Category Archives: History

Leah Allen is Assistant Professor of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College.

Although right-wingers likeRudy Giulianiargue that left-wing cancel culture is dangerous to free speech, the ongoing right-wing movement to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) from school curriculums fits into the rightslong history of attacks on progressives free speech. TheTexas Senate billremoving Martin Luther King, Jrs I Have a Dream speech, Native American history, and the history of white supremacy from public school curriculums may be blocked from passing right now, but it has madewaves throughout the internet. This bill comes amidst nationwide right-wing outrage over CRT, which Fox News reportedly mentioned nearly1300 times between March and Junethis year.

This hysteria reached a boiling point last month when aVirginia school board meeting was shut downby right-wing protestors over a curriculum that allegedly promotes CRT, although Loudoun County Schools officials publicly stated that CRT is not part of their curriculum.The ongoing distress over CRT is fueled by amassive,right-wing media-backed movementto control school curriculums. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for example, recently called for teachers to wearbody camerasto monitor CRT teaching, despite previouslyarguing in favor of free speech on campuses.

The panic over CRT may seem to have come out of nowhere,with media coverage of it skyrocketing in recent months,but progressive movements in academia have caused alarm for decades. This began withconspiracy theories about critical theory(CT), a method of systemic critique which was the predecessor of CRT. These conspiracy theories focus on the developers of CT, the Frankfurt School thinkers, who were mostly Jewish, and claim that they infiltrated American universities with the goal of destroying Western culture and implementing Cultural Marxism.

While these theories may seem far-fetched, they are still promoted today by right-wing thinkers likeBen ShapiroandJordan Peterson. Frankfurt School historian Martin Jay traced these conspiracy theories back to LaRouche movement writer Michael Minnicinosessaythat relies on little to no source material to make false, exaggerated claims. Minnicino claims, without evidence, that the heirs of Marcuse and Adorno completely dominate the universities and teach their students Politically Correct ritual exercises.The essay reduces the Frankfurt Schools complex intellectual history into a sound-bite sized package available to be plugged into a paranoid narrative,according to Jay. Despite the suspicious beginnings of this conspiracy theory, right-wing thinkers like Jeffrey A. Tucker and Mike Gonzalez continue to blame the Frankfurt School thinkers for todaysattacks on free speech, going as far as tosuggest executive actionto prevent their influence.

While the evidence supporting CT conspiracy theories is dubious, there is historical evidence to suggest that the Frankfurt School thinkers were far too divided to have devised such a world-changing plot. One must only look towards Adorno and Marcuses final letters to each othertheircorrespondence on the German student movementin the 1960sto see these divisions on full display.

In these letters, the two thinkers debated whether it was justified for Adorno to have called the police on a group of students who occupied his classroom demanding that he engage in self-criticism. While Adorno dismisses the students and their demands as pure Stalinism,Marcuse aligns himself with the students and their goals, finding it more helpful to aid the movement than disparage it. These thinkers differ in one key aspect: while Marcuse finds solidarity with the students in their goals, and is less concerned with how they achieve them, Adorno is repulsed by the means. How can a group that cannot even agree on which movements are good for society have possibly conducted such a mass, societal shift? The historical, fact-based evidence makes it clearthey didnt.

Some figures on the right have cancelled the Frankfurt School, reducing their complex history into buzzwords, and rendering their ideas meaningless. This is just one example of how right-wing figurescancel things that counter their worldviewthrough misinformation. CT conspiracy theories fit with former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorkas claim that theGreen New Deal will take your hamburgers, despite the proposal making no mention of meat. The theories also fit with the Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noems claim that we need todefend the soul of our nation against gay rapper Lil Nas X, just because he released Satan-themed shoes. We saw this pattern of regressive fear-mongering at its worst last month when there were two-stabbings at aprotest at a Los Angeles spa,spurred by a transphobic hoax. There is a pattern of misinformed reactionary cancelling in which even formerPresident Barack Obamahas been tied to the recent outrage over CRT. And these cancelling efforts clearly have had a wide-reaching effect, with26 states making steps against CRTjust recently.

Although reactionary cancelling is doing some damage, we can fight it through progressive cancelling. While reactionary cancelling serves oppression,pushing racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic agendas, progressive cancelling advocates consequences for socially unjust actions and amplifies marginalized voices.

