#FDR birthday

[newyorkthegoldenage]

President Roosevelt's 52nd birthday was celebrated (without the prez, who stayed in Washington) with a ball at the Waldorf, January 30, 1934.

Photo: Roosevelt House/City Univ. of NY

[fdrlibrary]

Party Like it's 1935!

This Howard Chandler Christy poster advertises FDR's Birthday Ball. At the suggestion of a public relations consultant, business magnate and FDR political ally Henry L. Doherty launched the National Committee for Birthday Balls that sponsored a dance in every town across the nation, both to celebrate the President’s birthday but also to raise money for the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/fdr-birthday

Learn more about the poster on our Digital Artifact Collection: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/.../the-birthday-ball...

[todaysdocument]

“My heart goes out in gratitude to the whole American people tonight -- for we have found common cause in presenting a solid front against an insidious but deadly enemy, the scourge of Infantile Paralysis.” 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 29, 1938.

Collection FDR-PPF: Papers as President, President's Personal File

Series: Speeches of President Franklin D. Roosevelt

File Unit: First Carbon Files

Transcription: 

HOLD FOR RELEASE      HOLD FOR RELEASE   HOLD FOR RELEASE

January 29, 1938

1038

CONFIDENTIAL UNTIL RELEASED

CAUTION: This address of the President, to be delivered in connection with the celebration of his birthday anniversary, is for release in editions of all newspapers appearing on the streets NOT EARLIER than 11:30 P. M., E.S.T.

Care must be exercised to prevent premature publication.

STEPHEN EARLY

Secretary to the President

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MY FRIENDS:

My heart goes out in gratitude to the whole American people tonight -- for we have found common cause in presenting a solid front against an insidious but deadly enemy, the scourge of Infantile Paralysis.

It is a very glorious thing for us to think of what has been accomplished in our own lifetime to cure epidemic diseases, to relieve human suffering and to save lives. It was by united effort on a national scale that Tuberculosis has been brought under control; it was by united effort on a national scale that smallpox and diphtheria have been almost eliminated as dread diseases.

Today the major fight of medicine and science is being directed against two other scourges, the toll of which is unthinkably great -- Cancer and Infantile Paralysis. In both fields the fight is again being conducted with national unity -- and we believe with growing success.

Tonight, because of your splendid help, we are making it possible to unite all the forces against one of these plagues by starting the work of the new National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The dollars and dimes contributed tonight and in the continuing campaign will be turned over to this new Foundation, which will marshal its forces for the amelioration of suffering and crippling among infantile paralysis victims wherever they are found. The whole country remains the field of work. We expect through scientific research, through epidemic first aid, through dissemination of knowledge of care and treatment, through the provision of funds to centers where the disease may be combated through the most enlightened method and practice to help men and women and especially children in every part of the land.

Since the first birthday celebrations in 1934, many splendid results have been accomplished so that in literally hundreds of localities facilities for combating the disease have been created where none existed before.

We have learned much during these years and when, therefore, I was told by the doctors and scientists that much could be gained by the establishment of this new National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, I was happy, indeed, to lend my birthday to this united effort.

During the past few days bags of mail have been coming, literally by the truck load, to the White House. Yesterday between forty and fifty thousand letters came to the mail room of the White House. Today an even greater number -- how many I cannot tell you -- for we can only estimate the actual count by counting the mail bags.

[page 2]

-2-

In all the envelopes are dimes and quarters and even dollar bills -- gifts from grown-ups and children -- mostly from children who want to help other children to get well.

Literally, by the countless thousands, they are pouring in, and I have figured that if the White House Staff and I were to work on nothing else for two or three months to come we could not possibly thank the donors. Therefore, because it is a physical impossibility to do it, I must take this opportunity of thanking all of those who have given, to thank them for the messages that have come with their gifts, and to thank all who have aided and cooperated in the splendid work we are doing. Especially am I grateful to those good people who have spread the news of these birthday parties throughout the land in every part of all the big cities and the smaller cities and towns and villages and farms.

It is glorious to have one's birthday associated with a work like this. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. And that kinship, which human suffering evokes, is perhaps the closest of all, for we know that those who work to help the suffering find true spiritual fellowship in that labor of love.

So, although no word of mine can add to the happiness we share in this great service in which we are all engaged, I do want to tell you all how deeply I appreciate everything you have done. Thank you all and God bless you all.

