Category Archives: History

This month, Alexander City native Orlando Withers is paying homage to the village that raised him.

"We have our own Black history here in Alexander City, Alabama and I wanted to honor our icons that have served our community in and out," said Withers, 37.

For each day of February, Withers is commemorating one of those icons living and deceased by posting a photograph and brief bio on his personal Facebook page.

"The saying is, 'it takes a village to raise a child,'" Withers said. "These are the people who motivated me to keep going when I wanted to give up. It wasn't only me, it was the whole community."

The first person to come to mind was community leader Rev. Alfred Cooper, who died in 2019 at the age of 90. Cooper, a former assistant principal and football coach, was an Alexander City Schools board member during integration.

As a child, Withers would see him at the Laurel Recreation Center, renamed the Cooper Community Center after its director.

"Each day that I came in, he motivated me; he'd ask 'how you doing, young man?'" Withers said.

Ella Gray, owner and chef of soul food restaurant "Mama Ella's," was another obvious choice, Withers said.

"Ms. Ella Gray, she basically taught me love," Withers said. "And what I mean by 'she taught me love' is Ms. Ella ran a restaurant where she probably gave away more food than she sold."

After coming up with a few names important to himself, Withers reached out to some of his friends to help come up with a shortlist. Instead, Withers came away with over 120 names.

"Sadly, the month of February only has 28 days," he said.

Withers works at the Honda plant, alternating between the day and night shift every couple of weeks. For the past few days, he's has gotten into a routine of posting at around 4 a.m. before heading into work. As of Thursday, Withers already had several days' worth of posts queued up on a Word document.

"Once I put it up there, people are going to share, comment, congratulate them," Withers said. "They're going to share memories on the page or something like that. Because some people don't know how much effect they had on the Black community and not only the Black community."

The Outlook has excerpted the posts made so far, courtesy of Orlando Withers:

"Cooper was a community leader, educator and coach. He was committed to directing the youth on the right path and educating. The Cooper Rec Center wasn't only a place for sports, but also a place of knowledge. Each and every day you (received) a word of encouragement from Rev. Cooper. He was a father to the fatherless!"

"Gwendolyn Darnell Coley was born in Alexander City to two grade school teachers, Grace Ellis Darnell and William Thomas Darnell, in April of 1941. Mrs. Coley taught 35-plus years in Alexander City (Schools) as a first-grade teacher and middle school counselor. She was devoted to encouraging kids to be proud of themselves and taught them self-love."

"Better known as Mama Ella, Ms. Gray was known (for) her ownership of the best soul food restaurant in Alex City, known as 'Mama Ella's.' She always greeted her guests with a smile and the nicest voice you could ever find. The difference from Mama Ella's restaurant and others was she always prepared food for the homeless, less fortunate, sick, and elders free of cost. She always asked the youth about how life and school was going."

"Ask anyone from Northside to Springhill if they have been influenced by Mrs. Geraldine Freeman (also affectionately known as Miss Freeman, Miss Geraldine or Mother Freeman) and their eyes light up. A lifelong citizen of Alexander City, Mrs. Freeman has made her mark; be it as a Head Start teacher or a Sunday School teacher, she has touched many lives."

"Some call him coach, Dad, Carl, but born and raised in Alexander City, Martin graduated from Laurel High School in 1969, just as integration was bringing about the merger of Alabama's white and Black high school athletic associations. He was one of three Black players chosen for the 1969 North-South All-Star game, the first minorities to receive that honor."

"Born December 17, 1956 in Alexander City, Alabama, (Poole) attended Benjamin Russell High School where he graduated (and) later attended University of Louisville to play running back. (In) 1979, Poole was drafted in the NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals (and) traded to the Denver Broncos. Poole also played in Canadian Football League. Poole has an athletic scholarship that he gives out each year."

"Mr. Berry joined the military during World War II where he served both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. One of his greatest honors came in 2014, as he became the first African American ever to be honored with the Legion of Honor Award, the highest award issued by the French Government for distinguished Military Service. In 1966, during a turbulent time of the civil rights movement where there (were) no Black officers in the South and few across the country, Mr. Berry joined the Alexander City Police force."

"Coach Hicks was well known within the community. He had a genuine love and concern for the people, especially his students and athletes. He had an excellent rapport with all people. We've all had teachers or coaches that were special to us in some way. But, the impact that Coach Hicks had upon those that knew him was remarkable."

"One of the most substantial things (Gamble) did (as Alexander City councilman) was have the gym at the Sportplex named after Mrs. Eva Fuller, who was asked to sell her land to create the Sportplex. He then became the first African American male to become a Tallapoosa County Commissioner. To this day, he is still helping his community whether it be a heart to heart conversation with the youth, employing those in need of work, or helping the elderly."

"Beverly has devoted her life to educating the children of Tallapoosa County, starting out as a teacher at Horseshoe Bend School before becoming an administrator in Alexander City Schools. She has served in various administrative capacities for the last 18 years, being named the first Black female principal in Alexander City Schools in 2007 and now serves as the deputy superintendent of teaching and learning."

Audrey Michelle "Buffy" Colvin

"Buffy has been employed at Russell Medical since 1990 as a respiratory therapist. In 2016, Buffy was elected as city councilor for District 2, becoming the third Black female to serve on the council. In 2020, she retained her position and was chosen as council president, making her the first female and first Black person to be chosen as council president."

"(Boleware) attended the city's all-Black and only school for Black children in Alex City, Laurel High, where he was valedictorian, a member of the high school band playing multiple instruments and student council president. He served on the Alexander City Board of Education for 10 years and two years as president. (Boleware is) currently director of the Community Action Agency for Chambers, Tallapoosa and Coosa counties."

"Mr. Ford also in the United States Army. He later began working with the Alexander City school system, where he proudly served as an educator for 29 years. In addition, Mr. Ford became a serial entrepreneur of many businesses in the community, including the one and only Ford's Community Club. Mr. Ford was also known as 'Boss.'"

"Mr. B. received a job offer to teach building construction at the Tallapoosa Area Vocational Center. Mr. B. became the second African American teacher to teach at the school. After the vocational school closed, Mr. B. took his program over to (Benjamin Russell). Mr. B. has held several community roles (including) the Alexander City Planning Commission and Habitat for Humanity board. His passion for education and helping others led him to direct students to enter post-secondary careers as well as becoming successful entrepreneurs."

Go here to read the rest:

'We have our own Black history': Alex City native honors an icon a day - The Alexander City Outlook

Updated at 10:35 a.m. Sunday

Norfolk Southern is stopping work on a rail facility in northwest Atlanta that had drawn opposition from local community and environmental groups, as well as from city officials.

On Saturday, the day after Mayor Keisha Lance Bottomss office announced it had filed a petition with the federal Surface Transportation Board to stop construction of a fuel terminal at the former site of the Chattahoochee Brick Co., Norfolk Southern said it would halt work immediately while the company continues discussions with the city.

The brick company, located on the Chattahoochee River, had relied on forced convict labor to churn out millions of bricks in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

The factory was owned by former Atlanta Mayor James English. And it operated under horrible conditions. Workers mostly Black men, many arrested for petty crimes, then forced to work were beaten, fed rotting food and lived in filth.

Large numbers of them had done nothing to deserve the fate that befell them, said Doug Blackmon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about convict labor, Slavery By Another Name, which includes research on the horrors of the brick factory.

