ataxiwardance

explore-blog:

The Histomap by John Sparks, 1931, depicts the ebb and flow of world powers from antiquity to today, part of a visual history of the timeline.

Actually got to page through Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline recently. Really really beautiful stuff.

theatlantic:

New Racism Museum Reveals the Ugly Truth Behind Aunt Jemima

David Pilgrim was 12 years old when he bought his first racist object at a flea market: a saltshaker in the shape of a mammy. As a young black boy growing up in Mobile, Alabama, he’d seen similar knick-knacks in the homes of friends and neighbors, and he instinctively hated them. As soon as he handed over his money, he threw his purchase to the ground and shattered it into pieces.

Pilgrim’s story brings to mind the young biblical Abraham, smashing idols in his father’s shop. But that mammy was the only racist icon Pilgrim ever destroyed. Today he owns thousands of them: cereal boxes, statuettes, whites-only signs, and postcards of black men being whipped and hung. The public will soon be able to see his entire collection and more at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which opens April 26 at Ferris University in Michigan where Pilgrim spent years as a sociology professor.

The museum is divided into sections, each reflecting a different distorted vision of black people in America. One features Uncle Toms: cheerful, servile black men like Uncle Ben or the chef on the Cream of Wheat box. Another showcases “brutes”: muscular ogres who lurk in dark alleys and ravish white women. Most of the objects predate civil rights, but there’s a section devoted to modern racism: It includes dozens of caricatures of President Barack Obama as a monkey, a terrorist, and a watermelon-eating “coon.”

Read more. [Images: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia]

FOLU! The internet has been reading our minds.

spiffingtea:

President Obama sits on the bus where Rosa Parks’ protest began the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott. Photo via African Americans for Obama.

This picture is so powerful. Unbelievable.

My quotidian disgust and exasperation with the Obama presidency should not surprise any of my followers but even my cold cold heart is not immune to the symbolic and historical gravity of his / our country’s achievements.

todayinhistory:

April 18th 1930: Nothing happened

On this day in 1930 BBC Radio announced in a 6.30pm news bulletin that there was no news for that day and instead played piano music for the duration of the programme. 

“Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news.”
- BBC presenter

Ha! Why is this such an amusing idea to me?

fyeahhistorymajorheraldicbeast:

Combining two of the greatest things: History and booze. Unfortunately no one was as excited as I was when I pointed it out!

allons-y—ally

Dude. This guy gets me.

New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll

By GUY GUGLIOTTA Published: April 2, 2012

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.

…

“[W]ars have profound economic, demographic and social costs,” he went on. “We’re seeing at least 37,000 more widows here, and 90,000 more orphans. That’s a profound social impact, and it’s our duty to get it right.”