- - - - - - -

[californiastatelibrary]

Nothing surprised us during the research for our Fred Korematsu Day post more than finding out President Roosevelt, who issued Executive Order 9066 (leading to the forced internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans), has the SAME birthday as Fred Korematsu, the man who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for resisting internment and bringing the case to the Supreme Court (which initially sided against Korematsu, and then later corrected their decision).

Today, January 30, is Fred Korematsu Day to honor Mr. Korematsu's birthday and legacy. It's also the birthday of the President who incarcerated him.

On an unrelated note, it's also apparently Kid Cudi's birthday. Go figure.

[rosabell14]

An analysis of Bianca di Angelo's role in the narrative and why bad writing can screw over a character.

For someone with such a limited time in the narrative, Bianca is one of the most divisive characters in the fandom. I've been in the fandom long enough to see how much nuance the fandom lacks when discussing certain characters and Bianca is no difference. But it's more than just viewing the characters' actions in a vacuum. It's ignoring the larger narrative problems. At the end of the day Bianca suffers from one simple problem: she's barely a character outside of her role in Nico's narrative. Like it or not, her entire character exists to die and give Nico issues down the road but Riordan's writing decisions didn't do her any favours either.

I feel like this is a huge issue when it comes to the pjo fandom they often try to come up with Watsonian solutions to problems that are Doylist in nature and Bianca is one example of that.

Case in point: Riordan's shit math when it comes to the Di Angelo siblings and how it messes up with bianca's character.

So when we meet them they're 10 and 12. We learn that their memories of their past is kinda hazy and that they don't remember their parents but that they were in a boarding school, then they moved to the lotus hotel, then they were taken out of the hotel and put into Westover's. And at the end we learn that they're Hades's children born before the oath of the big 3.

Said oath happened after WW2 btw. So 1945 probably since Bianca remembers FDR's presidency.

Now in TLO we get an update on this backstory. Hades is speaking to Maria about moving his children to the underworld or the lotus hotel since Maria doesn't like the former option because the war has put Hades in a bad situation with his brothers and also the prophecy is out, the oath has been taken and they're running out of time to hide the kids. So logic says that it's 1945. And then Zeus immediately kills Maria and Hades tells Alecto to erase the children's memories and put them in the lotus hotel, and honestly? I like this version much better? Because why in the world would Hades Put his children in a boarding school for a few years and THEN hide them in the hotel after they were nearly assassinated? Why not immediately put them in the hotel?

And so we get to our main dilemma. Bianca having to raise Nico. This was already strange to me because it's not as if this is a Jason and Thalia situation where Jason was a toddler and Thalia had to take care of him. Nico is not a baby they have a two year age difference. But of course these kinds of things might matter more if you're young. Even then, in what situation would Bianca be Nico's main caretaker? They were put into a magic hotel that mind you, makes time go faster so for them it was a month or two at best and they would have been given whatever they needed by the staff? Same type of issue with Westover's and the boarding school if you want consider that canon. They would have been taken care of by the facility. They probably wouldn't even have shared classes or dorms? Or am I misunderstanding American boarding schools?

And then, Riordan's bad math strikes again and this time with the characters' ages. Because Nico's age in HoO becomes 14 which would have made him 11/almost 12 in TTC but that's not the big problem, no no no. The problem comes from his official birthday which is 1932.

1932... Which would have made him 13 and Bianca 15 by the time Maria dies. Which is hilarious because with the way the kids are written during her death scene as absolute non players with nary a reaction, you would think they were written to be toddlers who didn't understand anything that was going on.

That royally screws over Bianca as a character (and me as someone who's trying to write a story centered around her). Because her main thing. The one time she's allowed to have complexity is the moment where she talks about how she wants to be more than Nico's caretaker, and she's barely Nico's caretaker at all. The best in universe explanation I can come up for this is that this is how Bianca perceives things because that's all that she literally remembers. Those months in the hotel and Westovers.

Another time the plot kinda messes her up is at the beginning of TTC. One complaint that I often see in regards to her Is how quickly she makes her decision. She does not even hesitate. She does not even wait to see the camp. You know the place that would have taken care of her and Nico which would have meant she wasn't going to be his supposed primary caretaker anymore? She doesn't even wait to see if it was an actual good place for her brother? Spoiler alert: it's not camp half-blood at the time was not a good place for either of them really. Nico did not have a cabin at camp and people were not accepting of him. Hell, people not being accepting of hades and his children was something established since the first book.

But once again, this is a Doylist problem at its core. We need to turn Bianca into a hunter but we also need Artemis to leave so that she can be kidnapped for the main conflict, so she leaves before the hunters even reach camp. Half-blood. So Bianca as a character doesn't even get to make a proper choice between the camp and the hunters. To people who only look at characters on an in universe level, it comes off as very rash and not well thought out.