They were starved and whipped and just treated in the most cruel ways, he said. Large numbers of people died there. And some of those people were buried there.

Norfolk Southern, which is moving its headquarters to Atlanta, says in addition to environmental reviews, it has also hired experts to conduct archeological and historical surveys, as well as excavations at the site.

We share the Mayors view of the historical significance of this site and recognize that any entity seeking to develop it takes on a special responsibility to do so in a socially and environmentally responsible way, Norfolk Southern spokesman Jeff DeGraff said in an email.

Neighbors and local activists have advocated for years to turn the location into a memorial to the victims of convict leasing, instead of allowing industrial development to proceed.

On Friday afternoon, the mayors office announced it had filed a petition with a federal agency that oversees railroads to stop construction of the ethanol unloading facility being built by Norfolk Southern.

Our Administration will do everything it can to protect the sanctity and significance of this property, the mayor said in a release from the city. A site of such historic and environmental importance needs careful consideration before even limited development occurs.

The Bottoms administration had, to this point, been quiet on the question of what should happen with the site, though last year the Atlanta City Council weighed in and asked Norfolk Southern to change its plans.

In its petition to stop work on the project, which cites prior reporting by WABE, the city writes that the site is of tremendous historical and cultural significance to the citizens of the city of Atlanta.

Donna Stephens, a neighborhood activist who has been leading the fight to stop the industrial development, said the news that the city was stepping in had brought her to tears Friday.

Im extremely happy, said Stephens, who works with the Proctor Creek Stewardship Council and other community and environmental groups in the area. There have been days where a number of us have been like, Should we just throw in the towel? Because it felt like we werent getting anywhere.

Stephens and others first started advocacy around the site five years ago, when a different company had planned a similar fuel terminal. That project appeared to stall a few years ago when the city denied it a key permit.

Norfolk Southern, which has tracks adjacent to the site, announced last year that it was leasing the property from the original company, with plans to build the ethanol facility.

We should have continued pushing to make sure everything got resolved, the first time, said Bob Kent, who lives near the property and has been working with Stephens. Now, thanks to the mayor, we get a chance to recover.

In addition to a memorial, Kent said hed like to see a park, affordable housing and commercial development just not industrial development built on the property, which sits on the Chattahoochee River near the confluence with Proctor Creek.

Norfolk Southern says it will build some type of memorial as part of its development, though officials have said they dont know what form it would take. The company has held meetings with some community members and with the Atlanta History Center about the site.

From a corporate responsibility perspective, you cant say, That just happened in the past, and expect to move forward, said Vanessa Sutherland, an attorney for Norfolk Southern, on a recent episode of Crucial Conversations, a program produced by Georgia State Universitys Rialto Center.

Earlier this week, Kent and Stephens were joined by other activists, pastors and former Atlanta politicians for a press conference at the site, where they called on the city to step in and stop Norfolk Southerns work.

Were asking Mayor Bottoms, fight against this deal, former state Sen. Vincent Fort said at the event. Use the power of the office to stop this moral, economic and environmental injustice.

City Councilman Dustin Hillis, whose district includes the property, said in an email that he was glad to hear about the citys move to stop the development, and hes confident they will prevail.

I stand with our nearby neighborhoods, historic preservationists and environmental advocates who have been tireless in their efforts fighting this development, he said.

Norfolk Southern says it does not have any evidence of a cemetery on the site, but given the tragic legacy of the site we have continued to exercise great care.

But Blackmon said that doesnt mean there arent people buried there.

Every place like this had a burial ground, he said. Because people died so frequently in these places.

A 1960s map of the site includes a note about a temporary cemetery.

Blackmon, who served on Atlantas confederate monuments advisory committee, said there arent any memorials to the victims of the convict leasing system in Georgia, though the committee did suggest creating one.

Atlanta, rightfully, is so proud of being the home of Dr. Martin Luther King and the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, he said. That obscures what a terrible place Atlanta was in terms of race before World War II.

He said he doesnt know whats possible in terms of a memorial at the Chattahoochee Brick site, but he said there should be a conversation about what happened there among people who live near it now, descendants of people victimized there, and people connected to the companies that made money there.

We need to be honest about that history. And weve refused to be honest about it up to now, he said.

More:

Industrial Development On Atlanta Site With Ugly History Paused After Pressure | 90.1 FM WABE - WABE 90.1 FM

The Pittsburgh Steelers will be making a first round draft pick for the first time since 2019., and for the fifth time in team history that selection will be the 24th overall pick. The last time the Steelers drafted in this slot was back in 2012 when they took All-Pro guard, David DeCastro. While DeCastro was clearly a home run choice for the Steelers, the selection has quite a bumpy history with the club.

The Steelers drafted cornerback, Chad Scott 24th in 1997. While Scott was a fine player, the team passed on others that would have far more illustrious careers. Players like Tiki and Ronde Barber, Darren Sharper, or even just two cornerback selections later, All-Pro Sam Madison.

However, the worst Steelers pick at this spot would be when they selected one of the biggest busts in team history back in 1989 with their second of two first round draft choices selecting offensive tackle, Tom Ricketts. Ricketts would only last three seasons in Pittsburgh before he split from the organization. In those three seasons, Ricketts would start just 13 games. The Steelers have not made multiple first round picks in a draft since 1989.

The first 24th overall selection in team history was a pretty good one however. In 1973 the Steelers added Pro Bowl Cornerback J.T. Thomas. Thomas was the Yin to Mel Blounts Yang for the Steel Curtain defense. A four time Super Bowl champion and a steady force in the Steelers defensive backfield.

Looking at the 24th overall selection as a whole, you will see a number of All-Pro and Hall of Fame players that immediately jump off the page. Those include: Aaron Rodgers, Ed Reed, Chris Johnson, Steven Jackson, Dallas Clark and Craig Iron-head Heyward. This goes to show that even MVP caliber talent can be found at 24, you just have to make the right pick.

Taking things one step further below is a list of the past ten 24th overall selections:

20 Cesar Ruiz, C, Saints19 Josh Jacobs, RB Raiders18 D.J. Moore, WR Panthers17 Gareon Conley, CB Raiders16 William Jackson III, CB Bengals15 D. J. Humphries, OT Cardinals14 Darqueze Dennard, CB Bengals13 Bjrn Werner, DE Colts12 David DeCastro, RG Steelers11 Cameron Jordan, DE Saints

Since the Steelers drafted DeCastro in 2012 the 24th overall selection has been a bit of a mess, outside of Josh Jacobs. My biggest takeaway from looking up these names up were teams clearly drafted out of need and didn't go with the best player available. Which, considering some of the big time flops of the above names may prove the best player available approach is the best choice the Steelers could make.

But what do you think? Who should the Steelers drafted 24th overall? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below.

See more here:

A complete history of the 24th overall pick in the NFL Draft - Behind the Steel Curtain

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(Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images) LA Chargers

At one point it seemed that the LA Chargers would have a pretty high pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. However, the team rattled off four wins in a row to end the season, giving them the 13th overall pick in the draft.

The 13th pick is still in that range of elite prospects that can truly make a difference. The prospects in the top 15-20 are typically all elite prospects and from there, it becomes more about who a team likes more than overall talent.