In his essayRepressive Tolerance,Marcuse says that to realize universal tolerance, we first need to escape from our repressive society. One part of doing this is, instead of tolerating all opinions equally, to retract tolerance from opinions that perpetuate violence and oppression. Marcuse calls on us to fight the forces that serve oppression. We cannot play into the pocket of the oppressor like the Loudoun School Board meeting protestors. Instead, we must resist oppression like the 1960s student protestors who used progressive cancelling against perceived injustices like the United States involvement in Vietnam.

Progressive cancelling is the same form of cancelling that hit J.K. Rowling, Harvey Weinstein, or even Christopher Columbusone that centers marginalized people and says enough to violence and oppression. On a wide-enough scale, we could achieve what Marcuse called a Great Refusal. To change our societal trajectory to one towards Marcuses opposite of hell,we need to fight reactionary cancelling through progressive cancelling.

Here is the original post:

Critical Theory Opposes the Right Wing's Cancel Politics - History News Network (HNN)

Fontanet, Ind. (WTHI) - Local residents enjoyed a day full of bounce houses and free beans!

Many would say it doesn't get much better than that.

This is all thanks to the Fontanet Bean Dinner Association.

On Saturday, the 125th annual bean dinner took place from noon to 8 p.m.

The dinner included big bowls of beans, with a side of bounce houses for the kids, a cruise-in open to all classes of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, and even a live band.

This event is a long-running tradition in the small town of Fontanet, and it's of historical importance.

"A gathering of the Civil War veterans that basically started it, and their basic mealwas beans and hardtack...so we've continued that tradition," President of the Fontanet Bean Dinner Association Kevin Payton said.

The association is accepting donations to help pay for next year's beans, bacon, and bands.

View post:

Keeping history alive with bushels of beans - WTHITV.com

After 5 NBA championships, 3 Coach of the Year awards, 25 seasons as the Spurs head coach, and the most wins for any coach with just one team, Gregg Popovich is rumored to want to add another achievement to his overcrowded mantle: the all-time wins record for a head coach.

While he may never say it out loud, according to New York Times reporter Marc Stein via his subscription-based Substack, he has heard whispers that Pop really hopes to pass his friend and mentor Don Nelson as the winningest coach in NBA history. Pop, who has 1,310 regular-season wins to his name, is a mere 26 victories away from breaking Nelsons 1,335 win record. For his part, Nelson is reportedly rooting for Pop to achieve his goal as well. (Its worth noting that for whatever reason, the official record only includes regular season wins, but if it included the playoffs, Pop would have broken the record a long time ago.)

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, he shouldnt have too much trouble adding his name to the record books. For the first time in three seasons, the Spurs should have a full 82-game slate to work with, and while the team is entering the season in rebuild mode, they have a solid, young foundation whose ceiling is well above 26 wins. And while Vegas has their over/under relatively low at just 28.5 wins for the upcoming season, that would still be enough for Pop to comfortably break Nelsons record.

If the 72-year-old decides to retire at seasons end, breaking the record would be a memorable sendoff for arguably the greatest coach in basketball history. Regardless of what happens, Pop has made a lasting impact both on and off the court, and the Spurs are very fortunate to have such a great mentor leading the team.

Continue reading here:

Rumor: Gregg Popovich wants to become the winningest coach in NBA history - Pounding The Rock

When you lift the manholes in New Yorks Meatpacking District, you may hear the trickle of the historic Minetta Stream, a now underground waterway whose adjacent footpath was once called the old negroes causeway as it marked a trail worn by partially freed African Americans in the 1600s, those who owned the nearby farms but were required to pay a fee. Down the road was the Black National Theater, the first free schoolhouse for African Americans and a cluster of Black and Tan saloons serving up booze and community for people of color. Theres a rich history of Blackness in the neighborhood that has carried over to an inner sanctum of Black creatives gathering at social club Soho House, building their careers. Now, seven of those talentsNadia Nascimento, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Carolyn CC Concepcion, Isis Arias, Melle Hock, Jane Aiello and Danny Baezhave founded new collective ARTNOIR to center artists of color, narratives that highlight the Black perspective and forgotten Black histories.

Artnoir began in 2013 as a group of New York friends attending exhibits and art events together. This month, in partnership with Meatpacking BID, the collective launched with a variety of exhibitions, happenings and installations centering the rich Black history rooted in New Yorks Meatpacking District.

