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Rewriting History: The Lee-Jackson Statue in Baltimore

6/5/2017

You never know what you'll find in a box.

Last year, my friend Erik found a recording titled "Dr. Freeman's speech dedicating the Lee-Jackson Monument in Wyman Park" in a friend's record collection. The 33 1/3 LP was homemade, and the fact that it dealt with a seemingly out-of-place confederate statue in a city park about two miles from his house intrigued him.
He shared the recording with me, and I knew the story of the recording had to be told through audio. My radio-producer friend Nadia Ramlagan and I started researching the the speech, the event, the artist, the donation, and produced a radio piece that aired last week on the Marc Steiner Show.
The story explores the history of the statue, and how that history should be a part of the debate about what to do with the confederate monuments in Baltimore today.

1948 cover of Baltimore Magazine, with a feature story on the monument.

Listen to the piece and explore our research.

God-fearing and Faithful Women

4/27/2017

Midwife Problems, and Solutions, Part 3

This is part three of a series on midwifery in Sweden and the United States. To read part one, click here, to read part two, click here.

Johan Van Hoorn, 1662

1697 was a difficult year in Sweden. King Charles XI had died in April. Although he had expanded the Swedish empire, the last two years of his reign were characterized by a devastating famine that spread across the empire. King Charles XII ascended to the throne at only 15 years old. The aristocrats, who made up only a small portion of the population but had a majority of the wealth, now wondered whether the King, just a boy still, would continue consolidating power to the crown or whether they would get some power too.

And during all this uncertainty, Johan van Hoorn was hoping someone would listen to him and his talk of jordegumman. Van Hoorn had studied medicine in the Netherlands and Paris, and had returned to Sweden to practice medicine and ended up spreading his gospel of training the midwife.
In Old English, midwife means with-woman, in Swedish jordemor (the jord comes from the Old Norse word for child or offspring) and barnmorska both mean child-mother. In Sweden at the end of the 1600s, most were untrained women known as jordegummor. Van Hoorn wanted to elevate their status, he wanted to make them barnmorskor. First, he put out the textbook called Then Swenske wäl-öfwade Jord-Gumman in 1697. In 1715, he published The Twenne Gudfruchtige I sitt kall trogne Och therföre af Gudi väl belönte Jordegummor Siphra och Pua, a textbook of questions and answers for midwives.

Across the Atlantic

4/2/2017

Midwife Problems, and Solutions, Part 2

This is part 2 of a series on the history of midwifery in the U.S. and Sweden. Click here to read part 1.

Like Hannah Karlen, Rosa Fineberg was alone when she had arrived in Baltimore in the 1890s. Fineberg had also been a midwife in her previous home, Russia, and planned to continued her work in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Jonestown.
Almost daily, she stepped out of her house carrying a large black leather bag. She walked by kosher meat markets and a butcher (who much to the dismay of the city health officials sometimes kept chickens in the basement), a kosher grocery store that advertised wares in Yiddish, and the Russische Shul where she attended temple. Every week, sometimes twice a week, and sometimes even twice in a single day she was called to deliver a baby. Her patients called her Tante Rosa and trusted her.

Rosa Fineberg around the turn of the 20th century, courtesy Jewish Museum of Maryland.

Kosher butcher in Jonestown, with the basement chickens, from Janet Kemp's Housing Conditions in Baltimore, 1907.

Rosa's daughter Sarah with her husband, Max Siegel in 1899, courtesy Jewish Museum of Maryland.

Fineberg's daughter Sarah thought her mother had a special, healing power, that was at times unexplainable. When Sarah went into labor in 1901, she called her mother to deliver the baby. And if her mother hadn't been a midwife, she probably would have called another midwife and not a doctor. A midwife’s delivery fee was five to ten dollars, much less than a hospital or private doctor would ask for, and in a time before medical schools were regulated, being a doctor didn't necessarily mean anything.

In Baltimore city, over 150 midwives delivered over 4,000 babies a year, and in every city and town in the U.S., you could find a woman delivering a baby, calling herself a midwife. But just like there were no regulations for doctors, there were no regulations for midwives. Why didn't the U.S. regulate the medical profession? And what did that mean for the health and safety of babies and mothers?

Midwife Problems, and Solutions

3/19/2017

(Hey! I'm trying something new here, with a series of short, interconnected posts based on research and archives I visited in the fall of 2015, relating to Swedish midwifery and comparing it to the U.S. Let me know what you think in the contact section.)

