Kristina's Open Stacks Blog - KRISTINA R. GADDY

The Women of the Hull-House

3/20/2018

Inspiring women, innovative approaches to living and learning, and pioneering social justice work: sound like something from the #metoo or #TimesUp movements? Maybe, but it was also how women at the Hull-House in Chicago lived and worked over 100 years ago.

Smith Hall of the Hull House, 1910.

While I was in Chicago in February, I had a chance to visit the Hull-House and be totally amazed by these women, who I already knew a little bit about. Here is a tour and brief history of the settlement house.

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes

3/7/2018

Think hockey is a white sport? The fast-paced action and some signature moves are thanks to a pioneering Black Hockey League that changed the game forever.

Read my piece on OZY.

The Africville Sea-Sides, c. 1922. Team members include: Aaron 'Pa' Carvery, Frederick Carvery, James Carvery, Richard Carvery, William Carvery, Jr., James E. Dixon, William Carvery Sr., T.G. MacDonald, Richard Dixon, James Paris, Jr., and Mantley. Photo from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes was truly innovative in so many ways, and I'm glad that George and Darril Fosty researched the story in their book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895–1925. I can't remember where I first heard about the anecdote that led me to the Fostys' book, and I didn't know much about the history of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia or the Maritimes, but I've found some cool research of which I hope to share more.

A Skimmington Shaming

3/2/2018

Is your neighbor being annoying? Too loud? Coveting another neighbor's wife? What do you do about it?
In early America, the answer would have been skimmington.

Metropolitan Museum of Art / The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1966

Read my piece on skimmington in OZY.

If you want to read even more about skimmington and the European traditions it evolved from, check out Riot and Revelry in Early America, a collection of essays about protest and celebration in the United States from the colonial period to the Civil War.

Mother of Monsters

1/29/2018

In 1954, a make-up artist named Milicent Patrick drew the costume for an iconic monster. She never received credit, and may have even quit the industry after her boss, Bud Westmore, gave her a hard time about taking credit for the Creature from the Black Lagoon's creation. She really was the beauty behind the beast.

Read my full story about Milicent Patrick on OZY.

By Source, Fair use, Link

Universal International made sure to take glamour shots of Patrick working on the Creature and other monsters to include in her promotional tour for the movie.

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To read more about Milicent Patrick and the history of the Creature from the Black Lagoon films, check out Tom Weaver's The Creature Chronicles.

'Communist' Legionnaires Take Over a Town

1/8/2018

On May 1, 1950, Communists took over a small town in Wisconsin. Except that every part of it was totally fake, a stunt meant to scare and warn Americans about what communism was really like. Newspapers, photographers, and newsreels (like the video below) captured the day and make the story a nation-wide news phenomenon.

Read the full story at OZY.

Communist Party USA booklet, available via the National Archives.

The Communist Party USA called out the stunt for being a total misrepresentation of what communism was, but the Legionnaires thought it was successful.

June 1950 article in The American Legion Magazine about the stunt.

The Proto-Feminists of Early America

11/11/2017

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, Vice President John Adams about the 1793 Valmy Celebrations, where women marched in the streets with men in support of the French Revolution.

Read my new piece on OZY!

Just in time for election day, OZY published my piece on how early feminists in the U.S. got inspiration from women participating in the French Revolution. This story was inspired by an essay in Riot and Revelry in Early America, a book that explores the celebrations, parades, and traditions that helped create American culture, even if they have been forgotten.

Pumpkins & Parties!

10/13/2017

Friday the 13th has enough scary stuff, so here are some cute photos of kids celebrating Halloween festivities!

This whole post was inspired by this one photo, from the Upshur County Historical Society in Buckhannon, West Virginia. In a collection of thousands of glass plate negatives, this gem appeared. The photographer Fred Brooks was a naturalist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so many of the photos in the collection are of diseased trees or insects. But since he had the camera, he also took photos of his children (like this one) and the travels he took around the United States. (I'm pretty sure this is his daughter Dorothy and the photo is from 1920-22.)

Today's Folk Music & the Protest Roots

9/3/2017

Read my profile of Eli Smith on OZY.

This past April, I had the opportunity to attend the Brooklyn Folk Festival in New York City's most hipster borough. The event was co-founded and is produced by Eli Smith, the multi-instrumentalist string band musician of the Down Hill Strugglers. The music he booked was a curated experience of great folk and traditional bands from New York and across the country. His music is deeply rooted in the history of folk and traditional music in the United States, and he brings in the complexity of that history when he books other acts too. And through this type of music, he wants people to create, think, and resist.

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.

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?