Francheska Alcantara in front of her work for The Meeting Point.

Inspired by the relationship between geography and lineage, ARTNOIRs five part production, From a Place, of a Place, channels the absolute truth that Black lives have always, do and will matter. Playing with the concept of placemaking, the cultural launch spans visual performances to community programming and launched August 12. The Meatpacking District has always been buzzing with Black energy. But those stories must be reclaimed, says Nascimento. We hold the past in equal recognition as we create a Black Future.

ARTNOIR kicked off their launch at the collectives 2 Gansevoort gallery with a show of 20 emerging Black artistsfour of whom were selected through public submissioncurated by Danny Bez of REGULARNORMAL. Aptly called The Meeting Point, the pieces in the exhibition are conceptually synonymous with what Bez coins the spirit of a ciphera reference to the freestyle circle of hip hop culture. From Daphne Arthurs smoke on paper footprints that seem to juxtapose resilience and confinement to the checkerboard literary collages of Kevin Claiborne, the work of these artists stands on its own while informing a larger story around Black liberation, mindful gathering and permanence.

Kevin Claibornes piece for The Meeting Point.

The exhibit speaks to the productions overall theme: the interplay between geography and identity is where the Black community holds its unique power, Nascimento explains. As part of Bezs curation, he selected two The Meeting Point artists for a five week residency that includes ARTNOIR council and a financial stipend. The first selected artist, Drew Weech, was recently announced.

In tandem, Nigerian artist and architect Olalekan Jeyifous has erected a large-scale sculpture, WHENEVER/WHEREVER, curated by Oshun Layne. Jeyifous built his piece with a focus on specific spaces where Black folks gather. Marrying the physicality of stoops, stairwells and porches with colors linked to traditional African and African American textiles, Jeyifous hopes his work can be a landing place for joy. Its very presence, Nascimento shares, asks us to look closer at the ground we are standing on and opens a world of possibilities on how and why we gather.

Bassist Endea Owens.

Thus far it has been a platform for musicians and dancers and will be the setting of a series of live performances in the coming weeks called Visions in Motion. Focused on the history of sound through a Black lens, the series was produced by Dario Calmese, the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vanity Fair, capturing Viola Davis.

For perhaps the most intimate part of the installation, ARTNOIR pieced together interviews of longtime Meatpacking residents in partnership with nonprofit Hudson Guild and Westbeth Artist Housing so that those meandering through Gansevoort Plaza can physically listen to the areas history by snapping any QR code nearby. These untold stories will serve as an official neighborhood guide that will eventually manifest as a zine alongside stunning portraits of these residents by Black-led creative studio Paper Monday.

What is most beautiful about ARTNOIRs creation is its celebration of Black joy by Black people. The self-prescribed family is working on their 100-year planraising their children in a community that intersects identity, happiness and art through the Black lens, and, ultimately, ensuring their Minetta Streams dont get paved over. As Nascimento proudly asserts, Were always going to fucking be here.

Craving more culture?Sign upto receive the Cultured newsletter, a biweekly guide to whats new and whats next in art, architecture, design and more.

See more here:

Artnoir Reclaims the Black History of New York's Meatpacking District - Cultured Magazine

In 1609, English sea explorer Henry Hudson and his ship, the Half Moon, reached present-day Delaware Bay.

In 1941, Japans ambassador to the US, Kichisaburo Nomura, presented a note to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Japans prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, expressing a desire for improved relations.

In 1955, Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago, was abducted from his uncles home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found brutally slain three days later.

In 1963, more than 200,000 people listened as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 1964, two days of race-related rioting erupted in North Philadelphia over a false rumor that white police officers had beaten to death a pregnant Black woman.

In 1968, police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.

In 1988, 70 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany.

In 1996, the troubled 15-year marriage of Britains Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially ended with the issuing of a divorce decree.

In 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew to a monster storm.

In 2009, the Los Angeles County coroners office announced that Michael Jacksons death was a homicide caused primarily by the powerful anesthetic propofol and another sedative, lorazepam.

In 2011, a suicide bomber struck inside Baghdads largest Sunni mosque, killing 29 people during prayers. California returned the Little League World Series title to the United States with a 2-1 victory over Hamamatsu City, Japan. Katy Perry won three MTV Video Music Awards, including video of the year for the inspirational clip Firework.

