The Army, the Interior Department, and the Wounded Knee Massacre

            On December 29, 1890, at least 150 Native Americans of the Miniconjou Lakota people, including 89 women and children, were massacred by troops from the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under the command of Colonel James Forsyth. As news of the massacre spread east from Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota where it occurred, different versions of the events, told respectively by members of the military, agents of the Office of Indian Affairs (within the Department of the Interior), and the media, emerged depending on the sources and recipients of information. By early the following year, the prevailing opinion about the massacre was that it had been a justified response to aggression by the Sioux. Public opinion and political repercussions were instrumental in resolving the issue of responsibility for the Wounded Knee massacre largely in favor of the version propagated by the military, rather than the more sympathetic version presented by the Department of the Interior.

            The Army’s version of events underwent its own evolution. The person who served as the source of information to Washington was General Nelson Miles, Commander of the Division of Missouri, although he was not present at Wounded Knee. His initial telegraph, to Army Commander-in-Chief John Schofield, reports “severe loss” on the part of the Lakota, which, he states, “may be a wholesome lesson to the other Sioux” and “may possibly bring favorable results” (Miles, 2015a, para. 1). However, the next day, Miles telegraphed Brigadier General John Brooke, commanding officer of the Army of the Platte, seemingly angry with the events at Wounded Knee, stating, “Some one [sic] seems to be suppressing facts” and that “Whatever the circumstances of that fight with Big Foot [i.e., Spotted Elk, chief of the Miniconjou and killed at Wounded Knee] may be it must have had the effect of increasing the hostile element very largely” (Miles, 2015b, para. 2).

Over the next few days, General Miles conferred with Schofield as an investigation began into the actions of Colonel Forsyth. On January 2, 1891, three days after the massacre, Schofield told Miles on behalf of Secretary of War Redfield Proctor, “He [President Harrison] hopes that the report of the killing of women and children in the affair at Wounded Knee is unfounded, and directs that you cause an immediate inquiry to be made and report the results to the Department. If there was any unsoldierly conduct, you will relieve the responsible officer, and so use the troops engaged there as to avoid its repetition” (Schofield, 2015, para. 8). A board of inquiry was established on January 4, and Miles relieved Forsyth of his command. By this point, Miles had already learned that a burial party that he had commanded to go to Wounded Knee, led by Major Samuel Whitside, had interred 146 Indians at the creek, including dozens of women and children (Russell, 2015, para. 11).

Within two weeks, however, the inquiry was over, and Colonel Forsyth had been reinstated, over the objections of General Miles and likely due to the testimonies of the soldiers under Forsyth’s command. Forsyth would go on to be promoted to brigadier general. By the time President Benjamin Harrison reported on the massacre in his State of the Union Address, the notion that the U.S. troops under Forsyth might have committed crimes against humanity had been effectively buried. While acknowledging that the Lakota had valid complaints about rations and other provisions, Harrison nevertheless stated, “the Sioux tribes are naturally warlike and turbulent, and their warriors were excited by their medicine men and chiefs, who preached the coming of an Indian messiah who was to give them power to destroy their enemies.” General Miles, the President wrote, “is entitled to the credit of having given thorough protection to the settlers and of bringing the hostiles into subjection with the least possible loss of life” (Harrison, 1891, para. 82).

Indeed, by the time General Miles wrote his annual report for Secretary Proctor at the end of 1891, even the general himself was more concerned with placing the events within the context of the larger effort to get the Indians to come to the reservations and how the massacre delayed the achieving of that goal. He refers twice to the massacre explicitly. The first mention is brief: “The unfortunate affair at Wounded Knee Creek December 29, 1890, in which 30 officers and soldiers and 200 Indians (men, women, and children) were killed or mortally wounded, prolonged the disturbance and made a successful termination more difficult” (Miles, 2013, para. 4) The second, in contrast, is more lengthy:

The result may be summed up in the loss of nearly 200 people, delay in bringing the Indians to terms, and caused 3,000 Indians to be thrown into a condition of hostility with a spirit of animosity, hatred, and revenge. The spirit thus engendered made it more difficult to force back, or restore the confidence of the Indians, and for a time it looked as if the difficulty would be insurmountable. (Miles, 2013, para. 9)

In neither case, however, does Miles indicate that the fault for the massacre lay with the Army, although he notes that the commander office (Forsyth) was relieved of his command. This report is more or less Miles’s final word on the massacre, and it is remarkable for its nondescript nature.