The Chargers may have completely taken themselves out of the Penei Sewell sweepstakes but there are still some solid prospects that could be taken at 13 and recent history is an indication of that. The 13th overall pick has been pretty solid in recent years, but it has been great in terms of offensive line talent.

2020: Tristan Wirfs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

What an excellent selection for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tristan Wirfs was not only a huge part of the Bucs blocking for Tom Brady, but he was arguably the best rookie tackle in the league last season.

Wirfs was the fourth tackle in the draft and while all three tackles before him definitely have potential, Wirfs was the one that made the biggest difference in year one and now has the highest projected ceiling.

That is excellent news for the LA Chargers. If they could get an offensive lineman with the 13th pick that has the kind of instant impact that Wirfs had in Tampa it would be huge for Justin Herbert. Not only will it help in 2021, but the team wouldfinallybe building towards something that could be long-lasting.

Wirfs is already a Super Bowl Champion hopefully, the LA Chargers can repeat the trend of the 13th overall pick winning a Super Bowl in year one.

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See the article here:

LA Chargers: 5-year history of the 13th overall selection - BoltBeat

As a day of violence and mayhem at the Capitol slid into evening last month, with blood shed, glass shattered and democracy besieged, President Donald J. Trump posted a message on Twitter that seemed to celebrate the moment. Remember this day forever! he urged.

The House Democrats prosecuting him at his Senate impeachment trial barely a month later hope to make sure everyone does.

With conviction in a polarized Senate seemingly out of reach, the House managers, as the prosecutors are known, are aiming their arguments at two other audiences beyond the chamber: the American people whose decision to deny Mr. Trump a second term was put at risk and the historians who will one day render their own judgments about the former president and his time in power.

Through the expansive use of unsettling video footage showing both Mr. Trumps words and the brutal rampage that followed, the managers are using their moment in the national spotlight to make the searing images of havoc the inexpungible legacy of the Trump presidency. Rather than let the outrage subside, the managers are seeking to ensure that Mr. Trump is held accountable even if he is acquitted in the Senate.

The Democrats and House managers are playing to a different jury in this case than in any previous impeachment trial of an American president, said Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and the author of books on impeachment, presidents and the Constitution. Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the first paragraph of historical accounts of the Trump presidency is likely to say that he incited a mob attack on Congress after refusing to accept the results of an election.

If Mr. Trump is not convicted, the managers want to ensure that he remains so politically radioactive that he cannot be the same force he once was if not the pariah they think he ought to be, then at least a figure that many mainstream Republicans and their corporate donors keep at arms length. In effect, if the Senate will not vote to formally disqualify him from future office, they want the public to do so.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of Mr. Trumps more outspoken Republican critics, touched on that on Wednesday after the House managers played a searing sequence of never-before-seen images of the mob he inspired ransacking the Capitol. Given what the country has now seen, she said the prospects for a Trump comeback campaign in 2024 appear vanishingly thin.

Frankly, I dont see how after the American public sees the whole story laid out here not just in one snippet on this day and another on that, but this whole scenario that has been laid out before us I dont see how Donald Trump could be re-elected to the presidency again, Ms. Murkowski told reporters. I just dont see that.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, said the managers had made a very persuasive presentation. Not clear they met the legal definition of incitement' and insurrection, but he is effectively tarnished for all time and incapable of running in 2024, Mr. Rove said. The question is how much power to dominate the G.O.P. will have been drained away by the time this is over.

Mr. Trumps camp acknowledges that the prosecution has been effective, but portrays it as an illegitimate smear borne of partisan animus. Jason Miller, a longtime adviser and campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump, called the impeachment drive a vindictive way to try to beat him for future elections, but one that he said would not work given Mr. Trumps enduring support with the Republican base.

I think the president is going to be involved in making sure we win back the House and Senate in 2022, Mr. Miller told Fox Business. President Trump will stay active. I think its going to take a little bit of rest and relaxation at Mar-a-Lago, but we will see him right back at it shortly.

The former presidents legal team, which will begin its own arguments after the House managers conclude theirs, dismissed the use of the video in the Senate trial as an inflammatory tactic to blame Mr. Trump for the actions of others.

It is something that President Trump has condemned in no uncertain terms, the terrible violence that went on there, so theres not an issue about that, David I. Schoen, one of his lawyers, said on Fox News. Theyre just hoping to drum up emotion and get their last shots in at President Trump.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who testified against impeachment the first time the House lodged charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against Mr. Trump in 2019, said the managers this time were just playing to the crowd rather than making a legal argument.

The House is presenting an emotionally charged but legally deficient case in terms of conviction, he said. Indeed, much of the argument seems designed to enrage rather than convict.

The videotapes, he added, are provocative but not probative. It is like showing a jury the remnants of a fire. It does not prove that the accused started the fire.

The decision to impeach Mr. Trump a second time and put him on trial even after he left office was always a dicey one for Democrats, some of whom were wary of once again mounting a largely partisan effort that last year resulted in an acquittal that only emboldened the president who declared himself vindicated. Some Democrats like Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia argued that a bipartisan censure resolution with Republican support would be a better outcome this time around.

But after drafting a measure declaring that the former president aided an insurrection in a way that might disqualify him from running for office again under the 14th Amendment, the senator found few takers on either side of the aisle Republicans balked at breaking with Mr. Trump and his fellow Democrats demanded impeachment or nothing, as Mr. Kaine put it. So now the Democrats who insisted on impeachment or nothing face the prospect of again failing to convict Mr. Trump, making it more imperative for them to use the trial to establish a different kind of verdict that will go beyond the vote itself.

The video images played for senators this week seemed to be having an effect outside the chamber. Twitter reinforced on Wednesday that it would never allow its most famous former user back onto its platform after cutting him off from his 89 million followers for inciting violence. And The Wall Street Journals influential conservative editorial page said that Mr. Trump was permanently scarred.

Now his legacy will be forever stained by this violence, and by his betrayal of his supporters in refusing to tell them the truth, the editorial said. Whatever the result of the impeachment trial, Republicans should remember the betrayal if Mr. Trump decides to run again in 2024.

The managers were also looking past 2024 to the pages of history. When it comes time to record this era, they want scholars to focus first on the events of recent weeks, branding Mr. Trump in the minds of future generations as a dangerous demagogue responsible for a deadly assault on the citadel of democracy.

Quite honestly, as a presidential historian, it was clear to me watching these events unfold on Jan. 6 that the insurrection would be the defining moment of his presidency, said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, a history professor at Purdue University. It clearly seemed a culmination of the ways in which Trump actively worked to advance misinformation, undermine the democratic process and institutions and endorse violence during his presidency.

That, of course, was not the story line Mr. Trump was promoting as he spent weeks falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him and encouraged supporters to travel to Washington on Jan. 6 to help him find a way to cling to power.

He portrayed himself as an aggrieved victim of a vast conspiracy that involved not just Democrats but Republicans as well, not to mention judges, election officials, the news media, the Cubans and Venezuelans and voting machine companies.

History will remember, Mr. Trump declared in a tweet about 10 days before the riot. That it will, and the trial this week will go a long way toward deciding what those memories will be.

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Trump Prosecutors Want a Verdict From the Public and History - The New York Times

New Jerseys attorney general, charging three male prison guards with misconduct this week in connection with an attack on female inmates, said the states lone womens prison has an ugly history. Indeed it hasnt even been a year since the U.S. government said abuse at the facility was an open secret.

