Unsung History

Throughout her life, Shirley Chisholm fought for coalitional change. She was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress in 1968, the first Black woman to run for President of the United States in 1972, co-founder of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus, both in 1971, and co-founder of the National Congress of Black Women in 1984. Toward the end of her life, Chisholm told an interviewer: “I want history to remember me ... as a Black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.”

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History and Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky, and author of Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is Shirley Chisholm speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, on July 12, 1972. The photographer was Warren K. Leffler, and the photograph is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress.

The audio clip of Shirley Chisholm speaking is from her presidential campaign announcement on January 25, 1972, in Brooklyn; the audio is courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archive, via C-SPAN. The audio clip of Rep. Barbara Lee is from Two Broads Talking Politics, Episode 433: Barbara Lee, which originally aired on October 9, 2020; the episode was recorded, edited, and produced by Kelly Therese Pollock and is used with express permission.

Additional Sources:

• “‘Unbought and Unbossed’: When a Black Woman Ran for the White House,” by Jackson Landers, Smithsonian Magazine, April 25, 2016.
• “‘Unbought and Unbossed’: How Shirley Chisholm Helped Paved the Path for Kamala Harris Nearly Five Decades Ago,” by Stuart Emmrich, Vogue, August 20, 2020.
• “Politicians reflect on Shirley Chisholm's legacy 50 years after her historic presidential run,” by Anna Lucente Sterling, NY1, February 17, 2022.
• “CHISHOLM, Shirley Anita,” House.gov.
• “What You May Not Know About TC Alum Shirley Chisholm,” Teacher’s College, Columbia University, Published Wednesday, November 30, 2022.
• “Shirley Chisholm, 'Unbossed' Pioneer in Congress, Is Dead at 80,” by James Barron, The New York Times, January 3, 2005.
• “Congressional Black Caucus swears in its largest group in history,” by Cheyanne M. Daniels, The Hill, January 3, 2023.
• “Democratic women lawmakers who broke through in 2018 now step into leadership roles,” by Grace Panetta and Mel Leonor Barclay, The 19th, January 3, 2023.
• “Rep. Lauren Underwood elected to House Democratic leadership position,” by Lynn Sweet, Chicago SunTimes, December 1, 2022.

Enslaved Africans in what is now New York State and in the Middle Passage resisted their enslavement, despite the risk of doing so. In the previously accepted history of these slave revolts, the assumption was that men led the resistance, but Dr. Rebecca Hall dug deeper into the records and read against the grain to find the women warriors who fought for their freedom.

Joining me to help us learn more is Dr. Rebecca Hall, a scholar, activist and educator, who writes and speaks on the history of race, gender, law and resistance, and author of the recent highly-acclaimed graphic novel, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “Negro quarters, T.J. Fripp plantation, St. Helena Island (near Beaufort), S.C.” from the Library of Congress.

Selected Additional Sources:

• Benton, Ned. “Dating the Start and End of Slavery in New York,”New York Slavery Records Index: Records of Enslaved Persons and Slave Holders in New York from 1525 though the Civil War, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
• Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Middle Passage, Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Slavery and Remembrance.
• Hall, Rebecca. “Not Killing Me Softly: African American Women, Slave Revolts, And Historical Constructions of Racialized Gender,” Vol. 1, Issue 2 of The Freedom Center Journal, a joint publication of University of Cincinnati College of Law and the National Underground Railroad Center, June, (2010).
• National Park Service, “The Middle Passage.”

When Alabama plantation owner Samuel Townsend died in 1856, he willed his vast fortune to his children and his nieces. What seems like an ordinary bequest was anything but, since Townsend’s children and nieces were his enslaved property. Townsend, who knew the will would be challenged in court, left nothing to chance, hiring the best lawyer he could find to ensure that his legatees received both their freedom and the resources they would need to survive in a country that was often hostile to free African Americans.

To learn more about the Townsend Family, I’m joined in this episode by ​public historian Dr. R. Isabela Morales, the Editor and Project Manager of The Princeton & Slavery Project, and author of Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Fugitive African Americans fording the Rappahannock,” photographed by Timothy H. O’Sullivan in August 1862. The image is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Additional Sources:

• “An enslaved Alabama family and the question of generational wealth in the US,” by Isabela Morales, OUP Blog, June 15, 2022.
• “Estate of Samuel Townsend,” The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections, Septimus D. Cabiness papers.

In fall 1947 the Shell Oil Company hired a Women’s Travel Director named Carol Lane, who served in the role until she retired in 1974. Lane’s job was to encourage women to travel, showing them the joys of touring the country by car. Lane herself traveled around the United States and Canada, speaking to women’s clubs and on radio and TV, giving travel tips and packing demonstrations. Eventually, she even awarded women who developed local travel safety programs with the Carol Lane Award.

So who was Carol Lane? To learn the answer to that question, I’m joined on this episode by historian Melissa Dollman, author of the digital dissertation, Changing Lanes: A Reanimation of Shell Oil’s Carol Lane, which was the source I consulted in writing the introduction to this episode.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is from the booklet Carol Lane’s Dress-O-Graph, from 1953, which is in the public domain.

In Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th century, oyster harvesting was a big business. There were so many oyster harvesters harvesting so many oysters that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia had to start regulating who could harvest oysters and how they could do so. Creating the regulations was the easy part; enforcing them was much harder. The illegal harvesting of oysters by oyster pirates continued, even after the creation of the Maryland State Oyster Police Force in 1868 and a similar force in Virginia in 1884.

The first of the Oyster Wars was in Virginia in 1882 when Governor William E. Cameron himself joined the expedition to raid the pirates. The first raid was a success, but Cameron quickly learned that pirates wouldn’t stay defeated for long, and the oyster wars continued. By the late 1880s the Oyster Wars turned deadly.

The Oyster Wars remained an important part of Chesapeake Bay history all the way until the “official” end of the Oyster Wars in 1959, although even that may have not truly been the end.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Oyster Wars and (with a little help from her son, Arthur, interviews Jamie Goodall, author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “The oyster war in Chesapeake Bay,” Drawing by Schell and Hogan. Harper's Weekly, Mar. 1, 1884, p. 136. Library of Congress.

Sources:

• Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars by Jamie L. H. Goodall
• National Geographic Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests & Legacy by Jamie L. H. Goodall
• The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay by John R Wennersten
• The daily dispatch. (Richmond, VA), 04 March 1883. Library of Congress.
• "Oyster Wars," Baltimore Sun, February 10, 2015.
• Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Since 1880 by Christine Keiner
• "An Evolving Force: Natural Resources Police Celebrates 150th Anniversary," Maryland Department of Natural Resources, March 30, 2018.
• “Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery” by Bradford Botwick and Debra A. McClane. Historical Archaeology, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 94–112.