To be fair, on an in universe level, she's a kid so it's okay if she's stupid, but Riordan wasn't trying to make her come off as that way? He treats Bianca's decision as a legit serious choice and not the rash decision of a desperate child.

And once again, Bianca is here for Nico's sake more than anything. She needs to die. So she takes the statue for Nico. Which is so ironic and tragic if you decide to play it that way. That Bianca wanted to be more than Nico's sister, but her literal death revolves around being his sister. Normally I'd enjoy this level of angsty irony but unfortunately that's how the very narrative treats her as well. Even her post mortem decisions are there to maximize Nico's angst more than that they're there to say anything about Bianca herself. We need Bianca to only appear at the end of Botl so that Nico and Percy can have a conflict but it once again comes at the cost of Bianca herself coming off as callous. What's the in universe reason for this behavior? It's so stupid because in universe, Nico doesn't even take that much convincing? One conversation. One conversation and Nico was convinced to stop his efforts in reviving her. Does she just not know her brother enough? Maybe since they technically know each other for a year max. Does she genuinely think she's that easy to give up on? Is she that conflict avoidant? I actually like this interpretation and plan to use it. There's much to be done with a character who's rash and bold but an absolute emotional coward who'd try to avoid an emotionally charged conversation until they absolutely can't.

Hell even after Botl, it's the same song and dance. Hades makes an absolute vile remark at Nico's expense. TSATS makes it into a joke moment and has you believe that Hades simple said that Bianca would have been a better demigod. No ladies and gentlemen. Hades literally tells Nico that he wished Bianca had survived instead.(The fact that I still think that hades is the best godly parent just shows you how low the bar is more than anything.)

I swear to God I spent so much time racking my brain trying to understand what this could mean for Bianca's character.

This is how I basically look like trying to milk every scene where Bianca is there as a character or is mentioned for every drop of characterization.

At the end of the day, I can't blame most of the fandom for being ambivalent towards her at best. The story by design is about Nico. It's designed for you to sympathize with him and yeah if I'm to look at it from Nico's perspective. He DID get abandoned, regardless of Bianca's intentions. From his Perspective , which is the one most people would take, his sister took the very first chance she could to ditch him for people she barely knew hoping people either of them barely knew would take care of him even though they haven't even seen the place yet, and then ignored him for months while he was desperate for a single conversation with her. Honestly had Nico outright resented his sister for leaving, I think the reaction towards her would have even been worse.

(Another sidenote, my very hot tea Is that I like to believe that had Bianca lived her and Nico's relationship would have become worse as time went on and as the camp's anti hades sentiments really started taking their toll on Nico. But I'm just an angst lover)

Worse is that this story is told from Percy's perspective and these two only have like 3 actual conversations together. One of them is her dying, one is about her making her first main decision and that's at the expense of Nico who's probably the fandom favorite behind Percy and Annabeth and the other is her trying to explain her aforementioned decision to Percy and even then, she talks about it in such broad strokes. "I want to be more than X" tells us about who you one day wish to be not about who you are at the current moment. And even when we have Nico as a POV character, Bianca is only there for "dead family member" trope. There's barely any moment where Nico remembers anything important about her to give her any depth. The cards are just stacked against her. Even the people who are at the "Bianca did nothing wrong camp" are barely interested in her. I swear to god whenever an AU comes up where she's alive, the focus is STILL on Nico. Oh Nico would have been such a happy person had she lived! And Bianca? Uhhhhh she would have fucked off with the hunters I guess?

Can we talk about the hunters while we're here?

If we WERE to talk about in universe scapegoats, I'd honestly choose the hunters. Honestly I could make a separate post about how much I hate how Riordan handled them. But oh dear God the way they're presented just comes off as creepy. The way they initially (up until TOA) only go for young girls because apparently older girls aren't useful once they hit puberty and start developing feelings for people and lose themselves(TTC and Percy Jackson's Greek gods oh dear lord are they terrible in Percy Jackson's Greek gods). How they're basically the heroine dumping ground for when Riordan doesn't know what to do with a female character. How ultimately in universe, Zoe more than anyone is to blame to for Bianca's death by taking an untrained girl to a mission where she KNOWS two people would die at the very least. And she doesn't even watch her properly during the mission. Honestly I could barely feel anything about Zoe's death upon rereads as an adult for this very reason. Or how stupid it is to basically put a child in front of a candy store and expect them to make a responsible decision. Who in their right mind would have young girls as young as nine take a celibacy vow? Oh but you'll be safe with us (never mind that we're not just normal hunters here like the actual myths but actual monster hunters) and you'll totally be able to see your brother when you want (actually we barely visit camp half-blood) oh but you'll be a FAMILY with us! Except you know if you catch feelings or get assaulted(holy hell how Riordan depicts the myth of Callisto makes me want to tear my hair out of my scalp)

[citizenscreen]

Eleanor Roosevelt at FDR’s Birthday Ball at the Statler Hotel in Washington DC, with Red Skelton, William O. Douglas, Lucille Ball, John Garfield, Maria Montez and others January, 1944.