            In contrast, the annual report of the Office of Indian Affairs for 1891 is remarkable for what it says about the massacre and the victims. The first mention of the massacre occurs in the main part of the report, in a section discussing the Sioux uprising at large. The commissioner (Thomas J. Morgan) refers to the “fighting” as “short, sharp [and] indiscriminate,” and then continues, “The bodies of women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter,” before finally referring to the Indians that fled as “frightened and exasperated” (Morgan, 1891, p. 130). The reader is further referred to an appendix of three pages of testimonies of Miniconjou survivors.

In the section of the report on South Dakota, the massacre is mentioned again. After detailing the campaign to get the Indians on the reservations and conceding that the reports of the massacre have been conflict, the agent for the state writes about the Indians killed, “As this band of Indians were on their way to the Pine Ridge Agency headquarters it is not probable that any hostility was intended” (Morgan, 1891, p. 390). Why was the likely peaceable nature of the Miniconjou killed at Wounded Knee not included in Miles’s report?

According to historian Heather Cox Richardson (Boston College), the differences between the accounts of the Interior and War departments were emblematic of a struggle for power over Indian affairs between the two departments. In her book, Richardson argues that the Commission of Indian Affairs, as part of the Department of the Interior, was motivated largely by political patronage; “its officers,” she writes, “[…] dispensed the valuable government jobs and lucrative contracts for Indian supplies to political supporters. By siding with reformers on the issue of managing the Indians, politicians kept this significant patronage power in their own hands” (Richardson, 2010, p. 47).

The Democratic administration under President Grover Cleveland had staffed the commission with agents sympathetic to the Sioux, but when the administration became Republican in 1889, the filling of positions with patronage jobs resulted in the hiring of agents fearful of Indians and ignorant of Indian culture. Nevertheless, upper-level positions continued to be staffed by more sympathetic people, and commissioner Morgan was among them, while Secretary Noble, a Harrison administration man, was more comfortable calling in the military, despite longstanding rivalry between the departments over who should manage Indian affairs. Conversely, the War Department, staffed with men with years of experience both fighting and negotiating with Indians and who felt a grudging respect for Native Americans, was more likely to be halting in the use of force. The result was that hostile agents and raw field officers were responsible for the massacre; in turn, more sympathetic senior officeholders within the interior department sought to exculpate the Indians, while the senior War Department leadership sought to keep the Army’s reputation clean.

            Another part of the answer lies in the two departments’ sources of information. Whereas the Army report relied almost entirely on the testimony of soldiers in the Army unit at Wounded Knee, with the only testimony of Indians that of scouts in the employ of the Army, the Interior Department’s information, as noted, came from Miniconjou who witnesses the massacre. As a result, the disposition of the Indians at Wounded Knee as not aggressive and as victims was more effectively communicated. The final part of the answer, and that which bears specifically on why President Harrison’s statement so closely reflected the official account of the Army, has to do with the media.

            Newspapers had been escalating public concern about the Lakota for months, specifically regarding the Ghost Dance religion that had inspiring the less assimilationist Sioux and motivating their resistance to some extent. For example, an article from November 22, 1890, in the Daily Tobacco Leaf Chronicle, published in Clarksville, Tenn., reported that Indians at Wounded Knee Creek were “still carrying on their dances and that they had heard of the arrival of the military, but what is of much more importance to the agents is they have strapped on their guns and are dancing fully armed” (“More Serious,” 1890, p. 1).

The American Studies scholar Christina Klein (also of Boston College) has identified the journalist William Fitch Kelley as a major culprit regarding the role of the press. Arguing that Kelley’s writing was part of a larger narrative that sought to subordinate the Sioux to a larger cultural order and narrative of stability in the face of widespread social upheaval, Klein writes, “For Kelley, the military represented the forces of order and the rebellious Indians the forces of chaos. In contrast to the tightly-disciplined army, the hostile Indians sowed mayhem among themselves and throughout the entire area” (Klein, 1994, p. 52). Kelley’s reportage was marked by grossly biased characterization of the Sioux and rank favoritism of the Army’s version of events. In this regard, and in so far as Kelley’s reports were representative, newspaper reports generally reflected the public’s opinion of the Lakota.

