Category Archives: History

In opening statements Monday, prosecutors described Ghislaine Maxwell at her trial as a longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. They accused her of being Epstein's "lady of the house" who set up teenage girls for him to sexually abuse.

The defense denies those allegations and argues she is on trial for crimes that Epstein committed. The display in a New York City courtroom is very different from the way she lived most of her life.

Six years after Epstein's first conviction, she was running an environmental organization and socializing with the wealthy and the famous. In Britain, though, Maxwell grew up as an outsider in immense wealth and privilege. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia turned newspaper tycoon.

Ghislaine was reportedly his favorite child and he even named his yacht after her. But Robert had a reputation as a bullying tyrant, including to his children.

"I think people treated him with a strange mixture of awe and ridicule," biographer John Preston told CBS News' Holly Williams.

When the magnate drowned mysteriously in 1991, it was discovered that Robert Maxwell had embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars, leaving Ghislaine and her siblings humiliated and reportedly strapped for cash.

"They were the children of someone who had been branded public enemy No.1. Serial killers have had better press than Robert Maxwell," said Preston.

But by 1997, when journalist Vicky Ward first met Ghislaine at a party, she'd transformed herself into a darling of New York society.

"She was always saying that she'd flown in from somewhere exotic and she was always name-dropping, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton," Ward recalled.

Ward later wrote a profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair discovering that Maxwell was his ex-girlfriend and uncovering early allegations of sexual abuse against the pair which Ward's editors wouldn't allow her to publish without more sources.

"He controlled the money that she needed access to. She introduced him to rich people, to important people, people like Prince Andrew," said Ward.

Prince Andrew and Ghislaine became friends in the 1980s. Prince Andrew denies Maxwell and Epstein trafficked a 17-year-old to him for sex.

Ward said other former friends of Maxwell now refuse to speak on the record, fearful their reputations will be tarnished.

Epstein died in jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial. His death has been officially ruled a suicide. Maxwell is facing a maximum of 80 years in prison if convicted.

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Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? A look at her life and history - CBS News

From questions about previous Georgia losses to the lack of late-game adversity, Kirby Smart sounded exasperated by the end of his Sunday teleconference with reporters.

His top-ranked Bulldogs have cruised through an unbeaten regular season only to find an old nemesis waiting in the same old place. Smart wasnt buying either premise from concern over how theyd handle a close game to the way Alabamas managed to come from behind in the last two Atlanta meetings and beat Georgia when the spotlights the brightest.

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If there was a time for the Bulldogs to end a six-game losing streak to Alabama, this is the moment and Smart isnt thinking much about the past failures in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

I dont think theres any overlap between the two, Smart said. I know people want to make it that, make it some kind of overlap. Every year is independent of the previous.

Georgia last beat Alabama in 2007, Nick Sabans first season in Tuscaloosa when Smart was the defensive backs coach. The Crimson Tide have taken the last six -- twice in the SEC title game and once in the CFP final -- by an average score of 36-24.

All three Atlanta games have been gut wrenching for the Bulldogs beginning with a 2012 league championship game. Smart, then the Alabama defensive coordinator, was among the first to sprint off the bench to celebrate the game-winning stop just yards from a Georgia win.

The Bulldogs led that one 21-10 in the third quarter before AJ McCarron, Eddie Lacy and Amari Cooper led that comeback for a 32-28 win. After destroying Georgia, 38-10 in 2015 to hasten the fall of Mark Richt and Smarts move to Athens, the two met twice in the calendar year 2018.

Georgia led both times at halftime, 13-0 in the playoff championship in January and 21-14 in December, before backup quarterbacks changed the game in last-second Crimson Tide wins.

And then a year ago, Alabama faced a 24-20 halftime deficit in Bryant-Denny Stadium before pulling away for a 41-24 win. Bundle those last three games and Alabamas outscored Georgia 31-0 in the fourth quarters.

Saban, like the assistant who worked 12 years under him at LSU, the Miami Dolphins and Alabama, puts little stock in those games factoring into Saturdays.

I think thats whats happened in the past in games really doesnt have a lot of impact on what happens in the future, Saban said. I think that youve got to line up and play well in this game. What happened last year doesnt matter. What happened the year before that doesnt matter. Youve got to play well in this game. So thats the challenge that we all have.

There was quite a bit of turnover for Alabama offensively since last years win over Georgia while Bulldog quarterback Stetson Bennett is back for his second shot at the Tide.