But how was abuse an open secret? Why wasnt something done about it? Below is a closer look at the history of the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.

This week, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal charged one guard with assault and misconduct and two sergeants at the prison with misconduct counts, saying they also tried to cover up the January attack on at least six inmates.

One woman was punched 28 times and pepper-sprayed, while another had bones broken near her eye, Grewal said.

More charges could be coming, he said.

News from the prison spurred lawmakers to call for the state Department of Corrections commissioners resignation, led to criminal investigations and pushed Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy to hire a former state comptroller to conduct a separate investigation.

WHO SAYS ABUSE WAS AN OPEN SECRET? AND WHY?

Federal prosecutors found former and current prisoners called sexual abuse an open secret.

The prosecutors uncovered a culture of acceptance of sexual abuse of inmates details to back the claim up.

In April, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, the U.S. Justice Department published a scathing report about the prison, located in Clinton, Hunterdon County, more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of New York City.

Five guards and one civilian worker at the prison pleaded guilty or were convicted of sexually abusing more than 10 women from 2016 to 2019.

The report found that there were insufficient cameras, and that one storage room without a surveillance camera, had a a mattress lying in it.

Guards regularly called prisoners disparaging names, graphically commented on their appearances and remarked on their sexual inclinations.

The report also found that when inmates reported abuse, the response could be retaliatory, with inmates being subjected to body orifice scanners and then being placed into solitary confinement.

Two women filed explosive court papers against New York City, claiming theyre the latest victims of visitor sex abuse by correction officers in the citys jails. Sarah Wallace reports.

HOW DID THE STATE RESPOND TO THE REPORT?

The state Department of Corrections oversees the prison, and a spokesperson for the department says its committed to changing the culture at the facility and has made a number of changes, including: hiring more female guards, installing more surveillance cameras and increasing training for prisoners and staff.

The department also is hiring an assistant commission for womens services.

DID THE JANUARY INCIDENT INVOLVE SEXUAL ASSAULT?

None of the charges Grewal brought this week are for sexual assault. But that doesnt mean sexual assault hasnt been raised. One inmate, Ajila Nelson, told NJ.com that she was attacked, kicked in the face, groped and sexually assaulted.

More than 25 women have now filed notices of claim against New York City alleging they were sexually abused by correction officers during visits to jails. Sarah Wallace reports.

IS THE STATE DOING ENOUGH?

Not for some, no. Every Democratic state senator signed a letter asking Murphy to fire Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks.

Murphy has said he finds the reports of the attack at the prison sickening, but declined to speak further about it, including on Friday at a news conference. Murphy has hired Matt Boxer, an attorney and former state comptroller and federal prosecutor, to investigate what happened in January at the prison.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The three guards face March hearings in state court, and the attorney general suggested more charges could be coming. Tom Eicher, the director of the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability under Grewal, said additional charges are likely.

A timeline for the investigation ordered by the governor isnt clear, nor yet is the cost to the public of hiring an outside firm to look into the matter.

Excerpt from:

EXPLAINER: Why Does NJ Women's Prison Have Ugly History'? - NBC New York

Tracy* kept it together when her mom died in mid-March in New York. She kept it together when she came back from the funeral on an Amtrak rather than an airplane because there were no flights operating to get her home.

It wasnt until she went back to her job as a flight attendant and saw out of the galley window row upon row of airplanes stacked nose to tail with cloth covers over their engines and sensors.

Tracy has been flying for over 16 years. She worked during the Great Recession, when passenger traffic fell by 10 percent and forced several airlines to declare bankruptcy. She worked during the years of nightmarish tarmac delays prior to 2010, when airlines werent required to taxi back to the gate to let passengers off even after delays of three or more hours. And she worked during the SARS epidemic in 2004, H1N1 in 2009, and the Ebola scare in 2014. But nothing in her training or her experience prepared her for the sight of so many airplanes from so many airlines with nowhere to go and no passengers to fly. For the first time in her entire career, she broke down and cried while on the job.

This has to be the beginning of the end, she thought. How are we going to recover from this?

Two months earlier, in January 2020, the outlook for the year was bright. Airlines had just posted their seventh consecutive year of multibillion-dollar profits and were expected to continue doing just as well. For an industry historically defined by cycles of boom and bust, there seemed to be no storm clouds on the horizon the economy was good, gas prices were stable, and business travel was expected to grow to a record $1.6 trillion for the full year.

But then the bottom fell out of commercial aviation. On March 1st, nearly 2.3 million passengers took a flight somewhere in the United States. Just 30 days later, that number was just over 136,000, a 94 percent drop against the previous year. And the number would keep falling.

Airlines were pushed to the brink. Delta burned through $60 million in cash a day; American Airlines, $70 million; and United, $100 million. In April, Congress passed the CARES Act, which included $25 billion in loans and grants to keep payrolls full and airlines out of bankruptcy, but even that was only enough to keep the industry afloat for six months.

In October, with the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of abatement and Congress failing to pass an extension to the CARES Act, airline executives switched to plan B. They stopped service to smaller airports and retired entire fleets of aircraft. They took on a collective $67 billion in new debt including some creative new strategies, like mortgaging their frequent flyer programs. But most of all, they tried to scratch what revenue they could out of the few people willing to travel. And there was no guarantee these drastic measures would work.

Weve got 12 to 15 months of pain, sacrifice, and difficulty ahead, said Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, in mid-October.

And the nations flight attendants would have to bear more pain, sacrifice, and difficulty than most.

On March 17th, the Department of Homeland Security designated airlines as critical infrastructure and flight attendants as essential workers. This wasnt an honorific: in the DHSs own words, essential workers have a special responsibility to maintain your work schedule and ensure continuity of functions. And as flight attendants went back to work, they found that they were not returning to friendly skies. Just as the pandemic changed everything else about travel, its also turned their chief role as the face of the airline from takeoff to landing from a source of pride into a source of dread.

Within weeks, several hundred flight attendants tested positive for COVID-19. By the end of April, it had claimed the lives of five.

Once it started going like wildfire, there was a lot of fear within the flight attendant community, recalled Lori Lochelt, who flew for 22 years. There was so much unknown about the virus. Could it live on metal surfaces, the seat back pockets, the tray tables?

Despite this, most major airlines were rumored to actively prohibit flight attendants from wearing masks while on-duty, although only American Airlines went on record acknowledging such a policy. (At the time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that only people with COVID symptoms wear a mask).

This did not make sense to us, said Paul Hartshorn, Jr., the head of communications for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents the 27,000 US-based flight attendants at American Airlines. Our major fight was to move the airlines towards a policy of everyone wearing some face covering in the airplane cabin. It just had to happen.

By April, airlines allowed their cabin crews to wear masks. And a month later, they required passengers to mask up, too. Flight attendants became the mask police, which led to even more trouble both on the ground and in the air.

At least one passenger on every flight has a mask issue, said Connor*, a flight attendant with two years of experience. It gets a little bit tiring to have to remind people, and when you remind them they get a little upset.

Tracy agreed. You always have a couple of jerky people. You can remove your mask when youre eating or drinking, so you have the guy eating one sunflower seed at a time so he can keep the mask off the whole flight.

Sometimes, passengers get outright belligerent. In late October, a viral video showed someone slap a flight attendant in the face when she tried to enforce the mask policy during boarding. The offender was quickly de-boarded.

