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Why Strom Thurmond's Mixed Race Child Ended Up in Coatesville, Pennsylvania

by Anita L. Wills

The first chapter of my book, Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color, begins in 1950's Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The town is now a household word, being the place where Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the biracial daughter of Strom Thurmond, was raised. Coatesville was a steel town made up mostly of immigrants, many of whom were from Communist countries. The blacks living in the community were by and large from the South. They moved there to work in the steel mills an

Once Again Sex Is Changing American Politics

by Ruth Rosen

I STILL REMEMBER the mixed emotions I experienced when the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. Finally, I thought, women will never again risk their lives with back-alley quacks. At the same time, I dreaded decades of political backlash that might try to repeal women's right to exercise this choice. I wish I had been wrong, but by 1980 abortion had entered American national politics -- as both a political litmus test and the engine that fueled the

It's Time for the State to Get Out of the Marriage Business

by Benjamin Braude

According to the opponents of gay marriage, the Nov. 18 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex unions threatens hallowed traditions, firmly established in Judaism and Christianity over thousands of years. However, what opponents take as hoary, biblically rooted practice is more hollow than hallowed. Those claiming to defend traditional marriage forget what those traditions were. One revered form of marriage -- espoused in the Bible -- is the polygamy of the patria

For Mom, Blueberry Pie -- and Iraq?

by Ira Chernus

With election day less than a year away, President Bush must justify something most Americans detest: a seemingly endless string of American casualties on foreign soil. No doubt, the president will argue that we must risk American lives in Iraq to bring our democratic way of life to a once-enslaved nation. He will proclaim that we are doing once again what the "greatest generation" did during World War II. He will tell us that the WW II generation became the great

Who Loses if President Bush's Plan to "Reform" Overtime Pay Is Put in Place?

by Jonathan Rees

"Politicians are wanted, not in council but in action!" wrote Ira Steward in 1865. Steward, a Boston machinist and trade unionist, played a vital role in organizing laborers of all types to press government for shorter working hours during the late nineteenth century. By the 1920s, most American workers labored eight hours a day thanks to decades of economic and political pressure to bring about reform. The ultimate result of Steward's political strategy wa

Column: Why Democrats Have to Go Negative to Win

by P. M. Carpenter

Republicans are big on giving Democrats advice these days, especially on how to conduct campaigns. It's like Tonya Harding coaching Nancy Kerrigan on the finer points of sportsmanship. The advice is simple. If you guys, the Democrats, have any chance of winning in 2004, it's only by staying upbeat and positive in message. Negative themes and negative campaigning are voter turnoffs. You'll go nowhere just being against things. One hates to appear ungrateful in the face of all thi

Why the Death Notice of Congressman Barber Conable Caught this Historian's Attention

by Yanek Mieczkowski

Last month, America lost one of its great statesmen. Barber B. Conable, a 20-year Republican congressman from New York and former president of the World Bank, died at the age of 81. I first met Barber Conable in 1994, as he enjoyed retirement in his hometown of Alexander, New York, a village southwest of Rochester. I was a graduate student researching a dissertation on Gerald Ford's presidency, and since Conable had been Ford's close friend in Congress and during Ford's years in the

Hiring a Black Head Coach in 2003 Is News? Yeah, Unfortunately

by Derek Catsam

The Mississippi State Bulldogs football team has hired Sylvester Croom, running backs coach for the Green Bay Packers, to be their next football coach. He will succeed Jackie Sherrill in Starkville . Croom was an All-American lineman at Alabama in the early 1970s. But his signing on with a traditional Southeastern Conference rival is not what is most noteworthy about this hiring. What is truly historic is that Croom is African American, and almost astoundingly, he will be the first bla

Column: The Republican Plan to Destroy Medicare

by P. M. Carpenter

Way back before July, 1965, before the socialist monster of Medicare terrorized seniors with guaranteed health care, conservatives told horror stories about it 'round the political campfire. Ronald Reagan - by then a long-time peddler of GE toasters, Borax and right-wing Arizonans - typified the sentiment. Medicare, he admonished, would so encroach on "freedom in this country" we'd be left to wile away our autumn years "telling our children and our children's children

Column: Bush Is Cutting and Running Because Karl Rove Can Count

by P. M. Carpenter

The president announced last week that Iraqis "need to know that [America is] not going to cut and run." Accompanying that pledge was this: "We believe they have the capacity to run their own country." BushSpeak mavens instantly recognized the abrupt change in policy. America is about to cut and run while Bush knows Iraqis can no more run Iraq than the Reverend Al Sharpton could carry Idaho.

