Social and Political History

 

“The facts fairly and honestly presented, truth will take care of itself,” William Allen White

 

When I was in grad school more than a half-century ago, political history was still “in” while social history was generally disparaged as the study of pots and pans.  Nonetheless, a growing number of historians attuned to the tumultuous events of the 1960s began advocating studying the past “from the bottom up,” that is, concentrating on ordinary people and marginalized groups too often neglected in traditional histories, such as workers, minority groups, immigrants, women, and queers (although that word only came into widespread use recently).  The field of social history included a growing number of young scholars investigating family dynamics, gender issues, and popular culture.  As a social historian, I was pleased to see the tide turning but still respected political history.

 

 In the current Journal of American History (JAH) there are multiple reviews of social histories for every book on politics.  Examples include Alison Lefkovitz’s “Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women’s Liberation” and Jaime Harker’s “The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement and the Queer Literary Canon.”  How delightful to come across my University of Maryland buddy Don Ritchie’s friendly critique of “Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White” by Charles Delgadillo.  Well-respected as editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette and a nationally syndicated columnist, White was a progressive Republican who helped Teddy Roosevelt form the Bull Moose Party in 1912 and broke his vow never to seek elective office by running for governor of Kansas in 1924 as an independent after both major candidates had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Ritchie wrote that while White “conducted a lifelong crusade for democracy, social justice, and economic fairness, his editorials were usually more emphatic than his politics.” When White supported Alf Landon against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, the President quipped that he could rely on the editor’s support for three and a half out of every four years.  Ritchie concludes: “Delgadillo provides a suitable study of this politically-minded journalist and liberal Republican, whose once forward-minded political faction is now virtually extinct.”

 

Despite the flattering subtitle of Arnold A. Offner’s Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country,” JAH reviewer Danial Scroop wrote that the author presented the Minnesota liberal as “a flawed, and not entirely likeable figure who talked too much and neglected his family while pursuing a policy of compromise that owed as much to his vaunting personal ambition as to political pragmatism.”  Examples include timidity in the face of McCarthyism and as President Lyndon B. Johnson disastrously escalated the war in Southeast Asia.  As LBJ famously said of his vice president, “I’ve got Hubert’s pecker in my pocket."

David Maraniss’s Pulitzer Prize winning “A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father” (2019) combines political and social history.  Elliott Maraniss, the son of Eastern European immigrants, was a baseball-loving, patriotic World War II veteran who in 1939 had written columns for the University of Michigan student paper praising the Soviet Union. Although the author’s father never talked about whether or not he had been a member of the Communist Party at that time, he came under FBI scrutiny and in 1952 was called to testify before the notorious House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Instead of acting contrite and “naming names” of those he suspected to be former Communists, Elliott Maraniss refused to cooperate with the committee, which refused to allow him to read a statement defending his patriotism; it was buried in HUAC files until discovered by his son decades later.  That stance cost Maranisss his job with the Detroit Times and, hounded by the FBI wherever he sought work, it was several years before the editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, hired him.  Rather than allow the experience to embitter him, Elliott, according to his son, remained an optimist and eventually regained his reputation as a fair-minded newspaperman respected by both Democrats and Republicans

 

Trump has been browbeating governors who are facilitating constituents being able to vote by mail ballot, claiming without a shred of evidence that it will lead to fraudulent returns. His constant downplaying of an epidemic that has killed upwards of a hundred thousand citizens gets more disgusting with each passing day as do the racist appeals to his base.  Dean Bottorff wrote: “Sadly, Trump supporters are like brainwashed cultists. No amount of reason, irrefutable facts or even common sense will influence their beliefs. If you try to persuade them of even the simplest fact (say, how Trump's two-month denial marathon about Covid-19 has caused tens of thousands of needles deaths) they will either not listen, claim the media and scientists are lying, throw up false equivalencies or simply go down a rabbit hole of flawed logic and conspiracy theories.”

 

In the Chesterton Tribune Betty Canright and Kevin Nevers reported on these events that took place 100 years ago: two-year-old Loraine Bedenkop died after swallowing a three-eighths iron washer; pickerel were abundant in the Kankakee River due to high water in Illinois lakes and streams; New York Central railway officials are ignoring demands by town officials to safeguard the Calumet Road railroad crossing; and this item: “forced to descend on account of heavy fog, U.S. mail aviator Carr Nutter escaped injury after crash-landing his machine in a soft field on the Ralph Peterson farm a half mile north of Crocker.”  The following day, I was mentioned in the “Ten Years Ago” section of the column for speaking to the Dunes Historical Society, and Becca’ photo appeared on the front page for winning a Chesterton music award.

 

Historian Ray Boomhower wrote that Hoosier homemaker Juliet V. Strauss (1863-1918), whose weekly column in the Indianapolis News was titled “The Country Contributor.”  Strauss also enjoyed a wide readership from a monthly column, “The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman,” published in Ladies Home Journal, played a major role in the establishment of Turkey Run State Park.  Boomhower posted this quotation by Strauss that captured her zest for life: “I lived my own life.  If I wished to ride a horse, or to play a game of cards, or to go wading in the creek with the children, I always did it. I never strained my eyesight or racked my nerves trying to arrive at small perfections. I avoided rivalries and emulations. In short, I lived.”