many of King’s early recordings.
Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll, a wonderful history of Phillips, explores this theme in detail.
You’ll find a striking line in this article in the form of a quote from Phillips: “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Whether Phillips truly said this is up for debate. Many have argued that if Phillips did say such a thing, it would have been in the spirit of frustration, and bemoaning such racism. This is a man who championed Black musicians long before — and long after — the coming of Elvis. Regardless, the sentiment lays bare the appalling racism that was endemic to the business at that time.
“But Elvis was different. He was friendly. I remember Elvis distinctly,” B.B. recalled, “because he was handsome and quiet and polite to a fault”—not unlike B.B. himself. “Spoke with this thick molasses Southern accent and always called me ‘sir.’ I liked that. In the early days, I heard him strictly as a country singer,” which is how most people regarded Elvis in the early years. Elvis made his first television appearance on a program titled Louisiana Hayride. “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”
***
Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.
Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
In the 1920s when the medium of radio was taking off, not all of the content was comedy shows and music; rather, the KKK used the new technology to broaden their reach and message, and often broadcasted from DC. https://t.co/Kp8CCxO6uK In the 1920s when the medium of radio w…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 28, 2022
In 1984, in just one of a long line of charitable acts, the performer Prince gave a free concert for the students at Gallaudet University. ASL interpreters translated the lyrics but the students felt the music through its vibrations. https://t.co/JBFrf055hi In 1984, in just …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 27, 2022
In 1921, the Miss America Pageant crowned its first winner, Margret Gorman. Where was she from? Washington, DC! Gorman was just 16-years-old when she won the competition. https://t.co/uTIEC6yRKr In 1921, the Miss America Pageant crowned its first winner, Margret Gorman. Wher…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 27, 2022
In an infamous piece of #DChistory and American history, former Congressmen Sam Houston from TN beat sitting Congressman William Stanbery with a cane over a speech Stanbery made at the Capitol. https://t.co/Jkm4dZVsCY In an infamous piece of #DChistory and American history, …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 27, 2022
Today in History - July 27 https://t.co/cW8U5fmnKU Architect Cyrus Lazelle Warner Eidlitz was born on July 27, 1853, in New York City. Continue reading. On July 27, 1946, American avant-garde writer and art connoisseur Gertrude Stein died in France. Continue reading. Cli…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 27, 2022
Where does mail go when it’s undeliverable? The Dead Letter Office, of course, which was once in DC! As early as 1777, the American government had someone (and then an office) to deal with mail that could not get to its intended recipient. https://t.co/ip7rzpZs94 Where does …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 27, 2022
Designed by Adolf Cluss, the Smithsonian National Museum (aka Arts and Industries Building) was completed in 1881. This detail from a stereoview of the interior features a cutaway display of a whale skeleton. https://t.co/aBKrJhgeNT Designed by Adolf Cluss, the Smithsonian Nat…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
Preparing for the Next Generation of Flight via NASA https://t.co/o0Dq5diIRq https://t.co/vQgYBA4zp5
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
Heading into (Orbital) Sunrise via NASA https://t.co/4a4ZlgqukU https://t.co/POX7bcZOl8
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
In case you missed it, check out G&M's latest interactive StoryMap about how geology shapes history by using the example of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line! See the StoryMap here: https://t.co/Z8Owxnx5d8 https://t.co/TyHtdMulpU In case you missed it, check out G&M's latest in…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
The Capitol Crawl was no pub crawl around the Capitol Hill neighborhood; rather, this was the protest of disabled Americans, some of whom literally crawled up the Capitol’s steps, to gain greater rights for the disabled. #disabilityhistory https://t.co/dRBMW4HBXy The Capitol…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
Today in History - July 26 https://t.co/prMGhGGqf5 On July 26, 1788, the Convention of the State of New York, meeting in Poughkeepsie, voted to ratify the Constitution of the United States. Continue reading. Joseph Jenkins Roberts declared Liberia, formerly a colony of the…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
Years ago, during a stop in Phnom Penh while on a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, I visited Tuol Sleng, a museum of the Cambodian genocide, and Choeung Ek, the killing fields. Both were places where thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge had been murdered; now, tourists moved along their hallways and paths, mostly in silence. I still remember staring down at my toes in dusty sandals, stopped just short of the human bone fragments coming up through the dirt, as a guide held his hand out to keep me moving.