Hanna Karlen arrived in Boston on October 11, 1901 with four pieces of luggage. She was 36, traveling alone. On the ship's manifest, Karlen called herself a nurse, a statement that wasn't totally accurate.

"The readers of Jordmodern might be interested in hearing something about their colleagues and our work across the Atlantic."

She had trained as a midwife in Sweden, and she must have already known that in the U.S., being a nurse was more respected than being a midwife. Karlen made her way to Elizabeth, New Jersey, a town just outside Newark. In the city directory, she also called herself a nurse.
She assessed her professional situation quickly, and in 1902 wrote to the editors of the journal of the Swedish Midwives Association, Jordmodern.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2/14/2017

I always loved finding old greeting post-cards when I worked at the archive. What better day to share some of my favorites?

Classic cupid cherubs are always a good choice for telling your valentine how much you care...

But then, you can also get more original. These are two of my favorites. I couldn't decide if the one with the Dutch children is poorly translated, or if it is supposed to be wrong, as if they can't quite make their English flirting correct. And I've definitely printed copies of the tickle card. I find it such a great image of how couples had to flirt in the early 1900s.

How West African Ancestral Music Became Pop

1/30/2017

Check out my new piece on OZY about El Hadj Sidikida Diabate, his sons, and the start of Guinean National Orchestras in West Africa.

On January 15, 1959, Sidikiba put together the first Guinean national orchestra, the Syli National Orchestra. The played at international festivals, including this one in 1969.

Check out more music and stories of the Guinean orchestras here on the blog.

Magical Maps of T.M. Fowler

1/12/2017

Map held at the Library of Congress.

When I was working in central West Virginia, I would often see these birds-eye view maps of small towns, like Buckhannon or Elkins. I quickly realized that there was no way the artist - the maps were signed T.M Fowler - could actually have been looking down on the city. There wasn't a hill or mountain at those angles, and he surely wasn't ascending in a balloon to get the right perspective. How did he do it?

In the Dark, She Comes with Light

12/13/2016

With candles in her hair, dressed in white with a bright red sash, Lucia comes to bring warmth, light, and goodies in the dark Swedish winter.

Celebrating Lucia at Koberg in Västergötland, 1848, watercolor by Fritz von Dardel, Nordiska Museet

The story I always heard growing up is that Lucia is the Patron Saint of Light, and she comes on (what used to be) the darkest day of the year, today, December 13th. She is based on St. Lucy, who, in the 3rd century, brought food and aid to hiding and persecuted Christians in the catacombs. She wore candles on her head so that she could see in the dark while carrying food, and her red sash is said to represent the blood from when she was slain. Her martyrdom lead to Sainthood, but this all happened it Italy, so how did she become the figure of a Nordic holiday? It might have to do with witches. Yup, another Swedish holiday with witch connections...)

A Treatment Meant to Save that Harmed

12/11/2016

Cancer is a spectre, and patients are often willing to try anything for a cure, for a chance at life. In the 1990s, tens of thousands of women underwent bone marrow transplants in hopes of curing their breast cancer. The harsh protocol was meant to eradicate cancer from their bodies, and bring them back from the brink of death with healthy bone marrow blood stem cells. The problem? The study that promoted the treatment as a success was completely fraudulent.

William Halsted developed the radical mastectomy to try to remove as much breast tissue as possible before effective chemotherapy had been discovered. Once chemo entered the sphere of treatment, it was also just as radical through the 1990s. If you have a strong stomach, you can view the surgery in a 1930s instructional film here.

Read the full article at OZY.com.

Ghosts at the Edge of the World

11/24/2016

At the southernmost tip of South America, the Andes mountain range plummets into the ocean and collides with the pampas plains of Argentina. Here, on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the wind whips across the landscape, the Straight of Magellan churns; the beauty of nature collides with the harsh realities of an Antarctic climate. For thousands of years, the Ona tribe called this place home. But as European settlers expanded throughout South America, they took the land the Ona lived on, systematically killed the Ona, and diminished their way of life. Finally, in the 1970s, the last person of full Ona ancestry died.

The land of Tierra del Fuego, 2007.

Images above and left from Charles W. Furlong's article on the Ona and Haush from 1915.

This Thanksgiving, as Native Americans are fighting for clean water and clean air here in the United States, I wanted to feature images of the Ona, with some historical and cultural context, as a reminder of the cultures and ways of life that have been destroyed because of a lack of understanding and respect for people that are labeled different and other.