The former walk-on was 18-for-40 for 269 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions in what was his first big-game experience. Hes completing 65% of his passes this season with 21 touchdowns to five interceptions after September starter JT Daniels got hurt and hasnt retaken the job. Bennett explained Monday the difference between the player he was last October in Tuscaloosa and the one wholl be in Atlanta on Saturday.

Just the understanding, more understanding of football and what a game takes to win, Bennett said. Knowing that individual plays are hard to win a game but theyre very easily lost. Thats where most games, especially at the college level, are won and lost is by losing them, not by individual plays winning them.

So not pressing and trusting everybody else on our team and defense and offense and knowing that I dont have to go out there and win the game on an individual play. Its OK to throw the ball away or run and get two or three yards. And just not to press.

But is there a matter of a mental hurdle between Georgia and win over Alabama? Smart doesnt think so and that was clear when he was asked if hed confront the past failures with his team.

I dont know what you mean confront, Smart said. Do you talk about it? We talk about the opponent every week we play somebody, right? But we focus on ourselves. We focus on execution. We dont focus on history.

I think every team is independent of the previous. So I mean, it is what it is.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.

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Georgias gut-wrenching history with Alabama isnt weighing on Kirby Smart - al.com

If you only know Geno Auriemma from catching the occasional UConn or Team USA game, you might not know the legendary coach is also an expert needler when hes not giving it to you straight. And no oneincluding Paige Bueckers, arguably the best womens college basketball playeris immune from hearing it from the Hall of Famer.

He calls me Paige Kardashian all the time, says the Huskies sophomore sensation. Because he thinks Im just famous for being famous.

Approaching 1 million followers on Instagram and 350,000 followers on TikTok, Bueckers has the kind of social media profile that steams talentless influencers. But if you somehow havent been paying attention, Bueckers is famous because she looks like a generational talent. A superb passer who just happens to be a lethal scorer that can practically get off any shot she wants, the UConn point guard exceeded the crazy hype surrounding her by carrying the Huskies to the programs 21st Final Four appearance last season and breaking all kinds of records in the process. She was the first freshman to win the Wooden Award, given annually to the nations top player, in its 45-year history.

Now Bueckers is making history off the court, and Monday marked yet another milestone for the mild-mannered 20-year-old. Gatorade announced it had inked its first NIL deal with the UConn star. A beaming Bueckers tried not to blush too hard thinking about the company she now keeps.

Its still sort of surreal, she tells Complex Sports via Zoom an hour before the official announcement is made. For me to become part of that, its so crazy to me that it hasnt sunk in yet.

The multi-year Gatorade deal (terms werent disclosed) represents the second ground-breaking deal Bueckers has landed this year. After signing with agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas of Wasserman over the summerand smartly filing to trademark her nickname Paige Bucketsit didnt take long for Bueckers to make her mark in the NIL space. Earlier in November, StockX announced a partnership with her.

With my light and the platform that I have, I want to share with others. I dont want to be selfish with that.

After the NCAA officially approved unprecedented legislation that allowed athletes across all sports to begin making money off of their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) this summer, plenty of college athletes have cashed in. However, Mike McCann, Sporticos legal expert who teaches an NIL course at the University of New Hampshires Franklin Pierce School of Law, describes Bueckers as an NIL unicorn. While women athletes throughout collegefrom volleyball players to gymnastshave inked deals with both major and minor companies, McCann notes that nobody will approach the level of Bueckers.

It is a trailblazing set of moves to land NIL deals, says McCann. Shes not a common or ordinary player. Shes exceptional. It makes sense that someone of her stature would do well in NIL.

The StockX deal made a ton of sense, since Bueckers can rock whatever gear she wants off the court and shes a certified sneakerhead who occasionally stunts on IG. The Gatorade deal means shes now part of an ultra-exclusive community thats aligned with some of the biggest names in sports, like Michael Jordan and Serena Williams.

Those two partnerships are a lot to flex about, Bueckers says with a bashful smirk.

As much praise as she deserves for being a trailblazer in the NIL space, she deserves so much more for her ESPYs speech this past summer. You probably saw it: it was incredibly inspirational, impressively delivered, and rather surprising that she used her moment to speak on the behalf of others.