Other passengers make it all the way to their seats before picking a fight over masks. And although flight attendants have the law on their side, quoting federal regulations at a disobedient passenger does little to get them to actually wear a mask if they dont want to.

Ben*, the lead attendant on a Boston-bound flight, found this out the hard way. After takeoff, one of his colleagues told him that there was a passenger on board who had taken off her mask and was refusing to wear it, despite pleas from every single one of the cabin crew.

Im a free American and you cant make me, she told them. Stop infringing on my rights.

The best Ben could do was give the customer a so-called yellow card, a slip of paper first pioneered by British Airways (hence the soccer reference) that warns passengers: follow crew member instructions or get banned from the airlines.

She remained maskless for the rest of the flight.

The pandemic has laid bare the many ways airlines tend to leave their flight attendants out on a metaphorical island, without the tools or support to deal with the difficult situations they might face in the sky.

Of the 40 flight attendants who talked to The Verge, only one recalled an instance where a flight was diverted to deal with an especially unruly maskless passenger. The rest of the time, the cabin crew and the passengers around the offender just had to grit their teeth and endure the risks until they landed.

What a shitshow it was, said Lochelt, who took early retirement in August because of the pandemic travel conditions. I didnt want to fly in this environment anymore.

It might seem like the job has gotten a lot worse from the so-called Golden Age of travel between 1960 and 1978. Dinah Barron-Hess, who flew during the 70s and wrote about her experiences in Fly By: A Life Aloft, recalled an age of caviar, prime rib carved in the aisle, an ice cream sundae cart and every top shelf wine, champagne, and liquor.

First class was truly first class, she told The Verge. There were fewer people, and I had more time to be a gracious hostess.

And more time to accrue some amazing stories. In February 1979, Barron-Hess was trying to prepare her first class section for landing when a drunken passenger blocked her way.

Do you need a ride into the city? he said. I have a limo.

Behind her, someone spoke up. It was a voice that was unmistakable to everyone in the cabin in fact, it would have been unmistakable to almost everyone in America at the time.

She has a ride to the city, said the voice, with me.

Dressed in a dark suit, a narrow black tie, and his trademark horn-rimmed glasses was legendary actor Cary Grant. He was in his 70s at the time but, said Barron-Hess, still incredibly handsome.

Awestruck, her harasser backed off. Grant, true to his word, did indeed take her into the city.

Nowadays, the inflight service is not quite so glamorous.

Most people dont really realize, flight attendant training is 95% emergency preparation training, and 5% service training, said Joe Thomas, who hosts the Grounded with Flight Attendant Joe podcast. Which is weird, because when you get on the plane, its the complete opposite.

Still, although in-flight celebrity encounters are rare, normal passengers provide more than enough entertaining stories. Before a departure in Las Vegas, Thomas was surprised to see two passengers coming down the jetway with a third, completely limp, dangling between them with an arm around each of their shoulders.

Hi guys, he said, is everything okay?

One of the men gestured to their unconscious friend. Oh yeah, he said. Dans just a little tired.

Thomas could smell the alcohol even from inside the airplane. Dan wasnt just a little tired; he was flammable.

Sorry, fellas, he said. Dan isnt going anywhere today.

If theres one constant between the age of COVID and the mythical Golden Age of flying, its that flight attendants have to deal with harassment on a daily basis. Nowadays, its much more overtly hostile. But even in the Golden Age, it was there: rampant sexism that often rose to the level of sexual assault. And in both cases, it was caused by the massive economic pressures that come with such a volatile industry.

In the 1960s, the average flight was only half full: all of that champagne and lobster might cause the well-heeled to flock to first class, but it didnt fill the tens of millions of empty seats in the back of the airplane. So airlines sought a competitive edge that everyone could appreciate. And they found it in their cabin crews.

As long as there have been flight attendants, there have been overly friendly passengers, as one air hostess told The New York Times in 1936. Its usually at the end of the run when were off duty and the man is away from home and lonesome, she said. If we like him we sometimes go to dinner and a show if we arent already going out with the pilot.

But in the 1960s, airlines learned to weaponize this interest. They hired flight attendants with a specific look: women no older than 27, weighing less than 135 pounds, between 52 and 57 in height, and unencumbered by a husband. And each airline hired for different personalities. Pan Am stewardesses were sophisticated and worldly. Braniff and Pacific Southwest, sexy and flirtatious. United wanted the girl next door.

A TV commercial for Eastern Air Lines dramatized the process but only slightly by having a Woody Allen sound-alike dismiss a parade of young women who werent a fit: Shes awkward. Shes married. She wears glasses. Honey, no.

Even with such strict guidelines, airlines had a wealth of applicants. In 1961, Pan Am placed a recruiting ad in a London newspaper for flight attendants. A thousand women responded: the airline hired just 17, including Betty Riegel, who flew for eight years and wrote a book about her experiences.

She can still remember the airlines grooming standards: hair above the collar, no necklaces or bracelets, eye shadow in regulation blue, and only one approved shade of lipstick Persian melon by Revlon.

We were required to wear girdles, she added. Every month, the supervisor would get the scales out to check we hadnt gone over our maximum weight.

Above all else, flight attendants must always remain young and unattached. Anyone who got engaged or pregnant could be fired on the spot. And no matter what, your career was over as soon as you turned 32.

Yet, every new hire at every airline had one trait in common, as Barron-Hess found out from a drunk HR executive one evening: across the entire industry, he told her, recruiters primarily looked for tens who think they are sixes.

In 1967, the airlines soft sell of their cabin crews turned harder. Two flight attendants named Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones published a book that purported to be the uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses. But mainly, it was positioned as a step-by-step guide to picking up flight attendants, who, the book assured readers, were ready and willing targets.

Good or bad, meeting men is the name of the stewardess game, wrote Baker and Jones.

The book was a smash hit, selling 3 million copies and spawning three sequels except Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones didnt exist. The book had actually been written by an American Airlines publicist named Donald Bain.

Truthful or not, Coffee, Tea, or Me? planted the image of stewardess sexpots in the popular imagination, and airlines were quick to capitalize on it. Miniskirts and go-go boots became part of the standard uniform at Southwest Airlines. Braniff featured designer catsuits in psychedelic patterns. And Trans World Airlines made its flight attendants don disposable paper outfits in styles like British wench, Roman toga, or Manhattan penthouse just before meal service.

No one was more on the nose than National Airlines and its 1971 Fly Me campaign. In one commercial, a bikini-clad flight attendant named Judy runs down the beach while she says in voice over, Fly me to Houston. Or fly me to New Orleans. You can fly me morning, noon, and night. Just say when! The campaign drove a 23 percent increase in passenger bookings.

More than a few passengers took that image a little too seriously. In her 1974 memoir Sex Objects in the Sky, American Airlines flight attendant Paula Kane talked about the barrage of harassment that she had to endure in the wake of Coffee, Tea, or Me? everything from patting and pinching to full-on sexual assault. One elderly passenger asked a colleague of Kanes to retrieve his coat from the overhead compartment for him. When she did, he shoved his hand up her skirt.

When asked what the airline was doing to stop such handsy behavior, one supervisor replied, They might get a pat, but the girls are moving so fast they scarcely have time to get pinched.

