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I forget where I read it, but it was that many Americans, including Franklin Roosevelt, thought Asians had bad eyesight because of the shape of their eyes, so they really weren't concerned with Japanese pilots being able to drop bombs accurately before Pearl Harbor.
* The National Origins Act of 1924 (until 1960); that established a sytem of national quotas, regarding immigration from southern & eastern Europe, also resticting immigration from Asia.
* That the Rockerfeller Foundation established & funded Germany's eugenics institutions starting in the 1920's & the Carnegie Foundation continued to support Hitler's Nazi eugenics institutions, all the way until 1939.
* The "Fitter Family" contests that took place in State Fairs across America (1919-1930's) that attempted to define the standard for well-bred humans in much the same way as the prize-winning livestock competitions did.
Seeing the 2015 video, "The Fallen of World War II" which gives a representation in graph form of the human casualties of that war. What stunned me especially was the visualization of the numbers of people that Russia lost, compared with the other countries involved. In the past I had read the figures, but the visuals were significantly more sobering.
The main thing that I have learned in studying history is that all people share a universal experience and that the concept of "race" is truly a social construct.
My most mind blowing "discovery" came about due to my interest in genealogy and local history of areas my ancestors are from. I "discovered" that the first black Americans who came to Jamestown were Indentured Servants and not slaves.
Recently, I have been thoroughly shocked and upset to find out that the main people who helped runaway slaves in the Underground Railroad were free black Americans. I have a lot of "free" ancestry and have discovered that nearly all of them lived in a town that was a hotbed of UGGR activity and a couple of them were known participants in the UGGR.
ETA: The upset part is due to the fact that previous people who documented the UGGR activities in the area I live and others did not include the stories of the black Americans who were the majority administrators of the UGGR because of racial prejudice/racism and the idea that blacks could not be all that important to the running of the UGGR. I had always loved studying the UGGR because I feel it is a great testament to the benefits of people getting beyond race and working together for a common goal in a hostile time period and environments. I read a lot of old newspapers, mostly from my local area and I study black history of the Great Lakes region and recently expanded to PA, DE, and MD. I have been very shocked to find many articles mentioning UGGR conventions in various areas and them stating the names of the attendees and a majority of them mentioned were officers of a UGGR committee and they were black. It makes sense that blacks were heavily involved in UGGR though now that I think about it because it would be much less suspicious seeing black people (escaped slaves) with other black people (free blacks) in the antebellum period.
That’s a bit of the history; what of those myths? Here are the answers:
1. The Underground Railroad and the abolition movement itself were perhaps the first instances in American history of a genuinely interracial coalition, and the role of the Quakers in its success cannot be gainsaid. It was, nevertheless, predominantly run by free Northern African Americans, especially in its earliest years, most notably the great Philadelphian William Still. He operated with the assistance of white abolitionists, many of whom were Quakers.
White and black activists such as Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett, Calvin Fairbank, Charles Torrey, Harriet Tubman and Still were genuine heroes of the Underground Railroad. William Still himself, according to James Horton, recorded the rescue of 649 fugitives sheltered in Philadelphia, including 16 who arrived on one day alone, June 1, 1855, according to Blight.
The Railroad’s expansion did not occur until after 1850, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. But very few people, relatively speaking, engaged in its activities. After all, it was illegal to assist slaves escaping to their freedom. Violating the 1850 Act could lead to charges of “constructive treason.” Being an abolitionist or a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the historian Donald Yacovone related in an email to me, “was about as popular and as dangerous as being a member of the Communist Party in 1955.”
Recently watched an Open Book review on our Pbs station. It was about the worlds fair held in Buffalo (1901).
They took dogs from the newly funded SPCA and killed them as "entertainment" then proceeded to serve them at a dinner. The Spca didn't want to ruffle feathers so they remained quiet on this deplorable act.
Or the KKK Funded rendition of how slavery was so good for society. The mockery was enforcing such hatred which high society encouraged at this event....
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