There to collect the award for Womens Collegiate Athlete of the Yearrocking sneakers, because doctors wouldnt allow her to wear heels after offseason ankle surgeryfor the majority of her roughly two-minute speech, Bueckers, who is white, spoke eloquently about how Black women athletes dont get the media coverage they deserve. She shouted out her teammates and some of the names that have inspired her, like journalists Maria Taylor, Robin Roberts, and fellow UConn alum and former WNBA star Maya Moore. Bueckers, who participated in protest marches during the tumultuous summer of 2020, also noted Black lives lost, specifically mentioning Breonna Taylor. She ended her speech by pledging to use her platform to promote others.

I dont want to be the main focal point of anything, says Bueckers. With my light and the platform that I have, I want to share with others. I dont want to be selfish with that.

While Gatorade and Bueckers are still working out specifics of how theyll practice what she preacheshelping the next generation of underprivileged youth basketball players, especially girls, have access to facilities and opportunities Bueckers was lucky enough to have growing up outside Minneapolis, roughly 15 minutes from the George Floyd memorialthe brands commitment to supporting womens sports is one of the biggest reasons why they teamed up.

Theres really big inequity in sports, and thats what Im huge on, says Bueckers. Just positivity in that light and growing the womens gamegetting more respect for womenand thats a huge value that we both align [with], and I think thats a huge part of why were working together.

The relationship between Bueckers and the brand dates back to when she was named the 2019-20 Gatorade National Girls Basketball Player of the Year. By that point, she was already a big deal and a role model in her native Minnesota, staying after games for a half-hour to sign autographs, take photos, and greet supporters.

One day some of them can say they were lucky enough to snap a pic with the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft (shes eligible for it in 2023). When shes done at UConn, chances are shell end up being one of the most decorated players in womens college basketball history. On top of winning the Wooden Award, Bueckers was also named the Naismith Player of the Year, AP Player of the Year, USBWA Player of the Year, Big East Player of the Year, and Big East Freshman of the Year last season.

The only thing she didnt deliver was another national title for UConn. Bueckers admits she feels the weight of the world on her shoulders when the team doesnt win or she struggles on the court. But if she wasnt a generational talent, with an insanely bright future and unquestioned marketability playing for the premier program in her sport, major brands wouldnt want to work with her. Leave it to Auriemma, though, to keep Bueckers honest.

I asked Paige the other dayI said, You know how long this is going to last, right? She goes, Yeah, Auriemma said, recalling a conversation they had this past summer. You know what makes this go away? She goes, Yeah, if I suck. I said, Correct. So the No. 1 thing is still you better be good at basketball or none of these opportunities come along.

Hes not wrong. And its another example of Geno being Geno. Ask Bueckers for a favorite Auriemma story and she cant narrow it down to one. She loves the jokes he tells at practice that often leave her wondering if theyre really jokes. Paige Kardashian is obviously a joke. Reminding the trailblazer how quickly her opportunities can disappear is keeping it real.

He says so many things that get to your soul, says Bueckers.

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How UConn Star Paige Bueckers Is Making History On and Off the Court - Complex

Demonstrators hold signs in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City on Aug. 2, 1987, to protest the appointment of Cardinal John O'Connor to a national AIDS panel, which gay rights activists said was "stacked" against them. (AP/Mario Cabrera)

In Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, author and reporter Michael O'Loughlin draws us into the mystery of the faith by resurrecting, through storytelling, the lives of those lost during the AIDS/HIV crisis and flooding a light of hope into the chasm of despair.

Hidden Mercy, published by Broadleaf Books in time for World AIDS Day, reframes history as not rote and binary with the LGBTQ community suffering on the one hand and the Catholic Church welcoming the plague on the other. Instead, it provides a dynamic look at how Catholic faithful, including LGBTQ Catholics, struggled, as they do today, to carry out the Catholic mission to love mercy, do justice and walk humbly with God, while overshadowed by a hierarchy with a much different agenda.

Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear

By Michael J. O'Loughlin

281 pages; Broadleaf Books

$28.99

O'Loughlin, who has been reporting on the intersection of the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ community for more than a decade, including in the podcast "Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church," recounts some of those same stories in the book. They include Carol Baltosiewich, then a Hospital Sister of St. Francis, who started an AIDS ministry in Belleville, Illinois, and the "gays and grays" at Most Holy Redeemer Parish in the Castro in San Francisco.

While the church refused to shift its theology of human sexuality or provide special dispensation for the use of contraceptives as a means for mitigating the spread of the virus, religious sisters, priests and laypeople alike moved into action, O'Loughlin recounts, to show compassion to those suffering.