In 2013, a military jury sentenced Major Nidal Hasan to death for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood that claimed 13 lives. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama stood on the same steps as he challenged new generations to seize the cause of racial equality.

In 2016, six scientists completed a yearlong Mars simulation in Hawaii, where they emerged after living in a dome in near isolation on a Mauna Loa mountain. Ryan Harlost led Endwell, New York, to the Little League World Series title, striking out eight and limiting South Korea to five hits in six innings in a 2-1 victory. Beyonce received eight honors at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York. Juan Gabriel, a superstar Mexican songwriter and singer who was an icon in the Latin music world, died at his home in California at age 66.

In 2017, floodwaters reached the rooflines of single-story homes as Hurricane Harvey poured rain on the Houston area for a fourth consecutive day; thousands of people had been rescued from the flooding.

In 2018, a white former police officer, Roy Oliver, was convicted of murder for fatally shooting a Black 15-year-old boy, Jordan Edwards, while firing into a car packed with teenagers in suburban Dallas; Oliver was sentenced the following day to 15 years in prison.

In 2020, Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Black icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown as well as the regal Black Panther on screen, died at the age of 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. On Jackie Robinson Day across the major leagues, the Houston Astros and Oakland Athletics jointly walked off the field following a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter T-shirt across home plate as they chose not to play. (Other major league clubs had joined teams in the NBA, WNBA, and MLS earlier in the week in calling off games while protesting social injustice.) The University of Alabama reported that an additional 481 students had tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total to more than 1,000 infections since students returned to campus for the fall. Nevada officials reported what may have been the first documented case of coronavirus reinfection in the United States. Japans longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he was stepping down because a chronic illness had resurfaced.

Read more:

Today in History - The Boston Globe

Kat Martin calls herself one of Charlottes unicorns, someone who was born and raised and grew up in the city. People like her are rare in this city of transplants, she knows. But the theatrical artist left town for grad school, and when she returned eight years later, she found herself getting lost in neighborhoods she once knew like the back of her hand.

So much had changed, and she wasnt sure she liked or understood it. What had happened to the restaurants and grocery stores she knew and loved? Why does the wedge of prosperous neighborhoods and the crescent of poorer ones in Charlotte still exist? What are food deserts and why are they found in places she frequented?

I saw all this, quote-unquote progress, she said, but then the porches that I was sitting on and the people that I knew didn't reflect the gleaming progress that I saw in other parts of Charlotte.

Courtesy FixaPlate

Martin felt drawn to telling Charlottes story its real story and not in a surface-level way. What she and Mixed Metaphors Productions came up with is FixaPlate, an immersive theatrical experience that aims to tell the history of Charlotte through food.

I feel like the answers to those questions have been around the table and on these porches rather than in boardrooms and in funding meetings, she said.

At FixaPlate, which takes place Sept. 17-19 and Oct. 23 and 24, attendees will sit down at Grandma Millies atop blankets in an open field so everyone is distanced during these COVID-19 times and learn about her memories through an old recipe box that is found. Handwritten cards and passed-down recipes reveal the history of the home and family while challenging and correcting the public narrative of Charlottes progress.

By using theater and installation art and food, we want to take something that we all know and ignore, and put it in our bodies through art and through celebration and through genuine talking to each other, Martin said.

In practice that means a theatrical scene, followed by a visit to an art installation. Another scene, and another art viewing. That continues until the conclusion which is a meal provided by the restaurant Grinning Mule.

Recipes of the food that will be served come from virtual potluck events shes held since the start of this year, and include everything from chicken and dumplings to collard greens and everything in between.

Courtesy FixaPlate

When we're working in the ensemble, we always say it's juicy contradictions. So, we're looking for complexity within that narrative, she said. So, yeah, there's a biscuit. And then there's also a pigeon, peas and rice dish that came from Charlotteans and it's really representative of their history."

But its not just food. FixaPlate aims to be a full-sensory experience. And that means the theater performance and art installations created through the help of 15 local artists. In one immersive art experience, artist Claudio Ortiz creates a soundscape using samples of sound hes gathered of people talking about recipes, about restaurants, of different neighborhoods, and even of Prices Chicken Coop on the final day it was open.