[thesmilingfish]

My Grandma was born 117 years ago today.

I'd love to post a couple very cool pictures of her but I get sad when I see vintage family photos posted on other accounts that just says stuff like "family with car 1957" or whatever.

Anyway, she's been gone for a while now but I still miss her. She lived with my Mom and I for around 15 years or so after my Grandpa died so she was a huge part of my life. I swear most of my friends only came over because they were excited to see her (and indulge in her most recent baked goodies).

Heck, my AP History teacher asked me to invite her to class so they could debate Herbert Hoover. (For the record, she would have cleaned my teachers clock. That woman hated Hoover until the day she died.) He'd made a crack one day that the reason I was a democrat in a classroom full of Reagan republicans was because my Mom had a crush on JFK. I reminded him that my Mom and my Grandma were FDR democrats and that's the household I was brought up in. (There were 3 other kids in my class who were liberal-minded and we did all of our group projects together.)

My Grandma loved playing practical jokes - and adored making me complicit against my will. She still had a crush on Valentino decades later and watched John Carpenter's The Thing at least twice a month with my Mom after they discovered it. (She and my Mom also loved and rewatched The Serpent and the Rainbow a lot which still kinds weirds me out.)

She was Grandma-shaped, standing maybe 5'4" with fluffy white hair and mischievous blue eyes. She always wore button-up shirts with square pockets in the front that always contained tissues and hard candy. She was disappointed that none of her children or grandchildren inherited my Grandpa's auburn hair. She was long gone by the time her great-great-great granddaughter would be born with a head full of auburn locks. (In the 90's I bleached out my hair and then dyed it red as a surprise. She cried and I felt terrible at the time but she loved it and petted my hair every day until it grew out.)

There's not a day goes by that I don't think of her at least once.

Happy Birthday Grandma.

[taraross-1787]

This Day in History: Lucy Coffey, WWII Veteran

On this day in 2015, a heroine passes away. At the time of her passing, Lucy Coffey was believed to be the oldest female military veteran. She was then just two months shy of her 109th birthday.

Coffey began life on an Indiana farm, but she moved to Dallas soon after her high school graduation. She was working in a grocery store when the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation.

She wanted to help.  When FDR signed a bill authorizing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, she leapt at the chance.

The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-lucy-coffey

[misforgotten2]

She also believes in Mothman, the Flat Earth, and that FDR will rise from the dead January 30, 1962 (His 80th birthday) and rid the world of the scourge of Communism forever.

Better Homes and Gardens December 1961

[deadpresidents]

Carter has passed Garner! He now holds ALL the records for anyone who has ever been President or VP! Only Alf Landon's still stands and he was never President!

Yes, you are correct! Jimmy Carter has now passed John Nance Garner on the list of longest-living Presidents or Vice Presidents (here was that list at the beginning of September). And we are 10 days away from President Carter becoming the first President or Vice President to ever celebrate their 99th birthday. Not bad for a guy who has been in hospice care since February.

And, yes, Alf Landon is the longest-living major party nominee for President or Vice President. Landon was the 1936 Republican Presidential nominee and lost the general election to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Landon was 100 years, 33 days old when he died in 1987. Think about that for a second: Alf Landon was the Republican Presidential nominee when FDR ran for his second term as President, and Landon died when Ronald Reagan had a little over a year left in his Presidency!

BUT, it's worth nothing that while Alf Landon is undoubtedly the longest-living Presidential or Vice Presidential nominee by a major party, he is NOT the longest-living person to ever win Electoral votes as President or Vice President.

In 1948, many Southern Democrats opposed to support for civil rights in the party's platform at the Democratic National Convention bolted from the party and formed the States' Rights or "Dixiecrat" party to run against incumbent Democratic President Harry S. Truman and Republican nominee Thomas Dewey. The Dixiecrats nominated South Carolina Governor (and future longtime Senator) Strom Thurmond as their Presidential nominee. Despite not being a major party nominee, Thurmond and the Dixiecrats, relying on voters in former Confederate strongholds in the South, performed better in the general election than just about any third-party Presidential candidate of the 20th Century.