President Harrison’s response, therefore, can be seen as the culmination of several factors, including the competing versions of the events of the massacre between the interior and war departments, not to mention within the Army itself, as well as the public opinion, as enunciated in the newspapers, that the Indians were to blame. On the one hand, Harrison’s report acknowledges the complaints of high-level Interior personnel about the privations that the Lakota faced. On the other hand, the report simultaneously exculpates the Army of any wrongdoing, thus vindicating the version of the President’s own appointees at the top of both departments. Nevertheless, Indian affairs remained the province of the Department of the Interior. When President Harrison lost re-election to Grover Cleveland in November 1892, the issue past back to an administration that viewed itself as reformist.

In conclusion, the Wounded Knee Massacre was largely the result of inexperienced field officers the Commission of Indian Affairs and the Army. Because the departments of Interior and State relied on different witnesses, their versions of events at the Wounded Knee Massacre differed as well. The authoritative version as communicated to the people by President Harrison more closely resembled the accounts in newspapers and in the Army’s accounts, although the President conceded that the Sioux had legitimate grievances. In this regard, the “official” version was shaped both by the media’s treatment of the massacre and by the desire of upper-level cabinet officials to shield the administration.

References

Harrison, B. (1891, December 9). State of the Union Address. Speech presented in Washington,

D.C. Retrieved February 1, 2017, from http://millercenter.org/president/bharrison/
speeches/speech-3767

Klein, C. (1994). "Everything of Interest in the Late Pine Ridge War Are Held by Us for Sale":

Popular Culture and Wounded Knee. The Western Historical Quarterly, 25(1), 45-68.

Miles, N. (2013, August 19). Annual Report of Major General Miles. Retrieved February 1,

2017, from https://armyatwoundedknee.com/2013/08/19/1891-annual-report-of-major-general-miles-part-4/

Miles, N. (2015a, September 27). [Telegraph sent December 30, 1890, to Commander in Chief

John Schofield]. Retrieved February 1, 2017, from https://armyatwoundedknee.com/wounded-knee-investigation/

Miles, N. (2015b, September 27). [Telegraph sent December 31, 1890, to Brigadier General John

Brooke]. Retrieved February 1, 2017, from Miles, N. (2015, September 27). Retrieved February 1, 2017, from https://armyatwoundedknee.com/wounded-knee-investigation/

More Serious -- Indians Continue to Indulge in Ghost Dance. (1890, November 22). Daily

Tobacco Leaf-Chronicle, p. 1. Retrieved February 1, 2017, from http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88061072/1890-11-22/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1836&index=15

Morgan, T. J. (1891). Annual report of the commissioner of Indian affairs, for the year 1891

(Vol. 1, Rep.). Washington, DC: GPO.

Richardson, H. C. (2010). Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American

Massacre. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Russell, S. (2015, September 27). Wounded Knee investigation. Retrieved February 1, 2017,

from https://armyatwoundedknee.com/wounded-knee-investigation/

Schofield, J. (2015, September 27). [Telegraph sent January 1, 1891, to General Nelson Miles].

Retrieved February 1, 2017, from https://armyatwoundedknee.com/wounded-knee-investigation/

Boston Busing Crisis

I agree that, in the long run, busing helped Boston because it desegregated the school system, providing equal educational opportunity for minority students, and set the stage for racial healing and an improved racial climate in the twenty-first century.

Regarding school desegregation, a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1987 found that school desegregation had been successful. they based this decision on three factors: that the number of single-race schools had decreased; that good faith had been exercised in the attempts by the School Board to desegregate; and that desegregation had been implemented to the greatest extent possible. On the third point, the court remarked, "Little in the record […] suggests that implementation beyond what presently exists is likely to be obtained." On the basis of the court's observation, we can conclude that desegregation was successful.

