"I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own."
#OnThisDay, 10 Apr 1864, army surgeon Dr Mary Edwards Walker is captured by the Confederates during the US Civil War. She later receives the Medal of Honor.
As well as serving in the Civil War, and being a dress reformer who preferred to wear trousers, she was also a suffragist who declined to take her husband’s name when they married.
The Columbian Orator Taught Nineteenth-Century Americans How to Speak
https://www.neh.gov/article/columbian-orator-taught-nineteenth-century-americans-how-speak
#OnThisDay, 9 Apr 1939, Marian Anderson sings to thousands for free in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Millions more tuned in on the radio.
Howard University had wanted to book the biggest concert venue in DC, Constitution Hall, for her. But the Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned it, would only let white performers appear on their stage.
Read more here: https://carvehername.org.uk/marian-anderson-sings/
Newsreel of the time: https://youtu.be/XF9Quk0QhSE
Restoring Lies And Insanity To American History
https://popularresistance.org/restoring-lies-and-insanity-to-american-history/
Amid anti-#DEI push, #NationalParkService rewrites history of #UndergroundRailroad
Since #Trump took office, the #ParkService -- an agency charged with preserving #AmericanHistory -- has changed how its website describes key moments from #slavery to #JimCrow
#whitewashing #WhiteSupremacy #History #racism #lies #censorship #propaganda #trumpaganda #USpol
https://wapo.st/4jdXL8m
#OnThisDay, 3 Apr 1979, Jane Byrne wins the Chicago mayoral election. She is the first woman to be mayor of the city and is sworn in on 16 April. She hires the first black woman to be a school superintendent in the city, and stops the police raiding gay bars.
Lori Lightfoot was the second woman to hold the post, from 2019 to 2023. She’s the first black woman and the first LGBT+ mayor since the post was created in 1837.
#OnThisDay, 2 Apr 1917, Jeanette Rankin is sworn in, becoming the first woman to sit in the US Congress.
#OnThisDay, 31 Mar 1988, Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
#OnThisDay, 31 Mar 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, who was drafting the Declaration of Independence. He declined her suggestions.
…The order is the latest move by the #Trump admin to quash recognition of #BlackAmericans’ contributions to the nation & to gloss over the legal, political, social & economic obstacles they have faced.
Trump’s approach is “a literal attack on #BlackAmerica itself,”Ibram X. Kendi, race historian & bestselling author, said. “The #BlackSmithsonian, as it is affectionately called, is indeed one of the heartbeats of Black America…&…also one of the heartbeats”of the nation at large.
@Heliograph oddly adjacent in my timeline https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/114244473137564287 It empowers #JDVance to review all properties, programs & presentations to prohibit programs that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race.”
#Trump also ordered Interior Secy #DougBurgum to determine if any monuments since Jan 2020 “have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” or “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures.”
It empowers #JDVance to review all properties, programs & presentations to prohibit programs that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race.”
#Trump also ordered Interior Secy #DougBurgum to determine if any monuments since Jan 2020 “have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” or “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures.”
“It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of #slavery even existed, or that #JimCrow laws & #segregation & #RacialViolence against Black communities, Black families, Black individuals even occurred,” said historian Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a professor at Morehouse College, the historically Black campus in Atlanta.
#CivilRights advocates, #historians & #Black political leaders sharply rebuked #Trump on Friday for his order, entitled “Restoring Truth & Sanity to American History.” They argued that his #ExecutiveOrder targeting the #Smithsonian Institution is his admin’s latest move to downplay how #race, #racism & #BlackAmericans themselves have shaped the nation’s story.
#Trump’s order accusing the #Smithsonian Institution of not reflecting #AmericanHistory notes correctly that the country’s Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal.”
But it doesn’t mention that the founders enshrined #slavery into the #US #Constitution & declared enslaved persons as ⅗ of a person for the purpose of the Census.
#whitewashing #censorship #BlackAmerican #WhiteSupremacy #racism #USpol
https://apnews.com/article/trump-black-history-smithsonian-dei-687fd306dc9c6d7611300d74fe49b8aa
#Trump’s order calls the #Smithsonian’s evolving approach a “revisionist” history “with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth” that is “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Does he just describe himself but sub the names of the institutions he attacks wherever his name was?
#law #AmericanHistory #censorship #WhiteWashing #CultureWars #WhiteSupremacy #MaleSupremacy #heterosexism
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/27/nx-s1-5342914/smithsonian-president-trump-executive-order
The #Smithsonian, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of #Congress in 1846. #Trump’s #ExecutiveOrder is an unprecedented act to edit an institution that — reflective of the nation itself — has expanded to include a wider, richer & more diverse telling of the nation’s #history.
#Trump issued an #ExecutiveOrder Thurs evening promising to eliminate “corrosive” & “divisive narratives” from the #Smithsonian’s museums & restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” removed over the past 5 yrs.
The “Restoring Truth & Sanity to #AmericanHistory” order directs #JDVance to eliminate what he finds “improper” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its #museums, #education & #research centers, & the National Zoo to remove “anti-American ideology.”
#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1944, Virginia Hall returns to Nazi-occupied France.
Previously with the British SOE, Hall returned with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and trained 3 battalions of resistance fighters.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #WW2 #AmericanHistory #Histodons
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