People come into a room and play each of those samples in whatever order they devise, creating a unique mix.

It's adding that layer of what food is, like the sounds of the kitchen, Martin said. So, we think that the installation pieces are going to make sure that we're tapping into every single sense that surrounds food.

In the end, Martin hopes, people will leave with a new sense of what created the Charlotte that exists today with all its sparkling uptown buildings, gentrified neighborhoods, food deserts and prosperous shops. That is to say, the real Charlotte.

We see how it shows up on our plate there, Martin said. And the project, itself, reframes that instead of kind of ignoring the systemic factors food desert makes it sound like it just naturally occurred like a desert -- instead, we want to show the way that Charlotte's history at large impacts the plate and the kitchen table, and how the kitchen table can impact Charlotte's history at large.

All that in a single immersive theatrical experience.

Excerpt from:

'FixaPlate' And Gather 'Round To Learn About Charlotte's History Through Food - WFAE

In this screengrab, JoJo Siwa speaks during Instagram and Facebook's Creator Week on June 8, in Los Angeles. Siwa will be dancing with a female pro on this season's Dancing with the Stars. Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Instagram and Facebook hide caption

In this screengrab, JoJo Siwa speaks during Instagram and Facebook's Creator Week on June 8, in Los Angeles. Siwa will be dancing with a female pro on this season's Dancing with the Stars.

Before stepping on the dance floor, actress and YouTube personality JoJo Siwa is already making history as the first Dancing with the Stars contestant to be matched with a same-sex partner.

"I am so excited to be a part of 'Dancing With the Stars,' Season 30, and to be dancing with a girl," Siwa said in a tweet. "I think it's so cool."

Siwa's partner will be introduced on the season premiere airing on Sept. 20.

"I think it's cool. I think it breaks a wall that's never been done before," Siwa said during this year's Television Critics Association virtual summer press tour.

"I think it's really special that I get to share with the world that you can love who you love, but now you can dance with who you want to dance with," she said.

Siwa, 18, opened up about her sexuality this January over a series of posts on TikTok and Instagram, saying she's "happy that the world gets to see this side of [her] life."

Siwa has over 60.5 million followers across her social media pages and over 3.6 billion views on YouTube. Last year, Siwa was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.

The remaining 13 celebrities for Dancing With The Stars will be announced on Sept. 8 on ABC's Good Morning America.

More:

JoJo Siwa Will Make History In The 1st Same-Sex Pairing On 'Dancing With The Stars' - NPR

DETROIT -- Austin Bryant has played only 10 games in the two seasons since the Detroit Lions took him in the fourth round, struggling to get or stay on the field, failing to make much of a lasting impact.

The versatile defender has always been an interesting mix of athleticism and length off the edge, switching to outside linebacker in first-year defensive coordinator Aaron Glenns scheme. Bryant had two tackles in Detroits preseason finale against the Indianapolis Colts, breaking into the backfield and pocket on a couple of occasions. He nearly had a sack on third down in the loss, saying he beat his guy with a clean move in the trenches and that next time I just have to make it.

Bryant spent time on injured reserve for pectoral injuries in each of his two seasons, missing additional time with a thigh ailment in 2020. Hes missed 22 games while playing only 10, putting him in an interesting situation with a staff and front office that didnt draft him, all while trying to adjust to a new scheme. The Lions have to be at 53 players by Aug. 31, down from their current standing of 80.

I just wanted to get better, Bryant said. You all know my story, a battle with injuries. Just really grateful and blessed to be healthy right now and being able to have a chance to help this team under a new staff. Im just excited, and hopefully I just got a little bit better today and to continue that for the rest of the year.

Bryant has been back on the practice field most of the last month, showing signs of progress along the way. He had a couple of sessions with multiple sacks, doing his best to carve a role in a room of edge defenders featuring Trey Flowers, Romeo Okwara, Julian Okwara and Charles Harris. While his numbers through the preseason wont blow anyone away, Bryant was relentless with his effort through those opportunities, truly looking like someone starved of football at times.

Bryant played 35 defensive snaps in Pittsburgh after logging 18 in the opener against Buffalo. He had two tackles against the Colts, adding another pair in Pittsburgh and two tackles against the Bills. The final tally from Fridays finale isnt available yet, but Bryant was out there for a fair amount of time, drawing reps with the first-team defense.

