MARY CRONK FARRELL AUTHOR
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American Icon Remains an Activist

3/2/2021

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Gloria Steinem's name  is practically synonymous with the word "feminism." Today at 86, she  this heavy-lifter of the American Women's Movement remains an organizer and political activist.

“I’ve learned that this [feminism]is not something we care about for a year or two or three,” Ms.  Steinem wrote. “We are in it for life – and for our lives.”
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Please welcome author Winifred Conkling here to tell you about the biography she's written entitled  Ms. Gloria Steinem, A Life.  Reviewers call it insightful and well-researched. From Booklist,  "Readers will come away with...

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The Enemy at Home

2/10/2021

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This past week marked the anniversary of one of the most crucial moments in American civil rights history. February 7, 1942, African Americans launched the Double V Campaign.
 
It started with one man's question. "Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?"
 
And it burgeoned into a force for equal employment opportunity for blacks during World War II, and laid a foundation for the civil rights marches in the 1960s.
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​I wrote about the Double V  Campaign in my book  Standing up Against Hate. There's one passage that  still chokes me up every time I read it.
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The Enemy at Home  was the working title for my book chronicling black women's service in the US army during WWII.
 
One of the things that struck me most profoundly when working on the story, was the women's willingness to join a segregated army and serve a country that did not recognize them as equal citizens. Some recruits from the north arrived at basic training to face the shock of segregation for the first time in their lives.
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A Spy in the White House

1/28/2021

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It's been a crazy month.

​A divided nation, reeling from the pandemic, now hit with cruel storms from coast to coast.
I support our new president, but politics is not going to solve our problems. We the people...have to step up. All of us little people, doing little everyday things, but with intention and courage like never before.

Americans have done it before.  Take, for example, Mary Richards Browser, an almost completely unknown black woman, who risked her life to become a spy in the Confederate White House,  help free her people and preserve the union during the Civil War.

There are few records to help us reconstruct the life of Mary Richards Browser, but there is evidence she worked as a spy in the very seat of the Confederate government, reporting secrets to the Union Army until fleeing for her life.

 No existing photos are known to picture Mary, though at least one floating around the internet is falsely reported to portray her.
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So up stepped a girl, who imagined how Mary Richards Browser might have looked, and posed for a portrait.

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Where do YOU stand on the Constitution?

10/26/2020

 
The U.S. Constitution has jumped into the limelight this election year, taking the stage in everyday conversation in a way I don't remember happening before. 

That is not going to change now that Amy Comey Barrett has been confirmed to the Supreme Court cementing an "originalist" majority on the court for the first time in nearly a century.  Originalists believe the court should decipher our Founding Father's precise meaning and intent and make sure it is carried out as the law of the land.
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Others see the Constitution as a living document to be interpreted in light of changing thought and circumstance. ​This view has brought us labor rights and protections, equal rights for people of all colors, persuasions and genders. It's brought us social security, Medicare and, so far, allowed the Affordable Care Act to stand.

To shed more light on the Constitutional debate, I've invited author and friend Cynthia Levinson to tell you about her new kids' book and graphic novel Fault Lines in the Constitution.

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    I'm fascinated to discover little-known stories from  history.  Stories of people and events that  provide a new perspective on why and how things happened,  new voices that haven't been heard, insight into how the past brought us here today,  and how it might guide us to a better future.
    I also post here about my books and feature other authors and their books on compelling and important historical topics.
    Occasionally, I share what makes me happy, pictures of my garden, recipes I've made,  events I've attended, people I've met. I'm always happy to hear from readers, in the blog comments, by email or social media.

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