The real story behind Memorial Day

It's seems only appropriate that for the holiday that commemorates war dead and valiant veterans we should remember who had the idea in the first place. I asked a bunch of well educated friends if they knew the origins of Memorial Day and virtually everyone said, "yeah, it started right after World War I." I can only surmise that Memorial Day and Veterans Day have become one in the minds of most of us.

The true origins of Memorial Day, I now know, thanks to Jim Downs and his explanation on History News Network a few days ago (http://hnn.us/articles/who-invented-memorial-dayhttp://hnn.us/articles/who-invented-memorial-day), is freed men and women in Charleston toward the end of the Civil War.  These freedmen gathered to honor the Union soldiers who had fought (whether they intended to or not) to free them.  Three years later, General John Logan ordered that May 30 that year be observed as Decoration Day.

It also seems appropriate to remember the origins of Memorial Day now when parts of the nation are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

The photo at the right is of the statue of General Logan  in Grant Park, Chicago.

End-of-semester musing

Final grades went in to the registrar last night and now I have time to reflect upon my performance this academic year as well as the academic performance of my students. Winning a teaching award this year was very gratifying--recognition from colleagues and administration means a great deal to me, but what my students have learned (and more importantly will remember) is the true test of whether I've succeeded this year.

So I welcome constructive criticism and comments from my students. I'm always harping on "the big picture" and "turning points" of history. Will my students remember these ten years from now? That's the real test of teaching and learning.

As to students' knowledge of grammar, punctuation (oy) and capitalization, I continue to be amazed at what they apparently have never learned. I know that secondary teachers have too much pressure these days and too little support, but why not teach punctuation? It's not that hard.

So, students and former students: if you want to set yourself apart from the others in your job cover letters or in your academic writing, here's what to do. Take a few minutes each day and learn how to use commas properly. You may think this is not important, but remember that most of the people who will read your cover letters are not your peers or your peers' age or, for that matter, even close to your peers' age. They are older and chances are good that someone taught them how to use commas in their school years. They're so used to seeing badly written, choppy drivel without any semblance of punctuation or proper capitalization that when they see your cover letter, it will stand out. And that's definitely what you want.

I encourage all my former students to stay in touch--and if you want to talk about punctuation and cover letters, I'll be glad to assist.

Happy summer, y'all!

What would you change if you knew it needed change?

Today, I was listening to the featured Story Corps piece on NPR, and it got me to thinking.

The story came from a man who had suffered a traumatic brain injury from a motorcycle accident. After six weeks in a coma, he awoke and he is now struggling to regain the body and brain that he had before.

During the talk, his wife asked him if thought he was a nicer person now. He said yes, of course. He talked about how much he loves his nieces and enjoys spending time with them. But before the accident, he didn't want them around--didn't want any children around because they annoyed him. He was "sarcastic," his wife said (I assume that she was using that word instead of something that might have been a bit stronger) and now he's not.

He says he's glad that he's had this second chance because it isn't just a second chance at life, but a second chance at living better.

And that got me to thinking. What if we all had this sort of second-chance-at-life-and-I-don't-want-to-screw-it-up experience? What would we change?

I'm going to think about that. A lot.

Another farewell: this one to a man who brought whimsy to Manhattan skyscrapers

My last post said farewell to Barney Rosset, combat publisher of literature and movies that some in the mainstream culture considered obscene. This post bids adieu to urban developer Melvyn Kaufman who did much to add needed whimsy to the skyscrapers of Manhattan.  Mr. Kaufman died at 87 last week.

The photo above is a sculpture called "Big Red Swing." It's in the outdoor lobby area of 777 Third Avenue. It's a good example of the kind of element he liked to have built into his buildings. Kaufman was not an architect--he was a developer--but he was intimately involved in the planning of his buildings. The swing that you see is meant to be sat on and it moves ever so slightly--a delightful reminder of the flow of nature in a carefully constructed, right-angle-dominated world like midtown Manhattan. Here's another view:

Kaufman delighted in the unexpected in his building lobbies and even on his rooftops. At 77 Water Street, Kaufman placed a replica of a World War I biplane. While not visible from the street, anyone in nearby buildings is treated to this most unexpected building adornment.

 

[Photo credits: top, The City Review; middle, Museum Without Walls; bottom, Rob Bennett [Via WSJ. and found at Curbed, New York]

Farewell, Barney Rosset!