In the book, we meet priests with AIDS, learn about a Catholic Worker house for homeless people with HIV/AIDS in Oakland, California, and, along the way, learn a bit about O'Loughlin's struggles with Catholicism.

Hidden Mercy is healing not in that it attempts to say "not all Catholics!" but instead by the way it shows that Catholicism, in its truest self as the manifest love of God, still lives, in spite of itself. And it is in this healing that O'Loughlin conjures hope.

O'Loughlin has tracked the ebbs and flows of what has felt like meager progress in the church's recognition of the full humanity of LGBTQ people, holding in tension the significance of moments like Pope Francis' support of civil unions for same-sex couples, without denying the harrowing reality of church leadership actively, and aggressively, attacking LGBTQ people.

But the stories O'Loughlin centers stories of pain and suffering, ministry in the face of true horror and impossible odds, death without dignity, and an institution hellbent on crucifying Christ's precious little ones always leave me suffocating with grief and lamentation.

It was early April 2020, a little before Easter, when I first listened to O'Loughlin's podcast. At the time, I was leading religious engagement and mobilization for a large LGBTQ civil rights organization, and as Lent waned, and a different but deadly new pandemic raged, I was struck by an onslaught of emotions.

Growing up gay and Catholic and serving as a public theologian and organizer primarily in the sphere of LGBTQ justice, I've grown more than accustomed to the weathered narratives around religion and the LGBTQ community, narratives that typically create a false dichotomy wherein you can't be a person of faith and LGBTQ, contrived narratives that falsely claim that you can either protect religious freedom or LGBTQ rights, but not both.

It's easy to get lost in the fury of the history, the grief of what has often been referred to as a lost generation, and the indignation at the fact that HIV/AIDS continues to destroy communities around the world. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 680,000 people died from AIDS-related causes in 2020 alone, a grim reality as we mark another World AIDS Day.

Today, we continue to face a Catholic hierarchy that is overwhelmingly opposed to civil rights and protections for the LGBTQ community. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has continued to take a militant position against the Equality Act, a piece of legislation that would, among many things, ensure that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination in health care. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still refers to "homosexuals" as "intrinsically disordered," and the church's only approved means of mitigating the spread of HIV today is, ignorantly, celibacy.

Michael O'Loughlin, author of "Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear" (www.mikeoloughlin.com)

And yet in response to O'Loughlin's chronicling, Francis sent him a letter, offering his gratitude and blessing both for O'Loughlin's ministry and the ministry of those who saw, and continue to see, Christ in the face of those with HIV/AIDS. This declaration of mercy is characteristic of Francis, who has attempted to reframe how Catholic faithful engage with the LGBTQ community both within and beyond the walls of the church.

While this response does little to restore the destruction the church has caused, it reflects what O'Loughlin teaches us through Hidden Mercy that though an institution can harbor terror, it can also be a means of spreading extraordinary compassion. These extraordinary displays of compassion from these hitherto-unacknowledged saints provides us not just a window into the dynamic history and present of the Catholic Church, but it offers a blueprint for what it means to live out, as Francis would have us, Christ's parable of the good Samaritan.

In Fratelli Tutti, Francis writes, "By his actions, the Good Samaritan showed that 'the existence of each and every individual is deeply tied to that of others: life is not simply time that passes; life is a time for interactions.' "

He goes on to say, "The parable eloquently presents the basic decision we need to make in order to rebuild our wounded world. In the face of so much pain and suffering, our only course is to imitate the Good Samaritan."

What O'Loughlin does through Hidden Mercy is show us that all along, there were, in fact, courageous Catholics, often defying their own leadership to live out Christ's call to heal our wounded world. Though heroes of the faith were not able to heal what remains an incurable disease (though an exceptionally treatable one in ways that significantly mitigate spread), their stories have the power to heal a broken world by inspiring us all to a discipleship that reflects a commitment to love in action.

Discipleship, the Gospels teach us, begins with asking questions. Jesus' telling of the parable of the good Samaritan is spurred on by a lawyer asking a series of questions, most importantly, "Who is my neighbor?" Church leaders have often failed to steward this question in their own lives and in the lives of the faithful. The parable teaches us that everyone is our neighbor, and that those in need most especially are our siblings.

