The Burns Archive is a collection of over 700,000 historical photographs that document
disturbing subject matter: obsolete medical practices and experiments, death, disease, disasters, crime, revolutions, riots and war. Newsweek posted a
select gallery this past October, as well as a
video interview and walk-through with curator and collector Dr. Stanley B. Burns, a New York opthalmologist.
(Via) (Content at links may be disturbing to some.) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 26, 2011 -
15 comments
Through a Lens Darkly - on September 4, 1957, when 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Little Rock Central High, she was blocked by the National Guard and surrounded by a screaming mob of 250:
"Lynch her! Lynch her!" "No nigger bitch is going to get in our school! Get out of here!" "Go back to where you came from!" Looking for a friendly face, she turned to an old woman, who spat on her.
Photos. Dramatic
news footage. Ernest Green, another of the Little Rock 9
recalls the first day of school.
[more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Sep 25, 2007 -
48 comments
Bought from a slave trader and put on display at the Bronx zoo: the strange, sad story of Ota Benga, a Pygmy with filed teeth brought from the Congo to America in 1906.
Here are a couple of contemporary news accounts of the controversial exhibit. After the zoo, Benga tried to make a life in America, studying to be a missionary.
"But what he really wanted to do was to tell everyone in this country that his people were dying, and why. I think he thought that eventually they'd listen. But they never did. That, to me, is the real tragedy."
In 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and
shot himself with a stolen pistol.
Creationists say the story illustrates "the racism of evolutionary theory" and "the horrors that evolutionary theory has brought to society."
posted by CunningLinguist
on Aug 7, 2006 -
35 comments
"Approximately 250,000 persons viewed and passed by the bier of little Emmett Till. All were shocked, some horrified and appalled. Many prayed, scores fainted and practically all, men, women and children wept". Chicago Defender, September 1, 1955.
Federal officials this morning
erected a white tent over the grave of Emmett Till in
Alsip, Ill.,
in preparation to exhume the body to shed light on the
Chicago teenager's death 50 years ago.
Till, 14 years old at the time,
was killed in a hate crime in Money, Miss., that
sparked the Civil Rights movement. (previous Emmett Till MeFi threads
here and
here)
posted by matteo
on Jun 1, 2005 -
5 comments
"I am an American, so that is why I make films about America. America is sitting on our world, I am making films that have to do with America (because) 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I can't change anything. We are a nation under influence and under a very bad influence… because Mr. Bush is an asshole and doing very idiotic things."
Lars Von Trier introduces his new film at the
Cannes Film Festival:
«Manderlay» picks up where «
Dogville» left off, with the character originated by Nicole Kidman -- now played by Bryce Dallas Howard --
stumbling onto
a plantation that time forgot, where slavery still operates in the 1930s.
The film (5 MB .pdf file, official pressbook) ends, as Dogville did, with David Bowie’s Young Americans played over a photomontage of images that range from a Ku Klux Klan meeting to the Rodney King beating, George Bush at prayer and Martin Luther King at his final rest, American soldiers in Vietnam and the Gulf, the Twin Towers. More inside.
posted by matteo
on May 16, 2005 -
69 comments
Rebecca's Revival. Rebecca Protten, born a slave in 1718, gained her freedom and joined a group of proselytizers from the
Moravian Church. She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, West Indies. Weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas. University of Florida historian
Jon Sensbach has written a
book about Protten's life -- the interracial marriage, the trial on charges of blasphemy and inciting of slaves, the travels to Germany and West Africa. Later in her life, after she moved to Germany, Rebecca was ordained as a deaconess: "a former slave now administered Communion and practiced other claims to spiritual authority over white women, including European aristocrats." More inside.
posted by matteo
on May 15, 2005 -
4 comments
Only in 1967 did Loving v. Virginia overturn vigorously-enforced laws against interracial marriage in these 15 states--Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Only in 1964 did the
Civil Rights Act overturn laws against equal access to voting, public accommodation, and public education. Only in 1963 did the
Equal Pay Act mandate that men and women be paid the same wage for the same work at the same job.
History isn't a superhighway, leading us in straight lines toward utopia. We
fall back and we
move forward, but over the past fifty years, the United States has become considerably more inclusive and equality of access to opportunity has widened. Take a look at
this article from the
Atlantic Monthly in 1956--1956!--if you don't believe me.
posted by Sidhedevil
on Nov 4, 2004 -
190 comments
Peekskill, 1949. "The mob was rolling toward us for the second attack. This was, in a way, the worst of that night. For one thing, it was still daylight; later, when night fell, our own sense of organization helped us much more, but this was daylight and they poured down the road and into us, swinging broken fenceposts, billies, bottles, and wielding knives..." Howard Fast's account of a terrifying evening that was supposed to be an outdoor concert near Peekskill, NY. You can think about the political implications ("...it illustrates how easily, when terror is unleashed in a nation, it can take hold, and how thin the line is that separates constitutional government from tyranny and dictatorship...") or just enjoy the riveting tale. (Related song and picture
here.)
posted by languagehat
on Dec 1, 2003 -
22 comments
The Pornography of Racist Violence: NYT Columnist Margo Jefferson reviews "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America", and says the book is a "record of what we can call civil war crimes." She goes on to say:
"The images are also what the historian Leon F. Litwack calls, in his introduction, race pornography: they were often made into picture postcards that were mailed, with curt, gleeful or venomous messages to friends and foes with nary a peep from the United States postal authorities."
posted by likorish
on Dec 26, 2000 -
35 comments