Barney Rosset, tireless champion of the right to read and the right to see, died yesterday in NYC at the age of 89. I have researched and written on Rosset, and the story of his fight against mid-century censorship enlivens the pages of both of my books.

Rosset fought numerous censorship battles wherever he could find them. He was a First Amendment absolutist. As he said, “If you have freedom of speech, you have freedom of speech.” To him it was just that simple, just that clear. 


For many others in mid-century America, the issue was not so clear, and so Barney Rosset went to court....a lot. Challenging the censorship of works today considered classics like Lady Chatterley's Lover, Naked Lunch, and Tropic of Cancer,  the case that brought him to my attention was his release and subsequent defense of the 1967 Swedish film, I am Curious (Yellow). 

In memory of such a principled crusader for free speech, I reproduce below the summary of his fight to bring I am Curious to American screens: 

Excerpt from Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, University Press of Kentucky, 2008, pp. 262-266.


I Am Curious (Yellow)
The Maryland board and film distributors got along uneasily through the next two years, until they were confronted by a Swedish film called I Am Curious (Yellow). It was the first major film to show fully nude actors. A box office success, I Am Curious still ranks as the sixth-highest-grossing foreign language film of all time, despite its odd plot and leftist political philosophizing. The film masquerades as a documentary about a young girl, Lena, exploring the realms of sexual relationships and political affairs at the same time, often getting the two confused.61 While Lena explores politics and conducts interviews, she also engages in frequent sexual trysts with her married lover in unusual places, like the balcony of the Swedish royal palace. The Maryland attorney general told the Baltimore Sun, “If the board cannot ban this sort of hard-core pornography masquerading as art, then I suppose it cannot ban anything and should be abolished.”62
     I Am Curious had already had a long legal career. It had been found obscene by U.S. Customs yet had been set free by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Since the court did not consider the film “utterly without redeeming social value,” its graphic sexual depictions were not enough to render it obscene under Jacobellis. But this decision had no bearing on local censors, and the film was under twelve suits and countersuits when it arrived in Maryland in 1969, courtesy of distributor Grove Press and exhibitor Howard Wagonheim. Both sides strutted and postured as they prepared for court. Grove Press crowed that it expected its challenge to abolish the Maryland censor board entirely, and Maryland’s chief law enforcer repeated that licensing the film would be tantamount to “unconditional surrender to those who want to exhibit hard-core pornography.”63 
     For Grove Press’s owner, confronting censorship had become a business staple. Specializing in what he called combat publishing, Barney Rosset had built a publishing house on controversial books, like the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer, as well as the magazine Evergreen Review. When Tropic of Cancer got hung up in U.S. Customs, Rosset hired attorney Edward de Grazia, who succeeded in freeing the book via the U.S. Supreme Court. Rosset was a natural in the anticensorship business; he described himself as “a type of free American
spirit, against censorship” by nature. Once he became a publisher, Rosset was more convinced than ever that censorship was wrong and that he should be allowed to publish whatever he wanted. Recognizing the immense potential of European writers like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet, Rosset began importing their lesser-known works. He later would turn to Anglo-American avant-garde writers like Henry Miller, William Burroughs, and D. H. Lawrence and political activists like Malcolm X and Che Guevara. Rosset believed, “If a book has literary merit, you publish it. If you get arrested in the process, you fight it.” He later admitted that his publication of the unabridged Lady Chatterley’s Lover had been a deliberate attempt to provoke an obscenity confrontation. 64
     After winning several book censorship battles, Rosset brought Grove Press into the film distribution business. As he purchased the rights to I Am Curious, his business was being monitored by the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. Army.65 He planned to bring I Am Curious to as many states as possible when he ran into the Maryland censor board.
     At the circuit court, the censor board, which had finally learned its judicial lesson, presented expert testimony from a psychologist and an educator who both confirmed that I Am Curious was obscene. A sculptor also told the judge that the film had no artistic value. But de Grazia explained that the film had been exhibited in twenty-three cities to more than three-quarters of a million viewers, and he brought out a parade of experts with impressive credentials who testified that the film had redeeming social value. Nevertheless, Judge Joseph L. Carter found the film obscene, holding that the time had come “to halt . . . [the pornographers’] program. This does not mean a return to Puritanism by any stretch of the imagination, but it does mean a return to sense and decency.”66 The court of appeals upheld the lower court by four to three, saying that the film’s overriding theme was “sex, per se.”67 One justice’s dissenting opinion, however, faulted the majority for ignoring the preponderance of expert testimony that the film had social value. Here, in a nutshell, were the distributors’ two major dilemmas: first, what would the state of Maryland allow, and second, how could a potential film owner figure that out in advance of purchase?