The second point is dependent on the first; i.e., successful school desegregation by its very nature guarantees that there will be equal educational opportunity for minority students. While metrics for equal opportunity are difficult to quantify, two statistics offered in the textbook provide some substantiation. First, the dropout rate among Boston high school students decreased to below the national average; second, the college graduation rate among alumni of Boston high schools tripled over the same period. These data provide sound proof of an improved educational situation. If the lack of segregation can be considered proof of equal opportunity, then opportunity not only was extended but actually improved.[1]

Finally, racial healing and an improved racial climate did in fact emerge after school desegregation in Boston. Here, the political career of Mayor Ray Flynn is instructive. As noted in the text, Flynn was able to secure a successful citizen referendum on replacement of the elected school board, which had been the locus of resistance to desegregation during the busing crisis. That voters would approve such a measure is indicative that the worst of bad feelings had passed. Although there are occasional outbursts of racism as there sadly are in most areas of the United States, these incidents are less common, and racial violence has virtually disappeared.

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     [1] Morgan v. Nucci, 831 F.2d 313 (1st Cir. 1987), accessed February 6, 2017, http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/831/313/398470/

The King Assassination and Black Nationalism Ascendant

The effect of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the civil rights movement was profound because Dr. King was the most visible and most politically "acceptable" of the leaders of the movement to white Americans. There were a variety of consequences to his assassination, which were both immediate and more remote. For instance, in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King's assassination, there were riots in the inner cities across the country, as simmering anger at continuing conditions of racial oppression exploded in rage at the assassination. President Lyndon Johnson mobilized the National Guard the day after the assassination and largely suppressed further rioting, although sporadic violence continued into the following month.

A more remote effect was a shift in the tactics of the remaining leaders in the civil rights movement. Although Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King and his closest associates urged a non-violent response to the assassination, younger leaders in the movement saw in King's murder the end of civil disobedience and the beginning of armed struggle. The ascendance of the Black Panther Party, which had existed before King's assassination, into a leading role in the struggle for black liberation is a clear effect of the assassination, and the willingness of the Black Panthers to use violence in self-defense arguably caused a dramatic shift in the civil rights movement from that point forward.

Although it is unclear whether there would have been this evolution in the civil rights movement without Dr. King's murder, it is fairly clear that it would have happened more slowly, if at all. As noted, the Black Panthers were already in operation in 1968, and they had been preceded by more militant and separatist organizations willing to use violence, including the Nation of Islam. King himself had warned in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" in 1964 that the failure of white Americans to embrace a moderate such as himself might result in the ascent of black radicals and nationalists, and he mentioned the Nation of Islam specifically in this context.

Moreover, it is often forgotten that Dr. King was assassinated the night before he intended to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. It is therefore often forgotten that the civil rights movement under King's leadership might have moved in a direction of social justice more aligned with a struggle for economic justice. Although this theme was always present in Dr. King's work and in his rhetoric, it is possible that the movement-wing tack after April 1968. Although many in the more militant black nationalist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s embraced Marxism, they failed to achieve recognition among the older generation of activists who rejected violence even in self-defense.

Finally, I would argue that the rejection of non-violence by the civil rights movement following Dr. King's assassination was a necessary factor in its ultimate successes. Although most of the work had been done in securing voting rights for Southern African-American voters by the time of King's murder, and the Fair Housing Act was signed by President Johnson merely a week after the former's death, the issues of police brutality in the inner cities across the country and particularly in Los Angeles might have remained issues unknown to many Americans without the visible responses of the Black Panthers. Although these are issues that obviously still pertain to the African-American experience in the United States to some extent, the days of military-style assault on black neighborhoods by police are largely a thing of the past, thanks in no small part to the armed resistance of the Black Panthers.

Class as a Factor in Feminist Leadership

The selection from the text that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

The situation was exacerbated, according to Lisa Tetrault, because women could earn a living through the lyceum lecture circuit in the 1870s - 1880s, a popular form of entertainment and adult education featuring traveling lecturers and performers. They came to expect similar payment, typically between $10 and $100 per lecture, for an appearance at a suffrage meeting. Suffrage organizations thus had to compete with the lecture circuit when they paid speakers appearing at meetings or at their annual conventions at the state or national level.[1]

I chose this excerpt to establish the cause and effect, respectively, between the professional lecture circuit of the early 20th century and the increased influence of money on the politics of the women's movement. Although the first impression of the thesis of this article might be that money affected the culture of the women's movement, this passage demonstrates that the relationship ran in both directions. Because women could earn money as lecturers, they expected that, regardless of the cause for which they might be speaking, they would be paid to speak at suffragist meetings. As a result, the infusion of larger amounts of money became necessary to stage these lectures, which were themselves integral to convincing people of the righteousness of the cause.