The church overwhelmingly has abandoned this ethos in its response to the spread of HIV/AIDS, a pandemic that remains a crisis, albeit one that far too many have moved on from.

O'Loughlin's book is a call to discipleship through both story and action. It doesn't simply invite us to ask new questions, but gives us permission to ask the questions we've kept to ourselves all along questions about identity, belonging and welcome. It demands that church leadership examine themselves, and not just the church's historic failings but its present plague-spreading policies and doctrines, and how they can, instead of being ministers of death, be prophets of life, and life abundant.

The prophet Jeremiah opens the Book of Lamentations with, "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!" A haunting verse that summons the anguish of a community devastated by a plague some church leaders dared called the will of God. A generation once vibrant and full of people succumbed to not just the catastrophic impact of the disease, but to the theological malpractice and failure of the Catholic Church's leadership. O'Loughlin's deep dive into this history provides a means of healing, hope and inspiration.

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'Hidden Mercy' sheds light on history of the Catholic Church and HIV/AIDS - National Catholic Reporter

Cardi B has made history as the first female rapper to receive diamond certification on multiple songs.

On Monday, the top-charting rappers 2018 collaborative single with Maroon 5, Girls Like You, reached 10 million sales in the United States, reaching the required milestone for diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, according toChart Data.

The 29-year-old Bronx rapper first received diamond certification in March of this year when her 2017 track Bodak Yellow surpassed 10 million sales.

Wow I got two Diamond records! Cardi wrote on Twitter. Thank you sooo much @maroon5 for including me on this song and this is the song I cater to my daughter every time I perform it. Im forever grateful.

Outside of rap, Cardi is only the third female artist in history to receive multiple diamond certifications, joining the ranks alongside Katy Perry, who has received three, and Lady Gaga, who has also received two.

Cardi is also up for a Grammy at the 2022 awards ceremony in January for her solo track Up in the category of Best Rap Performance. The track is nominated for the award alongside Drakes Way 2 Sexy, J. Coles My Life, Megan Thee Stallions Thot Shit and Baby Keems Family Ties.

In case you missed it, watch Megan Thee Stallion join BTS for a surprise live debut of Butter.

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Cardi B Makes History as First Female Rapper With Multiple Diamond Tracks - HYPEBEAST

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the largest gift in its history, a whopping $125 million from financier Oscar L. Tang and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang.

The gift, the largest ever capital donation to the museum, will help it realize the almost decade-long projected renovation of the Modern wing, which will be renamed for the Tangs for at least 50 years.

It will take a total of around $500 million to complete the projected 80,000-square-foot gallery and public space, which will be designed by an as yet unnamed architect. Although the museum suffered a $150 million shortfall during the pandemic, Met president and C.E.O. Daniel Weiss told theNew York Times that were not concerned about finding the additional funding, adding that our finances are very stable. Weiss did not specify if the museum would ask the city of New York, which owns the Mets land and building, for additional funding.

Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Eileen Travell, courtesy of the Met.

A full renovation of the current modern and contemporary galleries, inaugurated in 1987 as the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing and spanning 110,000 square feet, was delayed in 2017 when the pricetag had ratcheted up to $600 million. In 2018, when Max Hollein signed on as the museums director, it announced plans to continue plans to overhaul itsgalleries dedicated to Africa, Oceania, and the Americas before setting its sights on the Modern wing.

The renovations are part of Holleins approach to encourage a more inclusive exhibition of the museums holdings in keeping with the debut contemporary sculpture project displayed on the museums facade, as well finding homes for works like the trove of Cubist works gifted by Leonard A. Lauder in 2013.

Tang, who co-founded the asset management firm Reich and Tang, has served as a trustee of the museum for three decades, beginning in 1994 when he was the first American of Asian descent to join the board. He was born in Shanghai and sent to school in the U.S. while his family fled China for Hong Kong during the Communist revolution in 1948.

America gave me refuge and the education and opportunities to succeed, he said in a statement.

Hsu-Tang is an art historian and archaeologist who is the chair-elect of the board of the New-York Historical Society whose name adorns centers for Chinese studies at Columbia University, U.C. Berkeley, and Oxford University Press. She also advised UNESCO in Paris from 2003 to 2014 and served on President Obamas cultural property advisory committee.

The reimagining of these galleries will allow the Museum to approach 20th-and 21st-century art from a global, encyclopedic, bold, and surprising perspective, Hollein said in a statement, all values that reflect the legacy of Oscar and Agnes.