After leaving, I couldn’t stop thinking about my visit. The terrible history of what had happened at these sites haunted me, as did their material remains, but so did the troubling decision I made to be there at all. Why had I chosen to go to these places? It felt like a responsibility, in a way — to learn about the country I was traveling through, to pay my respects, clumsily, to the dead — but I was disturbed, too, by what I had done. Was I just a voyeur of other people’s pain?
Sites like these fall under the umbrella of what can be called difficult heritage: the places, artifacts, stories, and practices that we have inherited from the past, and use, in some fashion, today. We tangle our presents together with our pasts. As an American I know the stories we tell about our history as a nation, and the icons in which they are rooted: the Liberty Bell; the Mayflower; the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that are on display in the National Archives. People often think of heritage as something they’re proud of, a unifying point around which to coalesce. But heritage comprises the horrible parts of history, too, the ones many would prefer to forget, or over which societies continue to come into conflict. In America, plantations and buildings still standing today, built by enslaved people, are part of our heritage; so are the sites of battles and the stolen lands that were part of the genocide against Native populations. And even more heritage has been lost through neglect and deliberate destruction, as Jill Lepore explains in a story below.
After that trip to Cambodia, I went on to study difficult heritage professionally as an archaeologist and anthropologist of Rwanda. I learned how Rwandans were using the remains of their terrible past — the genocide committed against the Tutsi population in 1994 — in memorials that served as sites of mourning but also places of memory and education (and, for that matter, tourism, just like the Cambodian ones). In a way, the next decade of my life was shaped by those questions to which I had no good answers. Not only the ones about what I was doing there as a tourist encountering mass atrocity, but even broader ones, too: What do we do now with heritage that raises questions about pain, suffering, and our human pasts as both victims and perpetrators? How do we make these decisions today, and who has the right to do so? What kinds of values and politics guide our choices?
Even purportedly straightforward and “unifying” heritage has its faultlines: The Declaration of Independence’s “We the People” can mean something quite different to the descendants of Americans who weren’t counted as fully human in 1776 than to the descendants of those who were. Once you start digging, as the pieces in this reading list do, you find difficult heritage all around you. Museums are full of art and artifacts taken by colonial and genocidal forces. Public monuments commemorate people whose legacies are often, to put it gently, conflicted. Even cultural practices that are today seen as cheerful or entertaining can mask darker pasts, like Sweden’s Easter witches, who bring something like Halloween to springtime.
As the global protests calling for the removal of controversial statues and monuments in recent years have shown, people care deeply about what we do with the objects and places that make up our heritage — what we save, and what we destroy. What we do with heritage reflects how we understand ourselves: who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.
In a two-part story at Platform, historic preservationist Randall Mason illuminates how the remains of the Rwandan genocide are preserved.
Sites that memorialize tragedy and atrocity can be found all over the world, from Phnom Penh to Auschwitz to Rwanda, and these sites are visited by survivors, mourners, and tourists. The tension between paying respects and bearing witness, and exploiting or gawking, is unresolved; maybe it’s unresolvable. Steve Kandell’s essay about the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City is a raw personal account of confronting this tension. After his sister’s death in the Twin Towers, Kandell and his family did not participate in the development of the memorial museum; his story here recounts what happened when he decided to visit. His powerful, painful ambivalence about the memorial reminds us that even when history has been packaged up for public consumption, it also remains very present, personal, and agonizing for so many.