Beyond this point, the article does not really clarify the economic hardships of women campaigning for suffrage. Rather, the article focuses almost entirely on wealthy women and the impact they had on the movement. The one place in the article I could find that discusses women who were not wealthy was the following: "Similarly, women began to give large amounts to make change for women in society, not simply to assist poor women but rather to broaden women’s educational opportunities, as well as political and reproductive rights."[2]

Money, it seems, was a major factor in identifying targets, devising strategies, and even locating political offices. Class, it turns out, was a major factor. On second thought, however, perhaps this fact is not very surprising. Lenin said that revolutionary parties could only be successful under the leadership of party vanguards of professional revolutionaries of bourgeois background – himself a chief example. Revolutionary as the women's movement was for its time, perhaps we ought not be surprised that this observation of Lenin's held in this case.

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     [1] Joan Marie Johnson, "Following the Money: Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Suffrage Movement," Journal of Women's History, 27, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 65-66.
     [2] Ibid, 64.

Quebecois Immigration to New England

The selection from the reading that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

Industrialization, well under way by the 1860s, created a stiff demand for workers in the textile and boot and shoe industries. Laborers were also needed in building construction and in canal and railroad work. The native and Irish-immigrant labor force present in New England in 1865 could not meet the labor demands of industry.[1]

The context in this case is that of economic expansion due to industrialization in post-Civil War New England. Although these jobs, primarily in textile factories, were taken by native-born working-class laborers or relatively recent Irish immigrants, the sheer growth of the industrial economy in Lowell elsewhere following the war provided more jobs than the existing demographic groups could fill. Therefore, they were hired for these jobs. The result was that, despite some resistance to their arrival, the Quebecois established themselves in the Lowell area and were even able to support increased immigration from their home because there was a steady supply of jobs available to those who decided to come to the United States.

To me, this excerpt is important because it demonstrates the extent to which an immigrant group can become successful by virtue of coming to occupy a niche in the existing economy or a role in the growing economy. As we see in the United States today, immigrant groups are sometimes resented due to the impressions, whether real or imagined, that they will take the jobs of existing jobs away from longer-established immigrant groups or native-born citizens. In the same way as Latin American immigrants work in niche jobs such as those in California's agricultural regions, Quebecois coming to Massachusetts in the 1860s onward obtained employment in a specific industry in a specific place.

In terms of the reasons for the Quebecois influx, the article is abundantly clear that a lack of industrialization in rural Canada led to the immigration of Quebecois to New England, where industrialization was already going ahead at a rapid rate. Some of the points mentioned by the author later in the article, such as marriage trends between Quebecois immigrants and the Irish population, would be interesting to learn more about. She notes that there was actually a surplus of Quebecois women in Lowell, so Quebecois men did not have to return home to marry or risk cultural and linguistic eradication by marrying American Catholics [2]; however, it is not clear what the case was outside of Lowell.

=====
     [1] Frances H. Early, "Mobility Potential and the Quality of Life in Working-Class Lowell, Massachusetts: The French Canadians ca. 1870," Labour / La Travaille, 2 (1977): 218.
     [2] Ibid, 227. The selection from the reading that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

Industrialization, well under way by the 1860s, created a stiff demand for workers in the textile and boot and shoe industries. Laborers were also needed in building construction and in canal and railroad work. The native and Irish-immigrant labor force present in New England in 1865 could not meet the labor demands of industry.[1]

The context in this case is that of economic expansion due to industrialization in post-Civil War New England. Although these jobs, primarily in textile factories, were taken by native-born working-class laborers or relatively recent Irish immigrants, the sheer growth of the industrial economy in Lowell elsewhere following the war provided more jobs than the existing demographic groups could fill. Therefore, they were hired for these jobs. The result was that, despite some resistance to their arrival, the Quebecois established themselves in the Lowell area and were even able to support increased immigration from their home because there was a steady supply of jobs available to those who decided to come to the United States.