The Met has a special opportunity to be much more global in the context of Modern and contemporary, Tang told theNew York Times.In the art field, there has been insufficient focus on this. We wanted to help the museum move in that direction, beyond the Western canon.

At a time when philanthropists like the Sacklers face accusations of art-washing their charitable gifts, as well as a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes stemming from former President Trumps mischaracterization of the pandemic, it feels especially timely for an Asian couple to grace the new wing.This country has been good to megood to both of us, Tang told theTimes.And we want to put our stamp on it.

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The Met Just Received $125 Millionthe Largest Gift in Its Historyto Build Its Long-Awaited Modern Wing Expansion - artnet News

Happy Thanksgiving.

This years holiday is more normal than last years, before the Covid vaccines had arrived. But it still is unusual for many families, involving some combination of antigen tests, outdoor meals (where the weather allows) and underlying anxiety.

With that mind, my colleagues and I put together a brief history of Thanksgiving celebrations since the 1850s, focusing on unusual years like this one. Farther down in todays newsletter, youll also find last-minute cooking tips, suggestions for holiday television and more.

However you spend the day, we hope its a good one. We want to say thanks specifically to two groups of people: first, to everybody whos working today (including our colleagues putting out The Times and delivering the print edition); and, second, to all of you the readers of The Morning. We are grateful that you make time in your day for this newsletter.

The first appearance of the word thanksgiving in The Times digital archives which go back to 1851 did not refer to the holiday. It instead was a reference on Oct. 4, 1851, to an appropriate prayer and thanksgiving from a reverend at the opening of the Queens Countys annual agricultural exhibition.

Thursday was quite a jubilee in the pleasant village of Jamaica, Long Island, an unnamed reporter for The New York Daily Times wrote. The ruddy, manly appearance of the farmers, and the freshness, delicacy, and real natural loveliness of their wives and daughters, (for which the county is justly renowned,) were sights to cheer and amaze the citizen, and many were there to witness and enjoy them.

The first mention of the holiday occurred less than a week later, in a brief news item reporting that the governor of Massachusetts had declared Thursday, Nov. 27, 1851, as a day of public thanksgiving and praise. There was no national Thanksgiving holiday at the time.

As other states announced when they would also be observing the holiday that year, The Times printed an infographic of questionable value on Oct. 31, 1851:

The origin story of Thanksgiving thats often told in school of a friendly meal between pilgrims and Native Americans is inaccurate. (As far back as 1974, The Times ran an article describing the holiday as a national day of mourning for many Native people.)

The real origin of the national holiday dates to Abraham Lincoln. On Oct. 3, 1863, he called for the country, in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving. The Times published his Thanksgiving proclamation on the front page, and several times subsequently.

While reciting the countrys many blessings a productive economy, bountiful harvests and a growing economy Lincoln also recommended that Americans give thanks with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.

Lincolns proclamation was in part a response to Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor who had spent decades campaigning for a national day of gratitude.

Like this years version, Thanksgiving in 1918 occurred in the midst of a global pandemic. But the atmosphere was surprisingly joyous. World War I had ended on Nov. 11, and the country was celebrating, despite a horrific number of influenza deaths in October. During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, Times articles contained relatively few mentions of the so-called Spanish flu.

Thanksgiving Day this year will evoke a gratitude deeper, a spirit of reverence more devout, than America has felt for many years, a Times editorial on Nov. 19 said.

One factor may have been that the pandemic briefly receded that November, before surging again at the end of the year. As has happened over the past two years, a virus ebbed and flowed in mysterious ways.

By 1930, the countrys mood was much darker. A front-page headline on Thanksgiving Day that year reported: 450 Tons of Food Given to Needy, But Supply Fails. The police turned away elderly men and women to reserve the food for families with young children.

The Times also reported that the Thanksgiving tradition of ragamuffins in which children would dress up and go door to door asking for coins or treats seemed to be fading in Manhattan. Things aint the way they used to be, a police officer said.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to spark the economy by moving Thanksgiving one week earlier, to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Critics mocked the policy as Franksgiving, and it failed. Roosevelt announced in 1941 that he was abandoning the experiment for the next year.

Roosevelt ultimately settled on the fourth Thursday of the month a middle ground that made sure the holiday would not occur later than Nov. 28 and that Christmas shopping could always begin in November.