I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else’s past horror was my vacant diversion and maybe I learned something but I didn’t feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark. Annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom’s last round of chemo didn’t take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend’s last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch it be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely.
In spring, the historic core of Karlskrona, a city on Sweden’s southern coast, was decorated for Easter. Multicolored feathers were tied to bushes and, if I’d been there at the right time, a colleague told me, I could’ve seen little girls walking around in long, flowing clothes, with round red spots of makeup on their cheeks. “They’re the Easter witches!” she explained. “We used to love dressing up like that when we were kids.” I’d never heard of an Easter witch, so I pressed her. “Like Halloween!” she offered, adding that with the importation of that holiday from the U.S., Swedish children now have two run-around-town-demanding-candy festivals per year.
At Boston magazine, Kathryn Miles looks at Salem’s transformation into a witch-tourism magnet.
The Easter witches are called “påskkärringar,” and in this piece, Jennie Tiderman-Österberg traces the history of Swedish witches — or, rather, the country’s history of accusations of witchcraft, which resulted in the brutal deaths of a horrifying number of people (almost entirely women), particularly in the late 17th-century period called the Great Noise. The påskkärringar of today are charmingly attired kids who wear headscarves and carry baskets, but they owe their existence to a dark and terrible past. Tiderman-Österberg takes aim at a tradition that has neatly defanged itself, and asks us to consider the ways we transform, and even domesticate, pasts replete with suffering and pain.
Now, what do we do with this dark and difficult part of our history that caused so much suffering? How do we manage the memories of such ordeals?
In Sweden, we meet the suffering by basically playing around with the Easter Hag. Since the 1800s, she is the tradition. She has become our heritage, not the events which lie hidden in her background. Do Swedes do this to cope with a difficult recollection? Or to reminisce over the times before the witch trials when spells were not an evil act and the cunning women of the forest an important part of our healthcare system? Or do we dress our children as witches because we prefer to make quaint a wildness we still secretly fear?
When the news broke several months ago that the Smithsonian planned to return its collection of Benin Bronzes, it was met with relief from the Nigerian claimants — and surprise from observers who thought major Western museums would continue to fight tooth and nail to retain every item in their collections. These stunning bronze figures had been looted from the Kingdom of Benin by attacking British forces in the late 19th century, and they have been held in Western museums and private collections ever since. Requests for their return have mainly fallen upon deaf ears, as cultural institutions assert that returns would devastate their collections, or that the objects could not be adequately cared for elsewhere. Still, the Smithsonian’s change of position is not unique: Perhaps reflecting the start of a reckoning with colonial histories, recent years have seen an increasing number of returns, even as the total amount remains small.
At Items, Donna Yates considers how histories of violence and colonialism increase artifact sale prices on the art market.
In this piece, Tarisai Ngangura takes us through those requests. The article focuses on Africa, a continent whose cultural heritage has been stolen in massive quantities for the benefit of museums and collectors elsewhere. Ngangura considers what is lost when heritage is taken away; what claimants want returned (and how they hope to use what is returned); and how the beneficiaries of these collections — especially Western museums that have charged admission fees and built reputations on the backs of items gathered by colonial forces — have fought change. Whether museums in the Western world as we know them will exist in precisely the same form after such a reckoning is an open question. But if our status quo is dependent on ignoring how those museum collections came to be, that’s hardly a bad thing.
“They come into your house while you are sleeping, or when you are awake. They kill half your family. They steal from you. Take your art and your belongings to their country,” said Nana Oforiatta Ayim, curator, filmmaker, and author of The Godchild. “Then they showcase them like, look what I have. I am more powerful than you. Years later, when the world has somewhat righted itself, you ask for them back and they refuse.”