Why the Next Election May Well Be Decided by the Vice Presidential Nominee

by Jonathan Dresner

It's that time again: a presidential election campaign is in full swing and the pundits are building up a pretty good head of steam. Everyone has a theory about presidential elections: it's the economy; it's the amount of money raised; it's the media; it's a 30-year pendulum; it's the issues; it's the candidates' heights or genealogy, etc. Maybe they're right, but there's another thread running through recent elections: Over the last five elections, tickets with near-clone ideological

Why We Are Still Preoccupied with the Kennedy Might-Have-Beens

by William C. Kashatus

After forty years, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy continues to ignite countless conspiracy theories, rising from the strange circumstances and seemingly inexplicable actions surrounding it.

2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - - Revisionist History?

by Kathleen E. Powderly, PhD

On October 6, 2003, the Nobel Committee announced that Paul C. Lauterbur, PhD, an American chemist and Sir Peter Mansfield, PhD, a British physicist were the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The MRI is widely acknowledged as one of the most important technological medical advances of the twentieth century and many felt that its recognition by the Nobel Committee was long overdue.

Column: Was the Republican Party Trying to Protect Us from "The Reagans"? How Very PC

by P. M. Carpenter

It seems there's a good reason conservative activists prefer to paint their faces and travel by night. By day, they're dreadfully insecure and afraid of their own shadow. That, anyway, would explain perhaps the silliest political controversy ever: "The Reagans" mini-series … scandal? Rather than dismissing four hours of typical TV wasteland with a manly indifference of yesteryear, today's quiche-eating conservatives threw a hissy fit. Arm in arm with a couple of

Bush's Farcical Press Conference

by P.M. Carpenter

"Iraq's a dangerous place … "It is dangerous in Iraq … "It's dangerous in Iraq … "It is dangerous in Iraq … "I can't put it any more plainly. Iraq's a dangerous place. That's leveling. It is a dangerous place … "Iraq's a danger place and I can't put it any more bluntly than that. I know it's a dangerous place … "Iraq is dangerous."

The Perfect Fire

by Mike Davis

Sunday morning in San Diego. The sun is an eerie orange orb, like the eye of a hideous jack-o-lantern. The fire on the flank of Otay Mountain, which straddles the Mexican border, generates a huge whitish-grey mushroom plume. It is a rather sublime sight, like Vesuvius in eruption. Meanwhile the black sky rains ash from incinerated national forests and dream homes.

General Clark's the Wrong Kind of General

by Thomas Fleming

Once upon a time -- in 1920, to be exact -- another general ran for president. His name was John J. Pershing. He had far better credentials than General Wesley Clark. He had commanded two million men in battle against the most formidable adversary yet seen in the world's wars, the imperial German army -- and he had won. Air, artillery, infantry, supply, Pershing had orchestrated them all to bring off an improbable victory. When he returned to America, Congress conferred on him the un

How the Deficit Affects You Personally

by Leonard Steinhorn

When President Bush sold his tax cut plan to the American people, he made sure to tell every American how much money they would be getting back from Uncle Sam. In 2001, he trotted out a typical "tax family," claiming that his plan would return $1,600 to these average Americans. This summer he happily took credit for the $400 per child tax rebate many Americans received in the mail. It's our money, he told us, not the government's, and we deserve to get it back. But his s

The Pentagon's Obsession with Toys

by Nick Turse

In his famed 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a dangerous intertwining of private corporations, the armed forces, and the federal government for which he coined the term"the military-industrial complex." By then, the Pentagon had long been exercising script control over most war films made in Hollywood and the CIA was running covert operations in Vietnam through a front program at Michigan State University, but Ike wasn't focused on minor supporting players like t

The Democrats Can Win without a Southerner at the Top of the Ticket

by Martin Halpern

Although media and public attention has focused on retired General Wesley Clark's military credentials and his dramatic late entry into the presidential race, in one key respect his candidacy as a Southerner represents something familiar in Democratic presidential politics. In the past three decades, the Democrats have nominated Southerners for president five of seven times. What's more significant, they've won only with Southerners. Democrats' preference for