Forty years later, the problem persists. A 2018 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants found that 68 percent of flight attendants have experienced sexual harassment at some point during their careers, and 1 in 5 have been physically assaulted on an airplane in the prior year.

One passenger pulled a female flight attendant down into his lap and asked if she wanted to join the mile-high club. Another slapped a flight attendant on the buttocks as she bent over to get a can of pop out of the drinks cart for him. Others ask flight attendants where their hottest layover was or whether they wanna come to my room and tie me up?

For their part, flight attendants try to brush it off as just part of the job.

You can tell that type of person, said Tracy. The kind of guy that would want to hit on a flight attendant is the same guy who would hit on the bartender, the waitress, anyone in that serving role. Depending on the person, they can take it too far.

But flight attendants who are the victims of sexual harassment also experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.

Were at 36,000 feet with nowhere to go, a flight attendant named Teri told NPR in 2018. So if something happens in the air, youre forced to deal with that until youre on the ground.

If it happens at all. This past March, the Department of Transportation released a study on in-flight sexual assault, which found that airlines generally do not contact law enforcement every time that they learn of an in-flight sexual misconduct incident.

In that same report, the DOT asked the 12 largest US-based air carriers if they would be willing to revise their process for reporting in-flight harassment.

Most of them responded that they would not, it concluded.

I became a flight attendant because I wanted to travel, said Joe Thomas. A lot of people say, oh, its because I want to give good customer service. But I dont really believe that. I believe you become a flight attendant because you want to see the world.

The job itself pays a wage that is right at the national median. But you get free flights in your off-time and discounted hotels, cruises, rental cars, and pretty much everything else related to hospitality. On the job, you have a flexible work schedule and freedom from much direct supervision. And you get to visit a different city every day just by going to work.

Betty Riegel, who worked Pan Ams Pacific routes out of San Francisco in the 1960s, would often spend days-long layovers in places like Tahiti, Sydney, Manila, and even the occasional war zone.

We flew Vietnam out of San Francisco, she recalled, and so we were landing in Saigon with the snipers bullets flying all around us. And staying at altitude until the last minute, and coming down almost vertically.

The flip side of it is missed holidays, family gatherings, and an unpredictable early career. Its not until flight attendants accrue seniority, which can take a year at a small airline, and five or more at the legacies, that they have control over when they work and where they go. And that still doesnt mean youre working on the same schedule as the rest of the world.

Its not your usual 9 to 5. It is completely a lifestyle you have to adapt to, said Tracy. You really have to alter your entire existence, and if you hang on, the rewards on the tail end are worth it.

That lifestyle is also a big reason why so many gay men turn to flying. In 2015, a London School of Economics study found that, proportionally speaking, there are more gay men working as flight attendants than there are working as hair stylists or nurses.

Flying first became a refuge for gay men in the 1950s, according to Phil Tiemeyer, a historian of gender and sexuality at Kansas State University. For the entire decade, federal and state governments barred gay men and women from an increasing number of careers: the military, the civil service, and many professional jobs teachers, doctors, lawyers, even bartenders.

Airlines only hired a few hundred men as cabin crew in the 1950s (and virtually none between 1960 and 1971). But a huge proportion were gay up to 90 percent, according to some former stewards. And they found, ironically, that the very policies that forced women out of the profession allowed gay men to stay in it. Male stewards didnt have to retire upon turning 32. Marriage restrictions didnt apply to male stewards at the time, and they obviously didnt get pregnant, either. So while female flight attendants stayed on the job for an average of 18 months, male flight attendants accrued experience and seniority that the constant influx of female new hires couldnt.

So airlines tolerated gay men in the cabin, if only to keep their most senior stewards in place. And as airlines consolidated around major hubs San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York the pull toward aviation became even stronger.

As Tiemeyer described it: You can make decent money, you can work with other gay men, you dont have to worry about job security because the unions protect you and the companies decide to tolerate you, and you can go to all these exciting gay cities.

Its a legacy that endures to this day.

I always knew I wanted to get out and see the world, said Rich, a flight attendant who blogs as one half oftwoguysonaplane.com. But it never seemed like he would get there. He was on food stamps, struggling to pay his rent every month. One night I had a couple glasses of wine and decided to Google dream jobs. Two weeks later, I was flying all over for interviews with major airlines and luckily for me, one of them said yes.

Its been seven years since he took a chance on air travel. In that time, he met his husband, whos also a flight attendant, on a flight. Three years later, the two of them were married in an airplane hangar. They launched their travel blog together at twoguysonaplane.com.

As gay men, we often struggle while growing up with being labeled and feeling trapped, he said. Flying allows for a great deal of freedom to be exactly who you are, an opportunity which we dont always receive as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Becoming a flight attendant didnt just change my life, it saved my life.

In times of crisis, though, the lifestyle can keep flight attendants chained to a job whose other benefits are disappearing before their very eyes.

In 1978, President Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act, which dissolved commercial aviations regulated cartel and opened the industry to real competition for the first time in forty years. For consumers, this meant more flights and lower fares. By 1980, 134 new airlines were launched. Five years later, domestic capacity had increased by 50%, while the median ticket price had fallen by almost 25%.

But it was a classic race to the bottom. That kind of lost revenue was unsustainable in an industry where profit margins rarely made it to double digits. By 1988, over 100 airlines had gone out of business. Even the legacy carriers that defined the Golden Age started to disappear: Braniff and National in 1982, Pan Am and Eastern in 1991.

To survive, airlines cut costs to the bone. In 1980, a mid-career flight attendant working a normal schedule made about $4,200 in todays dollars. By 1995, a flight attendant with the same seniority and same hours would earn only $2,550 a 40% decrease in pay for the same work. And all but two airlines terminated their pension plans, refusing to pay out more than $12 billion in retirement benefits.

Wages and benefits werent the only things that airlines did away with post-deregulation.

When airlines took away things that passengers took for granted meals, blankets, pillows it was always the flight attendants who were left to deliver the bad news, said aviation historian and former flight attendant Gailen David, who flew between 1988 and 2012.

The clientele changed, too. With the rise of the modern frequent flyer program in the 1980s, a new generation of passengers largely business travelers who had previously flown economy now found their way into first class. It was a good way to reward flyers whose steady demand has always kept airlines afloat.

But some of them had trouble acclimating to the new amenities, as Cecilia*, a flight attendant who worked first class in the 1980s, recalled.

Sir, may I offer you some hors doeuvres? she asked one particular passenger at the start of service.

He looked confused and pointed to the food cart. Whats that?

Sir, we have goose liver pat, smoked salmon, shrimp cocktail, and caviar.

Caviar?

Uh, its roe, she said. Then, she clarified: fish eggs, sir.

He lit up. Okay, he said, give me two. Make em fried!

None of aviations past crises, however, compare to COVID-19. Not deregulation, not the 1973 oil crisis, not even September 11. To try and survive, airlines have cut schedules, retired older airplanes, and borrowed over $100 billion in loans and Federal aid. Theyve invested in electrostatic sprayers and medical-grade disinfectant, in a bid to make people comfortable with flying again. And theyve deployed their flight attendants not only to enforce their patchwork mask rules, but also to try and recreate some semblance of the way things used to be, even behind layers of personal protective equipment.

But most of all, theyve looked to reduce the largest line-item on every airlines balance sheets: wages and benefits.