I still remember the first time I saw a mummy. It was in the St. Louis Art Museum, in the 1990s, and I was on a field trip, small enough to be about eye height with the supine mummy’s wrapped feet. As we filed past, I dragged my own feet and had to be ushered along. The mummy’s painted cartonnage was certainly beautiful, with its delicate illustrations and its carved, serious face. But the wrappings were what transfixed me: a little decayed, a few scattered holes, the dirt of several thousand years. You mean there’s a person in there?
At Undark, Sarah Wild considers the new problems that arise when scientists shift to studying replicas of human remains.
Like the Benin Bronzes, human remains are subject to repatriation claims. Bodies populate museum exhibitions around the world, from Egyptian mummies to those pulled from Europe’s peat bogs, and they serve as the subjects of scientific research, like the bones that are the focus of this story by Lizzie Wade. The Penn Museum’s Morton collection, an assemblage of human skulls, is named after the scientist Samuel Morton, who used cranial measurements to support his ideas about racial hierarchy and race “science.” Like many other institutions, the Morton collection accumulated its human remains in a process laced with structural violence, targeting those who had less power to prevent their bones from being collected: Black people, Indigenous communities, the enslaved. Over time, physical and biological anthropologists have tried to use new research approaches to reckon with their discipline’s former efforts to prove white supremacy through bone. Still, using the collection differently doesn’t solve the essential problem: Can museums still hold and study human remains when their owners didn’t give consent? And what should we do with those collections, like the Morton, whose origins are saturated with racism?
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked protests for racial justice around the country, more and more people within and outside Penn began to see the Morton collection as a present-day perpetuation of racism and its harms, rather than just a historic example. Until last summer, most researchers thought “the science is justified because we’re doing it thoughtfully. And this moment brought to bear, no, that’s not enough,” says Rachel Watkins, a Black biological anthropologist at American University.
Even with recent research that strove to be respectful, it was almost always scientists who decided how and why to study the skulls, not their descendant communities, Athreya notes. “We were speaking for people without them at the table,” she says. To move forward ethically, “Those of us in power are going to have to give up some.”
Sometimes we handle difficult heritage by changing or removing it. In order to stop honoring perpetrators of racist violence, activists have taken down Confederate monuments in the U.S., along with statues of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa, King Leopold II in Belgium, and Edward Colston in the U.K. But the other side of the coin is what we choose to support instead. What lost histories and ignored people can we bring back into, and honor in, our social and political lives? What forgotten heritage sites deserve attention? As we consider what to remove, we might also consider what to restore.
Gary Younge cuts through the Sturm und Drang of the monuments debate with his incisive condemnation of viewing statues as public history at all.
In this piece, Jill Lepore traces attempts to save Black American heritage in the form of burial grounds and human remains. But these efforts are also faced with challenges: Who, for example, gets to make the decisions? (It’s a question Wade also touches on in her story about the Morton skull collection.) As Howard University professor Fatimah Jackson asks, referring to another actor in these debates: “Does he speak for Black America? Or do I speak for Black America?”
Examining the idea of “descendant communities” and the work of descendants, activists, scholars, and archaeologists, Lepore carefully untangles the complicated sociopolitics involved in trying to treat Black heritage, and Black communities, with the respect and dignity they have long been denied in the American public sphere.
It isn’t merely an academic dispute. The proposed burial-grounds network and graves-protection acts are parts of a larger public deliberation, less the always elusive “national conversation” than a quieter collective act of conscientious mourning, expressed, too, in new monuments and museum exhibits. History gets written down in books but, like archeology, it can seep up from the earth itself, from a loamy underground of sacred, ancient things: gravestones tucked under elms and tangled by vines; iron-nailed coffins trapped beneath pavement and parking lots and highway overpasses. How and whether the debates over human remains get resolved holds consequences not only for how Americans understand the country’s past but also for how they picture its future. The dispute itself, along the razor’s edge between archeology and history, is beset by a horrible irony. Enslavement and segregation denied people property and ancestry. But much here appears to turn on inheritance and title: Who owns these graveyards? Who owns these bones? Who owns, and what is owed?