I got a chance to holistically get better, from the weight room to the field, without having to worry about a rehab process or anything like that, Bryant previously said. Thats been awesome for me. Been able to dedicate a lot of time to perfecting my craft and being the player that I want to be. So now that I finally get to showcase it and show people what I already know about myself, thats been the most fulfilling thing.

Lions coach Dan Campbell was recently asked about any players that were different than he expected when he was first hired. He pointed to fullback Jason Cabinda, safety C.J. Moore and Bryant as those to impress or change his first impressions.

I think Austin Bryant, now he was hurt last year, but I know this, this guy was all out, all of the time the plays that he did play, but to watch him being here and get his feet back under him and get the reps, get the load, hes been pretty impressive, Campbell said. I think this guys really got a high ceiling and can continue to grow. I think hes even twitchier than I thought he was. Those would be three pretty good examples.

Related stories:

Stock report: Whos trending up, whos not for Detroit Lions ahead of final roster cuts

With roster cuts looming, Detroit Lions could lose QB Tim Boyle to thumb injury for some time

Instant observations: Detroit Lions go winless in preseason again, lose QB Tim Boyle to injury too

Detroit Lions lose 27-17 to Indianapolis Colts to finish preseason winless: Live updates recap

More:

Lions Austin Bryant ready to put injury history in the past after strong finish to preseason - MLive.com

Singer Tina Turner was the main draw at the opening ceremony in San Francisco for the first Gay Games in 1982, but city supervisor Doris Ward may have received the biggest reaction from the crowd. She said, Id like to invite you all to the first-ever Gay Olympics, remembers Jim Hahn, one of roughly 1.300 competitors in the inaugural event. And the place just went nuts.

But Gay Games I, which ran from August 28-September 5, 1982, faced many challenges, including the U.S. Olympic Committee's lawsuit barring the event from using the name "Gay Olympics." The legal action was a microcosm of the discrimination dealt with by the LGBT community, which still was carving out a place for openly queer people in American society.

There were Rat Olympics, there were Xerox Olympics, there were Police Olympics. You could have an Olympics for anything, says Shamey Cramer, a swimmer who co-led Team Los Angeles in the first Games, but heaven forbid you should be gay or lesbian.

The U.S.O.C. succeeded in blocking the official use of the term "Olympic," but the lawsuit galvanized support for the Games, especially among the gay community.

Participants in the inaugural event today recall Gay Games I as a watershed moment for gay athletes around the world."When I walk into the [Gay Games] opening ceremonies," says Hahn, "I always get that sense of history coming back.

Dr. Tom Waddell, a former U.S. Olympian, was one of the lead organizers of the first Gay Games. A two-sport athlete in college, Waddellwho died from AIDS in 1987was still closeted in 1968, when he placed sixth in the decathlon at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Waddell advised American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith there on their public statements about their Black Power salute, one of the more notable protests in sports history.

Like many other LGBT athletes, Waddell wanted to make a similar, powerful statement with an event for gay athletes.

READ MORE: 8 Memorable Protests by American Athletes

You were either a drag queen or in the leather communitythose were the stereotypes that were presented to the public at that time, says Rick Thoman, a track and field athlete who competed in the first Gay Games. They never thought that we were able to be athletic and be gay at the same time.

A number of gay and lesbian sports leagues emerged in the 1970s, as the LGBT community gradually announced itself to mainstream society. Still, many outlets for gay athletes, namely bowling and billiards leagues, were still tied to the bars that had served as safe harbors for decades.

The Games offer another place to come out besides a dark bar, Jill Ramsay, the chair of swimming and diving at the first Games, told the Bay Area Reporter, one of the nation's first gay newspapers,in 1982.

READ MORE: Harvey Milk, icon in the gay community

Like the campaigns of gay politician Harvey Milk, a well-known community organizer, the first Gay Games were a grassroots project. Ahead of the Games, a volunteer group of lesbians fixed up Kezar Stadium, one of the chief venues and former home of the San Francisco 49ers. Waddell used an ironing boardas a makeshift sign-up table for the Games on a street corner in the Castro,a hub of San Francisco's gay community. Waddell said the first Gay Games were put on with a modest budget: $220,000.

Shamey Cramer was instrumental in organizing Gay Games following the inaugural event in 1982.