     I Am Curious showed that, as late as 1969, the highest court in Maryland was refusing to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s direction on the determination of obscenity. I Am Curious was clearly outside the norm of community standards yet, by most accounts, held at least some social
value. It should have met the Supreme Court’s standards for a noncensorable film. After the state had won, the attorney general reiterated his earlier statement that if the censors had lost that particular battle, he would have recommended the board’s abolition. Asked whether he would feel the same if the U.S. Supreme Court should decide against Maryland, he answered, “It would logically follow, wouldn’t it?”68 Such temptation the anticensorship forces of Maryland could hardly ignore. In Freedman, Wagonheim, Rosset, and Marhenke (dubbed “the everlasting Board’s habitual agitator” by the board secretary69), the censors had a large contingent of adversaries eagerly awaiting the chance to get the Supreme Court to invalidate Maryland’s prior restraint.
     Wagonheim [first name Howard: owner of the theater exhibiting the film in Maryland] managed to get the case of his Swedish film before the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time the Maryland case reached the Supreme Court, I Am Curious was in legal trouble in twelve cities. Another case from Massachusetts was also pending before the Supreme Court.
     Grove Press and Wagonheim came to the U.S. Supreme Court with lots of friendly assistance. Their case was buttressed by amicus briefs from the International Film Importers and Distributors Association, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Adult Film Association of America, and the MPAA. At the oral arguments, Maryland attorney general Burch told the Supreme Court justices that the Court must let the states decide obscenity issues at home. Burch put all his eggs into this basket: echoing his earlier statements made for the Maryland press, he told the Court that he would rather see all censorship abolished than have the current state of confusion engendered by the Court’s ambiguous rulings. Grove’s attorney,de Grazia, explained that the film had been shown in 180 cities, in forty states, to more than five million people. Those numbers alone were clear evidence, he said, that the film was not pornographic. The Court must promise the states, de Grazia said, that it would not interfere with the exhibition of any material short of hardcore pornography, as long as it was available only to consenting adults. According to the Baltimore Sun, “Virtually the only thing the two lawyers agreed on was that the law governing obscenity and pornography is in a state of ‘confusion,’ and that the court should issue a ‘clear’ mandate.”70
     As they had so many times since 1952, both sides hoped that a decisive ruling by the Supreme Court in this case would “lift the fog” that had come to surround film censorship.71 But their wish was not to be granted. On March 8, 1970, the court split evenly (Justice Douglas, who probably would have voted with the liberals, did not participate because of a possible conflict of interest with Grove Press), which meant that the Maryland court of appeals’ determination of I Am Curious (Yellow) as obscene would stand.72 And so the two main issues—whether the film and others like it were constitutionally protected speech and whether the Maryland censor statute was unconstitutional—were deferred. In four years, the Maryland censor board had faced and survived eight legal challenges.
     The case of I Am Curious (Yellow) ended anticlimactically. After another year of haggling with the censor board, Grove Press agreed to make some cuts, and the film was finally licensed in Maryland—but only after a great expenditure of both time and money.73
     One of the most salient anticensorship issues was how to pay for such lengthy, complex litigation. Despite its three decades of public denunciations of censorship, the ACLU had been able to assist in only a few of the cases. Both the national office and its state affiliates needed promising litigants and local attorneys willing to take on the cause of the motion picture distributors. With the ACLU’s resources strained by many civil liberties issues in the mid-twentieth century (separation of church and state, public speech, loyalty oaths, civil rights, defendants’ rights), the organization can hardly be faulted for playing a minor role in the fight against motion picture censors. The MPAA also had a surfeit of critical issues to stare down. As a member-driven organization, the association was required to run its affairs through committee. Fighting the censorship of a foreign or independent production or of an allegedly obscene film was not likely to appeal to the dues-paying membership.
     And so those who chose to fight the censors were often on their own. Joseph Burstyn had spent a great deal of his own money on his battle because he believed the principle of censorship to be wrong. The Hakim brothers (La ronde) also spent their own company finances to fight to the Supreme Court. Richard Brandt used the resources of his theater chain to free A Stranger Knocks. Ronald Freedman bankrupted his Baltimore Film Society, a loose collection of film enthusiasts who in the 1960s acquired four theaters and financed his crusade to the Supreme Court. But Grove Press hit on an ingenious financing solution: it took advantage of a plan, set up by de Grazia, that encouraged local attorneys to take local cases for contingency fees based on box office receipts in their area.74 Thus Grove did not have to shell out cash in advance of a dubious return; local attorneys were given a vested interest in winning the cases, and each local distributor, exhibitor, or bookseller of a Grove product could serve as a test case. Grove Press was able to carry on its extensive cause litigation by convincing attorneys to gamble on the outcome of their own work in their local courts.