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Cabin pressure: the turbulent history of flight attendants - The Verge

This package is sized not simply to fill the hole, said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Its trying to do somewhat different things. A lot of people and businesses are desperately hurting right now, so this money is relief aimed at those people, and in order to be really confident youre reaching them all, you need to send a lot of money.

But that doesnt change the fact that the aggregate money the government is pumping out adds up to more than the missing economic activity, which could have meaningful consequences for the years ahead. And that is before accounting for other expected proposals from the Biden administration, such as large-scale funding of new infrastructure.

There are pros and cons, she said. Running the economy hot might be a good thing, but there also might be a painful adjustment with a period of slow growth on the other side of the mountain.

In an economy running hot, employers face shortages of workers and must bid up their wages to attract staff. This, along with potential shortages of various commodities, can, in theory, fuel a vicious cycle of rising prices.

For the last 13 years, arguably longer, the United States has had the opposite problem. Large numbers of Americans of prime working age 25 to 54 have been either unemployed or outside the labor force altogether. Wage growth has been weak most of that time, and inflation persistently below the levels the Federal Reserve aims for.

Some argue that estimates of potential output by the C.B.O. and private economists are too pessimistic that Americans should dare to dream bigger. We dont really know what the G.D.P. output gap truly is, said Mark Paul, an economist at New College of Florida. Economists for decades have erred and been too cautious, thinking that full production is significantly lower than it actually is. Weve been consistently running a cold economy, creating massive problems for social cohesion.

In a paper published in December, he said a pandemic aid package of more than $3 trillion would be justified based on the scale of job losses that have been endured. The output gap looks worse based on employment than it does when you look at G.D.P., in part because job losses have disproportionately occurred in sectors that generate relatively low economic output per worker, such as restaurants.

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Biden Wants the Biggest Stimulus in Modern History. Is It Too Big? - The New York Times

So F.E.W. Harper was already a well-known temperance/womens rights/Black rights activist in her own right when Frances Willardpresident of the influential Womans Christian Temperance Unionapproached Harper to become national superintendent of the WCTUs division for Work Among the Colored People. Harper enthusiastically agreed. Rooted in the nonviolent picketing of saloons across the upper Midwest in 1873-74, the WCTU introduced an entire generation of American women to political activism, first in the North, but soon spreading nationwide. Temperance organizations of all stripes had a difficult time establishing chapters in the former Confederacy in the generation after the Civil War, so deep were the North/South political wounds, animosity and mutual suspicions. But between Willards annual tours through the Southern states, and Harpers grassroots activism, the WCTU helped begin to heal those wounds.

Harper was hardly alone in joining the WCTU. Black women saw in the WCTU a chance to build a Christian community that could serve as a model of interracial cooperation on other fronts, claims historian Glenda Gilmore in Gender and Jim Crow. With its Do Everything focus, the WCTU advanced interracial cooperation on anti-lynching laws, educational uplift and anti-illiteracy programs that benefited both Black and white communities. The WCTU represented a place where women might see past skin color to recognize each others humanity. It also gave many women, Black and white, their first taste of political activism. In the words of one Mississippi activist, the WCTU was the generous liberator, the joyous iconoclast, the discoverer, the developer of Southern women.

The Reconstruction South was a hotbed of intersectional activism, long before that term was coined.

Still, the battle for racial equality took place even within the organization. When Black women complained of discrimination from the predominantly white Georgia WCTU, they petitioned Harper for their own, separate chapter, where African American women were free to organize themselves. Harper and Willard agreed. Soon, Black WCTU chapters were organized in states across the South.

Despite such organizational tensions, the WCTUand the temperance movement more generallywere engines of progressive reform, reconciliation and civil liberties: demanding liberation from unjust political and economic subordination. In the 1880s, even as violence and lynchings ended Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era began, prohibitionist rallies made the point of announcing that all were welcome to attend, regardless of color. Black and white temperance speakers shared the same stage and applauded each others accomplishments despite organizational segregation, as Black voters were courted by white politicians. Such interracial bridges were reinforced by religious and class sympathies. Those who took all of Christs teachings seriously recognized both the fundamental precepts of human equality, and the need to uplift downtrodden communities. In all these ways, concludes historian Edward L. Ayers in his Promise of the New South (2007), the prohibitionists forged relatively open and democraticif temporaryracial coalitions.

For most of the American South, prohibition did not come with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, nor the enactment of the Volstead Act in 1920. It actually came a decade earlier, as from 1907 to 1910, a dry wave of prohibitionism swept from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi to Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina. Nor was prohibition imposed from abovefrom the federal government or whites in the Jim Crow Southbut rather emerged from genuine biracial grassroots cooperation.

If Black temperance is a largely ignored chapter in American history, explaining Southern prohibitionism presents a double conundrum for historians. After all, shouldnt we expect prohibitions triumph in the North, where every city and town could boast of multiple temperance chapters, rather than the South, where activistsincluding the WCTUadmitted difficulty establishing an organizational foothold?

Historians usual answer is to fall back on the same, discredited colonizers discourse about alcohol: chalking-up Southern prohibition to the Ku Klux Klan and white racists, fearful of Black drunkenness, intent on disciplining African Americans.

The Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington D.C. in 1925. | AP Photo

While it makes sense that the KKK and white supremacists would hold fast to a white-supremacist alcohol discourse, that doesnt mean modern historians should, too; especially since it doesnt hold water. For one, the modern KKK emerged in 1915, making it unlikely to have caused prohibition in 1908. Second, the whole point of prohibitionism was to oppose the predatory liquor traffic, which was overwhelmingly in affluent white hands, while its victims were poor whites and poor Blacks alike. If the goal was really to keep African Americans down and ensure white dominance, no better system couldve been devised than the unregulated saloon business that already existed.

Third, by simply blaming the Klan, historians fall into the same trap of disempowering Black activism: portraying African Americans as passive objects, subject to the whims of white actors, rather than legitimate actors in their own right. From the Reconstruction era in the Southand even generations before that in the antebellum NorthBlack churches and temperance activists had clearly, consistently and loudly articulated that liquor was subjugation, and that the route to freedom and community uplift meant reining in the predatory liquor traffic through prohibition.

A better explanation for the dry wave that swept the South from 1907 to 1910 would be to point out that Southern wet forces were far weaker, more dispersed geographically, and far less organized than the well-entrenched brewing and distilling trusts of the North, and were therefore less able to defend against united community activism. Also, in the Democrats one-party South, liquor interests had less opportunity to flex their political muscle by throwing their financial weight behind rival political parties or candidates more willing to defend their interests. At the very least, incorporating political and economic factors rather than just cultural ones gives us a far better sense of those prohibition dynamics across the South, which were quite obvious to the political players of the day.

After Georgia voted itself dry in 1908, journalist Frank Foxcroft of the Atlantic Monthly explained for his predominantly Northern readership that racial dynamics furnishes only a partial explanation of the prohibition movement of the south. It is a noticeable fact that, during the debate in the Georgia legislature upon the pending prohibitory bill, the negro was not once mentioned as a reason for the enactment of prohibition. Instead, he noted that liquor-traffic predations were suffered both by white communities and Black, and were opposed by white communities and Black, and were being roused by the ablest and most far-sighted leaders of Southern opinion, both white and Black.