Further Reading:
***
Annalisa Bolin is an anthropologist and archaeologist who studies the uses and politics of the past, from material objects and sites to human remains, in post-genocide Rwanda. She holds a PhD from Stanford University. Her literary nonfiction has been published in the Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Epoiesen, and elsewhere. Her academic articles can be found in Anthropological Quarterly, Journal of Social Archaeology, and Journal of Eastern African Studies, among others, and she has also written for the magazine SAPIENS and Africa Is a Country. Her essay “A Ghost Map of Kigali,” which appeared in Anthropology and Humanism, won the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s award for creative nonfiction. Currently based in St. Louis, Missouri, she is writing a book that mixes her research in Rwanda with essays and memoir. She can be found on her website and Twitter.
Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Copy-editor: Peter Rubin
Quote of the Day: "I never think of the future - it comes soon enough." - Albert Einstein
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
Today is National Merry-Go-Round Day! To celebrate these fan favorite amusement park rides, we look back at the summer of 1960 when Glen Echo Park in MD played a historic role in desegregating public spaces. #MDhistory https://t.co/XOxf1rorSL Today is National Merry-Go-Round…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 26, 2022
#DYK writer Ezra Pound— who was tried for treason— pleaded insanity in his 1945 trial? The court-appointed doctor found him to be sane, yet, he still spent 12 years in Chestnut Ward at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. https://t.co/940h1iLZJD #DYK writer Ezra Pound— who was tried fo…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 25, 2022
Alethia Tanner Day honors enslaved woman who bought her freedom https://t.co/nHX6lC5adP Alethia Tanner Day honors enslaved woman who bought her freedom https://t.co/nHX6lC5adP — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Jul 25, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 25, 2022
Blue Ripples on a Red Planet via NASA https://t.co/x6zExFuZ9Y https://t.co/UjgD9YhW3K
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 25, 2022
After World War II, Southwest Washington, DC, underwent a bout of complete urban renewal to clean up the blighted neighborhood. New buildings went up, but a community was torn apart. Was it all it worth it? https://t.co/MrPtVsLMfB After World War II, Southwest Washington, DC…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 25, 2022
Today in History - July 25 https://t.co/ibFc7JXXf4 On July 25, 1936, after a five-night run, the audience at the Park Theatre in Bridgeport, Connecticut, applauded the closing night performance of Macbeth, produced by John Houseman and directed by Orson Welles for the Federa…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 25, 2022
After the 1908 Olympics, a strange phenomenon began to hit Washington D.C. - an obsession with marathons. At the time, a "marathon" wasn't the 26.2 mile race we know today but the fad still caught on all the same and took the district by storm. https://t.co/c32RaDsdAd After …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022
Mary Church Terrell fought the rights of Black people, specifically Black women all her life. In particular, she fought against segregation in Washington D.C. and advocated for greater accessibility to education for Black Americans. https://t.co/Bu00hy81tc Mary Church Terrel…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022
Mary Church Terrell, legendary women's and civil rights activist, helped to integrate D.C.'s restaurants in the 1950s, utilizing laws first passed during Reconstruction in 1872. https://t.co/I1DRea6MCC Mary Church Terrell, legendary women's and civil rights activist, helped …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022
During World War II, the Washington Senators could no longer hold their spring training camp in Florida, and instead held it at the University of Maryland, College Park (which was decidedly less glamorous). https://t.co/mNTJMA7oBz During World War II, the Washington Senators…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022
Did you know that there was once a plan for an innovative domed football stadium in the District, with plans lead by former Washington Commanders coach George Preston Marshall, in 1936? https://t.co/sgSff2Eish Did you know that there was once a plan for an innovative domed f…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022
Today in History - July 24 https://t.co/BMkKr1X6mB Completing a treacherous thousand-mile exodus, an ill and exhausted Brigham Young and fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived in Utah's Great Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Continue rea…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jul 24, 2022