Annie Wells/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

At Gay Games I, teams were organized by city, each designing their own uniforms. Age groups were not standardized, and squads for relays and other team sports were often organized on an ad hoc basis.

Future games would be more organized, but those competitions retained several crucial elements of the first Games: Athletes of all skill levels and orientations are welcome, and winning is not considered as important as setting a personal best. Participants ranged from elite athletes to novices.

Charlie Carson, a swimmer who traveled to from New York for Gay Games I in 1982, recalls meeting a young swimmer from Australia who had never competed against others. While warming up, Carson and others gave him tips on the finer points of each stroke to ensure he would not get disqualified.

READ MORE: Explore history of the LGBTQ movement in America

In addition to boxing, basketball, swimming and a number of other traditional Olympic sports, the Gay Games featured billiards, bowling and a physique competition held at the historic Castro Theater. For two weeks, venues around San Francisco were hubs of activity, with restaurants, stores and nightclubs in the Castro district offering special deals for athletes.

Attendance was mediocre at first, participants say, but rose as the Games went on. About 10,000 spectators attended the opening ceremony at Kezar Stadium. One participant estimates that between 6,000 and 7,000 fans attended the closing ceremony.Extensive coverage of the first Games was found only in the Bay Area Reporter.

Greg Louganis, one of the best divers in Olympic history, publicly revealed he was gay at the Gay Games in 1994.

Pascal Rondeau/ALLSPORT

Thanks to the efforts of Cramer, Hahn, Carson, Thoman and many others, the Gay Games have taken place every four years since 1982, with recent editions drawing comparable numbers of athletes to the Olympics and Paralympics. Carson remains proud of the impact of the Gay Games on the Olympics and broader sporting world.

We weren't oblivious to the fact that what we were doing at the first Games was groundbreaking, he says.

Six years after the first Gay Games, equestrian Robert Dover became the first openly gay athlete to compete in the modern Olympics. Olympic gold medalist Bruce Hayes came out publicly while competing at Gay Games III in 1990. Four years later, diver Greg Louganis came out as part of the opening ceremony of Gay Games IV. According to Outsports, there were at least 185 openly LGBT athletes at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

The Games also led to a boom in the formation of gay sports clubs across America. People went back to their communities, and gay sports just came out of the woodwork, says Thoman, who is still a member of a track club that formed in the wake of the Games.

[The Games] gave me confidence to be who I really was, he adds. To be able to be an athlete and be gay, it was just a huge burst of pride.

Continue reading here:

Why the First Gay Olympics Was a Watershed Moment in Sports - History

The Accommodation begins with the bombings. The 1950s terror spree that racist Dallasites unleashed on Black residents whod dared buy homes in a then-white neighborhood. The dozen or so packages of dynamite hurled at South Dallas houses that rocked the city, yet led to no criminal conviction. The shameful episode that local elites have fought to see forgotten but that, the books author writes, sprung right up out of the spiritual heart of the white community, the heart darkened by nineteenth-century specters.

A 34-year-old work set for republication this September, The Accommodation is an unusual book with an unusual backstory. Jim Schutze, a long-time acerbic city columnist and white man, wrote the text in the mid-1980s after many evenings buried in Dallas Public Library archives. The end-product may fairly be called a journalistic account, blending straight reportage and opinionated analysis, of race and civil rights in mid-20th century Dallas. But the 260-page book is also amateur history and historiographical critique, newsy play-by-play and grand political theory. It is a fierce indictment, occasionally indiscriminate and overwrought, that still hits its target. It is, perhaps above all, a pleasure to read.

The Accommodation almost never saw the light of day. In 1986, the books Dallas-based publisher unexpectedly scrapped it due to either poor pre-sales or political pressure, depending on who you ask. A year later, a New Jersey press gave the book a small release but decided against a second run. Schutze then handed over the rights to Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, who pledged to find a publisher, but after the two men had a falling out, Schutze says, Price simply sat on the book for decades. Thus, an obscure books legend grew.

Like literary contraband, young Dallasites over the last decade passed around a Dropbox link leading to a photocopied version of the book. No one seems sure who made the copy. On Amazon, The Accommodation listed for hundreds of dollars and D Magazine profiled the phenomenon in a piece titled The Most Dangerous Book in Dallas. As the now-75-year-old Schutze interprets it, millennial-age residents were encountering a Dallas still viciously riven by a north-south divide and allergic to talking about why. His book spoke to a burning question: Why is the city like this? Now, with Prices blessing, the local publisher Deep Vellum will let everyone digest Schutzes answers.