To me, this excerpt is important because it demonstrates the extent to which an immigrant group can become successful by virtue of coming to occupy a niche in the existing economy or a role in the growing economy. As we see in the United States today, immigrant groups are sometimes resented due to the impressions, whether real or imagined, that they will take the jobs of existing jobs away from longer-established immigrant groups or native-born citizens. In the same way as Latin American immigrants work in niche jobs such as those in California's agricultural regions, Quebecois coming to Massachusetts in the 1860s onward obtained employment in a specific industry in a specific place.

In terms of the reasons for the Quebecois influx, the article is abundantly clear that a lack of industrialization in rural Canada led to the immigration of Quebecois to New England, where industrialization was already going ahead at a rapid rate. Some of the points mentioned by the author later in the article, such as marriage trends between Quebecois immigrants and the Irish population, would be interesting to learn more about. She notes that there was actually a surplus of Quebecois women in Lowell, so Quebecois men did not have to return home to marry or risk cultural and linguistic eradication by marrying American Catholics [2]; however, it is not clear what the case was outside of Lowell.

=====
     [1] Frances H. Early, "Mobility Potential and the Quality of Life in Working-Class Lowell, Massachusetts: The French Canadians ca. 1870," Labour / La Travaille, 2 (1977): 218.
     [2] Ibid, 227.

Irish-Americans, Baseball, Whiteness

Here's my first discussion post for HIS-200: Applied History.

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The selection from the text that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

In contrast, the other main non-English immigrant group of the period, the Germans (Cohn 1995), assimilated much more easily. While language was a problem, they were more highly educated and skilled than the Irish. In 1860 German men were most highly concentrated in skilled crafts, in contrast to the Irish, who were disproportionately made up of unskilled laborers (Conley and Galenson 1998: 471). Also, German immigrants had been preceded by numerous fellow "countrymen" during the previous century who had paved the way by establishing themselves economically and socially in America. The stereotypical German was hardworking, disciplined, earnest, and frugal (Gerlach 2002: 39).[1]

I chose this passage because it demonstrates to me not only aspects of the change over time in perceptions of the Irish, but also of the Germans. On the one hand, as the readings and common sense indicate, the Irish were grossly and negatively stereotyped, and this perception of the Irish -- and, in fact, their "acceptance" into the larger American "white race" -- changed radically as immigration from other parts of Europe increased and as emancipation of African Americans resulted in increased competition for unskilled labor. The case of Germans reflects even more changes. For some Americans, their initial interaction with Germans was in the form of Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British in the War for Independence. While this experience might have cast Germans in a negative light initially, the passage makes it clear that the economic circumstances of German immigrants, as well as the Lutheran faith of many (but not all) of them, eased their transition despite the language barrier that they faced. Germans ultimately came to make up the majority of Midwesterners and Plains residents owing to the Homestead Act, and even with periods of negative perceptions of Germans during both world wars, Germans now make up a plurality of all white Americans, indicating a highly successful immigration experience overall.

As indicated above, part of the integration of Irish Americans is the process of their being made "white" by the surrounding society and culture. As I already noted, much of this transition involved not only the economic upward mobility of Irish Americans, but also the immigration of other, presumably even less "white" people from southern and eastern Europe and competition between Irish and African Americans post-Civil War. The article on Irish players in baseball offers addition, econometric and statistical information to substantiate how Irish Americans were mainstreamed. By proving statistically, including in tables,[2] that Irish American players were essentially forced to be better players in order to overcome discrimination, the visibility of Irish American players increased in the public eye and normalized Irish Americans among non-Irish fans. Interestingly, the author also shows that German players were comparatively less talented than Irish players,[3] demonstrating less of a need to overcome prejudice in hiring. In any case, the Irish overcame prejudice in the United States through a variety of means, and mainstreaming via major league baseball played a not insignificant role.

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     [1] E. Woodrow Eckard, "Anti-Irish Job Discrimination circa 1880: Evidence from Major League Baseball," Social Science History, 34, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 410.
     [2] Ibid, 425, 427.
     [3] Ibid, 432.

A New Year and a New Term

I finished my World War II class back in December and had a couple of weeks off before starting my second-to-last history class, one called Applied History. It's a lower-level class, which I'll follow with a thesis writing class. Since I started a new job in late November, and I'm currently teaching two literature classes to boot, I wanted to give myself a bit of a break for now.

Discussion posts from Applied History to follow over the next six or seven weeks.