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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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.
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. So up stepped a girl, who imagined how Mary Richards Browser might have looked, and posed for a portrait.
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. |
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. Archives
March 2021
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