Thanksgiving in 1963 came only six days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and most public celebrations were canceled. The Macys parade was an exception, The Times reported, because the organizers felt its cancellation would be a disappointment to millions of children.

The Kennedys gathered at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., but they skipped their usual game of touch football. Like millions of other Americans, they will give the day over to the children and mourn together their loss, The Times wrote.

The Covid-19 pandemic arguably caused a bigger break in Thanksgiving traditions than anything that came before. Since Lincolns proclamation, even during war, depression and tragedy, most Americans still found ways to gather with family and friends for a holiday meal.

But the threat from a pandemic better understood in 2020 than it had been in 1918 caused many people to stay home last year.

Today will be different. The pandemic is not over, but the worst of it almost certainly is. Vaccines have allowed most Americans to gather safely.

The country is hardly in a joyous mood. Even as people are happy to be together again, many are mourning the losses of the past two years and deeply worried about the countrys future. Yet mixed feelings are also part of the Thanksgiving tradition, all the way the back to Lincolns proclamation.

More on the holiday: For Rafael Alvarez a writer for The Wire today is a chance to remember his fathers penknife and his parents Baltimore dreams.

Rich: Kanye West created a jacket for Gap. It makes you look famous.

Ranking: Vote for the best book of the past 125 years.

Ethical questions: What should a reader do with a big inheritance?

Lives Lived: Margo Guryan recorded an album in the 1960s, but it didnt find an audience until the late 1990s. People say Ive been rediscovered, she said at the time. Its not true Ive been discovered. Guryan died at 84.

Last years Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade lacked its typical pageantry. Because of the pandemic, there were no spectators, the route spanned only one block and thousands fewer participants marched.

This year, the parade is almost all the way back: About 6,500 people will be working on it, up from 960 last year. The number of giant balloons and floats is back to roughly what it was two years ago. And 10 marching bands, many of which couldnt travel last year, will fill the streets.

There is one caveat: No kids under 12 will participate. Everyone in the parade must be fully vaccinated, but children 5 to 11 were eligible for their first shots only a few weeks ago. (They can still watch; spectators have no vaccination requirement.)

Their absence will be curious in an event whose stars have included Pikachu, SpongeBob SquarePants and Shrek. This year, the young people waving from floats will be vaccinated tweens and teens so viewers can perhaps expect less unadulterated joy and wide-eyed wonder, The Timess Julia Jacobs writes.

The televised parade will feature the Rockettes, Carrie Underwood, Mickey Guyton, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Batiste and Nelly. It starts at 9 a.m. Eastern, and you can watch it on NBC, Telemundo or the Peacock streaming service. Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

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A History of Unusual Thanksgivings - The New York Times

But those students have since graduated, she noted, and the pandemic impacted the universitys ability to conduct public outreach.

Alexander Rosado-Torres, a graduate of Rutgers, once served as a Scarlet & Black tour guide. He remembered the feeling of standing on Wills Way, a walkway named after an enslaved man whose unpaid labor helped build the campus. The experience, he said, was transformative.

I was like, Wow, Will, right?

Rosado-Torres is now a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focusing on the history of education. He said his own research is uncovering the experiences of LGBT teachers, during the 60s and 70s in the United States, specifically in New Jersey.

"Id say it was really in large part because of my own experiences in Scarlet and Black and being able to do that work," he said.

But he said there was a subsequent falloff in public engagement after the first few years.

Darrick Hamilton, director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy at The New School, said institutions like Rutgers need to be intentional if they want to actually reach students.

Knowledge is a necessary ingredient, but its not sufficient, he said. We also need a concerted strategy to actualize that knowledge and disseminate that knowledge through public engagement.

Rutgers is one of a growing number of colleges and universities in the U.S. confronting their early history, and in some cases making amends. Students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., agreed to tax themselves $27.20 each semester in order to pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people from whom the institution profited.

Students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island are making similar efforts in the wake of a report in 2006 documenting how the universitys founders played an active role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Student ImaniNia Burton heads the United Black Council at Rutgers, an umbrella organization for Black student groups. She said elevating the facts about the universitys founders and acknowledging the fault is awesome, but like the students at Georgetown and Brown, wants to see the administration do more, like provide more funding for Black students and foster a more supportive environment for them.

The impact of the Scarlet and Black Project is not lost on Jonathan Holloway, a historian and the first Black president in the universitys history. He joined the university in the wake of the protests after George Floyd was killed and presides at a challenging time, when conservatives nationwide are suppressing efforts to teach American history under the pretext of fighting critical race theory.

