Gloria Young from Bakerstown, PA, dropping what some today might derisively call Critical Race Theory on the readers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 September 1956. "I feel shame for my white countrymen."
I'm not going to show the full image, but this is the story that Gloria saw in the September 1 edition of the paper that inspired her to write that letter.
As a youth, I was taught to think of the civil rights movement & school integration as stories of black bravery, which they were. But they were also stories of white rage, of thousands & thousands of ordinary ppl who took it upon themselves to stand athwart history yelling stop.
The people who engaged in acts of massive resistance like this as teenagers are in their late 70s today, their children are probably in their 40s and 50s. This is not ancient history.
Many of us have probably seen interviews with the Little Rock Nine or other survivors of the black freedom struggle. But when's the last time you heard the testimony of or a story about one of the thousands and thousands of massive resisters?
Their actions have largely disappeared down the memory hole, in part because it's painful to recall this history & the ppl who were on the wrong side of it. But forgetting the depth and breadth of massive resistance renders us unable to see a key dimension of our past & present.
Anyway...let's work on channeling more of the spirit of Gloria Young from Bakertown today, and less that of Mansfield High Texas, shall we? Seems like it should be a low bar.
Gloria appears to have come straight from central casting for The Feminine Mystique. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 24 January 1958.

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More from @SethCotlar

12 Dec
That terrible “Reconstruction was a mistake” piece, published in Pat Buchanan’s old rag, that’s making the rounds today reminds me of this 1968 conversation between George Wallace and Bill Buckley.
Bill Buckley calls Reconstruction a “systematic exploitation of the South” and “the worst period in our history” after noting that two of his great-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy. Maybe I’m weird, but I guess I’d say, um, *slavery* was worse than Reconstruction? 🤷‍♂️
So let’s have none of this “conservative elites used to have a far less racist understanding of American History” stuff today, mmmmkay.
Read 6 tweets
11 Dec
In 1939, when Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein were six years old, 10% of Americans (13 million people if the Roper poll was accurate) thought Jews should be deported. 53% said they should face "some restrictions." Only 39% said they should be treated the same as any American.
I mentioned those two senators just for perspective. This was in living memory. This was the generation that raised the boomers, and were the grandparents of Gen X.
Antisemitism is just one manifestation of a broader thread of illiberalism that courses through US history and politics. Don’t be fooled into thinking bigotry (of this and other forms) is some irrelevant vestige of a dead past.
Read 4 tweets
11 Dec
There were pictures of David Duke in a Nazi uniform and a KKK uniform publicly circulating in 1991 and yet the majority of white Louisianans voted for him for Governor...just in case you were wondering what past sins US voters have been willing to overlook.
It would be interesting to know how many of those Duke voters who were fine with his past in 1991, were completely unwilling to forgive Obama in 2008 for once going to an event at the home of Bill Ayres.
Duke got 56% of the vote of whites with family incomes under $15,000, 63% of those making from $15,000 to $29,999, 60% of those making from $30,000 to 49,999, 49% of those making from $50,000 to $74,999, and 34% percent of those with incomes $75,000 and over.
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec
I watched the NYTimes 40 minute video reconstructing the events of January 6 with students and one of their main takeaways was how close things got to being much much worse. They audibly gasped when Pence and the nuclear codes were quickly hustled out of the chamber.
Another take away was the cognitive dissonance of watching self-described “patriots” marauding through the hallowed halls of the US Capitol like drunk college students trashing the student center after a lost football game.
They’d all watched January 6 in real time and had found it disturbing. But seeing the bloodthirsty rage of the crowd up close like you do in that video really brought home the seriousness of purpose that drove these folks.
Read 4 tweets
10 Dec
The Alex Jones loving, septuagenarian Publix heiress who wired several hundred thousand dollars from her lair in Tuscany to fund the Jan 6 coup reminded me of an earlier far right heiress with Italian ties, Countess Guardabassi. esquire.com/news-politics/…
Countess Guardabassi (born Rosalind Wood, heir to a New England textile fortune who married an Italian fascist aristocrat) was a super-rich Palm Beach racist who funded neo-Nazi and other right wing groups from the 1950s into the 1970s
In 1971 she hosted neo-Nazi Revilo Oliver at her Palm Beach mansion. Oliver was working with the National Youth Alliance at the time, the group that spawned the guy who wrote the Turner Diaries.
Read 13 tweets
9 Dec
What was happening in the WH in December 2020 and January 2021 was like Watergate on steroids...and yet it seems highly likely that none of the high level people involved will be held accountable for it because their Republican colleagues will protect them at all costs.
They were seriously talking about declaring a fake "National Security Emergency" to justify the nullification of a free and fair election. Just take a second to imagine what Lindsay Graham would have said about this if Obama had done it.
Read 4 tweets

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