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The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism - POLITICO

In the summer of 1937, as the specter of World War II loomed over Europe, Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow living near Woodbridge, a small town in Suffolk, England, met with the curator of a local museum to discuss excavating three mounds of land on the far side of her estate, Sutton Hoo. (The name is derived from Old English: Sut combined with tun means settlement, and hoh translates to shaped like a heel spur.) After Pretty hired self-taught amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, the dig began the following spring.

Over the next year or so, Brown, who was later joined by archaeologists from the British Museum, struck gold, unearthing the richest medieval burial ever found in Europe. Dating back to the sixth or seventh century A.D., the 1,400-year-old gravebelieved to belong to an Anglo-Saxon kingcontained fragments of an 88-foot-long ship (the original wood structure had deteriorated) and a burial chamber filled with hundreds of opulent treasures. The British Museum, which houses the trove today, deemed the find a spectacular funerary monument on epic scale.

The importance of the Sutton Hoo burial cannot be understated. Not only did the site shed light on life during the early medieval Anglo-Saxon period (roughly 410 to 1066) but it also prompted historians to revise their thinking about the Dark Ages, the era that followed the Roman Empires departure from the British Isles in the early fifth century. Contrary to long-held beliefs that the period was devoid of the arts or cultural richness, the Sutton Hoo artifacts reflected a vibrant, worldly society.

The discovery in 1939 changed our understanding of some of the first chapters of English history, says Sue Brunning, a curator of early medieval European collections who oversees the British Museums Sutton Hoo artifacts. A time that had been seen as being backward was illuminated as cultured and sophisticated. The quality and quantity of the artifacts found inside the burial chamber were of such technical artistry that it changed our understanding of this period.

Given the inherent drama of the excavations at Sutton Hoo, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood offered its own take on the events. The Dig, the new Netflix film starring Carey Mulligan as Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Brown, is adapted from a 2016 novel of the same name by John Preston, nephew of Peggy Piggott, a junior archaeologist on the Sutton Hoo team. The film follows the excavation, including the stories of the main characters, tensions between them, and romantic involvements. Pretty, who had a young son, has always been fascinated by archaeology and recruits Brown to begin excavating the mounds which they both believe to be Viking burial grounds. When Brown unearths the first fragments of a ship, the excavation proceeds full steam ahead.

Minus a few plot points inserted for the sake of dramatic storytelling (Browns relationship with British Museum archaeologist Charles Phillips wasnt nearly as contentious as portrayed, for instance), the movie mostly adheres to the real story, according to screenwriter Moira Buffini. But Buffini professes that in the script, she did omit Prettys obsession with spiritualism and penchant for speaking to the dead.

Even with its historical discrepancies, the Netflix film does a public service in that it introduces the extraordinary Sutton Hoo story to a new generation of viewers. At the same time, The Dig illuminates the role archaeology plays in unearthing previously unknown narratives.

Buffini, who adapted Jane Eyre for the screen in 2011, conducted extensive research on Sutton Hoo, poring over Browns notebooks, inquest reports and photos and drawing inspiration from each bit of treasure recorded, measured and drawn for posterity.

One is struck by the tenderness Brown felt for all of the artifacts, Buffini says. He spoke of the respect and almost familial love hidden in the artifacts, and how there was incredible culture and craftsmanship outside and beyond the Roman Empire.

Over the course of several excavations in 1938 and 1939, Brown and the archaeological team found 263 objects buried in the central chamber of the enormous Anglo-Saxon ship. Iron rivets, identified as being part of the seafaring vessel, was the first clue that alerted the archaeologist of the huge ship buried on the site, according to Brunning.

As the archaeologists dug deeper, they found themselves stunned by the scale, quality and sheer diversity of the trove. Among the artifacts unearthed were fine feasting vessels, deluxe hanging bowls, silverware from Byzantium, luxurious textiles and gold dress accessories set with Sri Lankan garnets.

The graves burial chamber was laden with weapons and high-quality military equipment. A shield found inside is believed to have been a diplomatic gift from Scandinavia; shoulder clasps appear to be modeled on those worn by Roman emperors, suggesting the armors owner drew from different cultures and power bases to assert his own authority.

The artifacts also included a belt buckle with a triple-lock mechanism, its surface adorned with semi-abstract imagery featuring snakes slithering beneath each other. Brown found gold coins that had been minted in the Aquitaine region of France with an ornate lid adorned in reddish garnet. The purses cover is now considered one of the finest examples of cloisonn, a style in which stones are held by gold strips.

Though metal items survived in Suffolks acidic soil better than organic objects like fabric and wood, the team did find a number of unexpected artifacts, including a well-preserved yellow ladybug.

Every part of the burial site is an important piece of the puzzle, even something as simple as small wooden cups, says Brunning. Most people (who see the collection) tend to walk past them because theyre not shiny. But when we analyze these objects and look at how they are laid out and the type of labor that went into them, they would have taken time to make. So even the smallest, most shriveled objects are important.

Elaborate ship burials filled with treasures were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly toward the latter end of the early medieval period. The wealth of grave goods found at Sutton Hooas well as the positioning of the ship and its contents, which wouldve required a considerable amount of manpower to transportsuggest its onetime inhabitant was of a very high social status, perhaps even royalty, but the individuals identity remains a mystery. (An oft-cited candidate is King Raedwald of East Anglia, who died around 625.) By 1939, notes the British Museum, all that was left of the deceased was a human-shaped gap among the treasures within.

According to Brunning, Raedwald ruled around that time and may have had power over neighboring kingdoms, which would have earned him a good send-off.

The most iconic item to come out of Sutton Hoo is a helmet decorated with images of fighting and dancing warriors and fierce creatures, including a dragon whose wings form the headgears eyebrows and tail its body and mouth. Garnets line the eyebrows, one of which is backed with gold foil reflectors. Found highly corroded and broken into hundreds of fragments, the armor was painstakingly restored by conservators at the British Museum in the early 1970s.

On July 25, 1939, Pretty hosted a reception at the Sutton Hoo site to celebrate the conclusion of the dig. The land next to the excavation site was fashioned into a viewing platform. The British Museums Phillips delivered a short speech about the ship, but was drowned out by the roar of the engine of a Spitfire flying overhead as England prepared for war. Shortly after that, news of the excavations findings started to appear in the press, in part from information leaked by a member of the excavating team. A few days later, the Sutton Hoo artifacts were transported to the British Museum, and after some legal wrangling, they officially became part of the collection as a gift from Pretty.

The public first got a look at the artifacts in a 1940 exhibit, but that opportunity would be short-lived as they were secreted away in the tunnels of the London Underground for safekeeping during the war. After the Allies victory in 1945, the trove was returned to the British Museum where conservation and reconstruction work began.

But analysis of the artifacts generated more questions, and the Sutton Hoo burial ground was re-excavated using advances in science to improve analysis. In 1983, a third excavation of the site led to the discovery of another mound, which contained a warrior and his horse.

Today, the Sutton Hoo artifacts remain on exhibition at the British Museum, where each year, in non-pandemic times, visitors view the extraordinary treasures of an Anglo-Saxon king buried in grandeur 1,400 years ago. More than 80 years after Brown started sifting through the sandy soil of Sutton Hoo, the treasures he unearthed are undiminished. As he wrote in his diary in 1939, Its the find of a lifetime.

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The True History Behind Netflix's 'The Dig' and Sutton Hoo - Smithsonian Magazine