Please reference the book pages for the footnotes contained herein in order to give proper credit to the sources of my information and cite this excerpt as Laura Wittern-Keller, Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

The real story behind Presidents Day

Most of assume, and this includes me, that today's national holiday, Presidents Day, is meant to celebrate both Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. But we're wrong.

It was not patriotism or gratitude to popular presidents that set up this holiday, but retailing. Read on to get the real story:

http://hnn.us/articles/it-presidents-day-or-presidents-day-or-presidents-day
.
Photos: WhiteHouse.gov

Yet another Union Station

Last night, I was talking about the City Beautiful movement in my urban history class, and I was showing photos of the rash of "union stations" that were built in this circa-1900 era. Today, Shorpy.com has posted a new photo of yet another Union Station, this one in Nashville. So here it is in all its turn-of-the-century grandeur! Click the link below to go to Shorpy.


Nashville Union Station 1900.

Be sure to click on the photo on Shorpy to enlarge it in all its high-def splendor.

The U.S. Constitution is losing oomph as a model for other nations

According to a story in today's New York Times (please note that the italicized title), a new study finds that while the U.S. Constitution used to be the template for other nations around the world, that is no longer so. And it finds that the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which until recently were regularly cited by the highest tribunals of other nations, are losing their influence as well.

Here's a link to the entire story:

'We the People' Loses Appeal With People Around The World

Apparently the study, which quantified the provisions of constitutions around the world, the U.S. protects fewer rights--and, in some cases, different right--in its Bill of Rights.

The new models for court decisions are--and I imagine you'll be as surprised by this as I am--India, South Africa, and New Zealand. 

The new model for constitution building, which, by the way most other countries seem to do every nineteen years or so--is the Canadian Charter. 

But don't take my world for it--read the article. 

Following the news these days? If not, you should.....

I'm wondering how many students follow the news these days. In the 1960s when I was growing up, everyone watched the nightly news--a 30 minute broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS that kept us informed of the major happenings of the time. Since there were no tweets, blogs, facebooks, or websites to distract our attention, the nightly news and newspapers were what we had. And we watched/read them!

Now I'm concerned that students, who have so much competition for their time, are not staying abreast of what we all need to know.

I often make comparisons in class between what's happened before and what's happening today, so in the interest of encouraging all of you to stay abreast of world and US headlines, here are a couple of weblinks that you might want to consider making part of your daily routine.

http://www.cnn.com/US/index.html

http://news.yahoo.com/

http://news.google.com/

I am not endorsing any of these news headlines sources, nor any of their advertisers, but I hope that some of what they list will be of interest to you.

Suggested reading list for HIS 101

As we gear up for a new semester, it occurred to me that I should post a suggested reading list for my students. Now, I know that because of your busy schedules, most of you have a hard enough time finding the time to read required books, but allow me the indulgence of telling you what I think you should also be reading (or listening to if you have an audiobook membership somewhere).



Upton Sinclair, The Jungle.
     This classic tells the story of immigrants in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. It's      fascinating, horrifying, edifying....makes us really glad to live when we do and not back then. This book also supposedly helped passage of landmark legislation that protects all of us--the creation of the  Food and Drug Administration.
Jack Finney, Time and Again.      
      Finney uses a rather implausible time travel device to bring middle class life in New York City in the 1880s to the pages of this remarkable book. If you can suspend your disbelief on how our hero gets to the 1880s, the book will reward you amply with fabulous period detail about daily life in the nation's most important city. Students who have read this book in classes where I have required it rave about it!
 
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. 
      Steinbeck's masterpiece tells the story of a family caught up in the horrors of the Great Depression. Like The Jungle, it too makes us happy not to have lived in the 1930s. If you have never read this book, you really must.