The books thesis is this: Dallas, despite its boosters claims, is a place crafted stem to stern by white supremacist violence and expropriation. Yet, through an anti-democratic alliance between the citys business class and conservative Black clergy members, Dallas managed to avoid the riotous convulsions of the civil rights era seen elsewhere in America. The city maintained a relative peace with precious little justice, the titular accommodation, which Schutze believes hampered the development of independent Black leadership and the advancement of white attitudes.

Dallas commands a part of Texas that is much more Southern, with stronger roots in slave culture, than many outsiders realize, Schutze writes. To make the case, he recounts the 19th-century influx of enslavers to North Texas, where he argues slavery then was likely even crueller than in the Deep South. He reviews post-Civil War federal reports recounting floggings and murders that permeated Dallas, and describes the city in the 1920s as a hotbed of KKK activity. As the Black middle class fitfully grew, he describes how the city used legal hocus pocus to vaporize property rights, clear neighborhoods, and push as many Black residents as possible into segregated housing projects. These very pressures, he details, led Black housebuyers to venture into South Dallas, where working-class whites responded with dynamite.

Black Dallasites fought back, defending their homes with guns as necessary, butin Shutzes tellingthe public square stayed rather quiet. Bull Connor sicced his dogs in Birmingham and Watts burned in Los Angeles, but Dallas saw just a few picket lines outside downtown stores. The key player, he says, was the Citizens Council, a coterie of business elites that controlled the city council, elected entirely at-large, and ran Dallas like a pre-democratic city-state. With a fine-tuned sense of when to co-opt a leader or cut ties with one who veers too far-right, the council was adept at propaganda and substituting tokenistic reforms for justice. The group ultimately sowed the enduring myth of Dallas as a rational Southwestern city of convenient commerce. Members of the Citizens Council also composed the grand jury that, after finding the 1950s bombings plot involved respected white community leaders, asked to be disbanded. Still, the city did not burn, and blatant segregation persisted from the State Fair to graduation ceremonies.

For Schutze, a turning point came finally in the late 70s, when a movement of Black homeowners spearheaded a lawsuit that overturned the at-large city council system, leading to district elections that the Citizens Council couldnt control. The book ends hopefully. But, in a new foreword, County Commissioner Price argues that little has actually changed in Dallaseven in todays era of Black Lives Matter uprisingsand many locals still see the city as a uniquely white-washed place.

Jerry Hawkins, now the director of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing and Transformationan anti-racist nonprofitwas one of those Dallas residents who discovered The Accommodation through a Dropbox link years ago. He tore through the PDFs. These were things I had never heard of, he says. Nobody talked about this stuff.

Hawkins says hes shared the photocopied version with numerous acquaintances, and he references it at talks where he finds that even lifelong Dallasites dont know the history of the bombings and similar events. He says The Accommodation spreads well thanks to its reputation as a banned book and because its written like a telenovela. With a friend, Hawkins formed a reading group to discuss each chapter. This book has created a whole bunch of other things, he says, noting that the actor William Jackson Harper, a Dallas native, wrote a 2018 play based on the story.

At the same time, Hawkins doesnt actually buy a core piece of the books thesis. He thinks Schutze undersells the history of Black activism in Dallas, not because of ill will but because of ignorance. The notion that Dallas didnt really have a civil rights movement is kind of a myth thats perpetrated in the way the author tells the tale, he says. Im not saying hes intentionally leaving things out. Im saying he probably doesnt even have the key to the door to get that information; I mean the Black Panther Party was in Dallas, and hes not going to be in those meetings.

Hawkins plans to help flesh out the story of Black Dallas himself. Hes editing a collection of essays called A Peoples History of Dallas, set for release next year, and hes researching another project, with a working title of How to Build a Racist City.

Schutze himself has called for further attempts to unravel Dallas past. In a recent article, he described his own book, with some exaggeration, as the only attempt anybody has made so far to solve a glaring unavoidable riddle: Why is the city like this? He then urged new and younger authors to soon produce a better answer to the question.

Here is the original post:

Dallas' Hidden History of Terror - The Texas Observer - The Texas Observer