We have legislatures who are now trying to make it illegaland this is a long history behind this thingto teach certain aspects of our countrys past," Holloway told Gothamist, "literally making it illegal to teach enslavement as part of our countrys past.

Holloway said this makes it especially important for the university to tell history, starting with its own.

We haven't even begun and when I hear about people not knowing who Sojourner Truth is, it affirms that work is ongoing.

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Rutgers Confronts Its History of Slavery, With Mixed Results - Gothamist

After the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving is the most heavily mythologized US-specific holiday, and in some ways its myth is even more insidious. Whereas the Fourth of July is an origin story for the nation, Thanksgiving is its supposed prehistory, a deceptively anodyne depiction of relations between European settlers and the lands Native inhabitants. The story of friendly New England pilgrims and Wampanoag people breaking bread together is instilled in every schoolchild in the country. Recent years have seen a pushback against this picture-book version of the past and the sanitized narrative it represents, as Native people of various nations fight for recognition and reparation of both their historical persecution and contemporary government neglect.

This is the context in which the Upstander Project, a decolonization-minded media education initiative, has released its new documentary short Bounty. Produced in collaboration with members of the Penobscot Nation, it tells the little-known history of government bounties for Indigenous people across the Northeast, both before and after the founding of the United States. These murders were commissioned starting only a generation after the fabled First Thanksgiving. Researchers for the film uncovered records of government payments for 375 human scalps that amounted to the modern equivalent of millions of dollars, awarded over the course of many years. Additionally, bounty hunters were sometimes rewarded with the land of the people they killed, resulting in thousands of acres throughout the region being stolen. And this is only what is known from what currently survives in various archives.

The film features several Penobscot relaying this history to their children in Bostons Old State House, in the very room where in 1755 the settler government proclaimed war on their ancestors. The documentary is made both as a provocative We are still here statement and as an introduction to a greater dialogue around these issues. The films website is built with a novel structure, introducing elements piece by piece as the reader scrolls, encouraging you to ingest each piece of information in turn before proceeding to the next section. It is filled with supplementary materials videos that introduce and contextualize the short, clips that tell more about the participants, a teachers guide, a timeline of events, an appendix of documented land grants in the Northeast, and more. Bounty is a potent piece of Thanksgiving counter-programming. On this holiday, people are encouraged to reflect; dont leave this history out of that reflection.

Bounty can be viewed, along with its accompanying videos and other materials, on its website.

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This Thanksgiving, Dont Forget the History of Native Bounties in the US - Hyperallergic

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) Thanksgiving began in Knoxville as a religious holiday but after the Civil War, it grew into a festival that often included fireworks, hunting parties, roller-skating parties, and shows in theaters on Gay Street according to the Knoxville History Project.

Thanksgiving celebrations date back to the 1600s and it was mostly celebrated in the New England area. Slowly, many days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout the country. In fact, in 1847, Gov. Aaron Brown decreed a Thanksgiving Day.

In Knoxville, there was at least some awareness of the holiday by 1847 when the newspaper The Knoxville Register urged the national adoption of the holiday. A few years later, Gov. Andrew Johnson declared a Thanksgiving Day to be held on Thursday, Dec. 6, 1855.

The Knoxville History Project said it was celebrated with nondenominational service at First Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Church Avenue and State Street, and most area churches participated.

When Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday on Nov. 26, 1863, its unlikely that many in Knoxville were celebrating with a feast as the city was under siege by Confederate Gen. James Longstreet.

However, Union soldiers defending the city observed the holiday thanks to Gen. Ambrose Burnside giving General Field Order No. 32. Though the men were living on half rations at the time.

By the early 1900s, the Knoxville History Project said many were making a point to feed the less fortunate on Thanksgiving. The YMCA, the Salvation Army, and the Childrens Mission Home served free dinners for the holiday.

In 1906, reformer Carrie Nation, a prohibitionist famous for smashing saloons with her hatchet, spent Thanksgiving in Knoxville. According to the Knoxville History Project, saloonkeepers put up signs saying All Nations Welcome Except Carrie. It is reported that Nation celebrated the holiday quietly with a dinner at the Cumberland Hotels dining room at the corner of Gay and Cumberland.

Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated throughout the country with family get-togethers, parades and often lots of food.

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From siege to family fest: Thanksgivings history in Knoxville - WATE 6 On Your Side