Thurmond and the Dixiecrats won 4 states and 39 Electoral votes in 1948. In 1936, Republican nominee Alf Landon won two states and just 8 Electoral votes. So Thurmond's racist, third-party challenge performed far better than the GOP nominee had done twelve years earlier.

So, unfortunately, while we're talking about longest-living President or Vice Presidential nominees, we have to throw Strom Thurmond in the conversation considering the fact that he won far more Electoral votes in 1948 than Alf Landon did in 1936. And Thurmond lived longer, as well. Thurmond was 100 years, 203 days old when he died in 2003 -- he lived 170 days longer than Alf Landon did.

Thurmond is also almost certainly the oldest person to ever be one of the top officials in the Presidential line of succession. As I mentioned, Thurmond eventually served in the U.S. Senate from South Carolina -- a seat that he held from 1954-2003 (except for a period of about 7 months in 1956) -- where he eventually became the first (and only, so far) person to serve in Congress after their 100th birthday. Due to his lengthy tenure in office, Thurmond was president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate for several years when his party was in control of the Senate.

As president pro tem, Thurmond was third in the Presidential line of succession, behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House. This meant that, Thurmond was third in the line of succession well after turning 98 years old. In June 2001, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords announced that he would begin caucusing with the Democrats in the Senate, which gave the Democrats a narrow majority and control in the Senate, However, if Jeffords had not made that decision when he did, Strom Thurmond would have been president pro tempore on September 11, 2001. That means a nearly 99-year-old man would have been third in the Presidential succession at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

The fact that presidents' day, a day celebrating a group of political leaders who were primarily genocidal racists and set on the birthday of george washington slaveholder in chief,

happens to be hitting us this year on the same day of the 82nd anniversary of fdr signing executive order 9066 and order the mass incarceration of japanese americans in internment camps,

and these commemoration are both happening the same day that the right-wing side of twitter has decided to perpetuate a storm (tw intense racism and csa mentions) of racist lies and paranoia centered around a modern-day "executive order 9066" where the biden administration somehow actually gives immigrants concrete financial support,

all feels deeply, profoundly...american.

[travsd]

Wilson (1944)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson’s last birthday (he passed away in February, 1924). We’ve previously done posts on Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan, and I’ve plans to do ones on Jackson, Grant, FDR, Truman, Ike, and Carter. This being a show biz blog, I’ll also likely do ones on Obama (since he’s now a movie…

[fdrlibrary]

FDR's Favorite Portrait of Eleanor

This was Franklin Roosevelt’s favorite portrait of his wife.

His son, Elliott, commissioned it shortly after FDR’s election to the presidency. The Roosevelt children presented it to their father as a birthday gift during a celebration at the family’s Hyde Park home on January 30, 1933.

Roosevelt shipped the painting to the White House, where he placed it in a prominent location in his private Study. It remained there until his death in 1945.

“You know, I’ve always liked that portrait,” he once remarked to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. “It’s a beautiful portrait, don’t you think so? . . . You know the hair’s just right, isn’t it? Lovely hair! Eleanor has lovely hair, don’t you think so?”

Eleanor had a very different reaction to the portrait. When she first saw it she burst into tears. She told reporters she wanted to burn it “because it makes me look too pretty.” After FDR’s death, she gave the painting to Elliott.

The portrait closely resembles a 1927 photograph of Eleanor by Edward Steichen. Artist Otto Schmidt likely used that photo as a reference because Mrs. Roosevelt did not pose formally for him (though she did allow the painter to sketch her at St. James Church in Hyde Park and other social functions).

Schmidt was a prominent painter of business and social figures in the Philadelphia area.

Join us throughout 2023 as we present #FDRtheCollector, featuring artifacts personally collected, purchased, or retained by Franklin Roosevelt, all from our Digital Artifact Collection: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/objects/19401

[todaysdocument]

Eleanor Roosevelt with Red Skelton, William Douglas, Lucille Ball, and John Garfield

Collection FDR-PHOCO: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain PhotographsSeries: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs

This black and white photograph shows First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt cutting into a large, two-tier birthday cake.  The words “Happy Birthday” are spelled out by a cake topper.  Many people in evening clothes of the 1940s surround the First Lady.  Prominent among the group are comedian Red Skelton, actress Lucille Ball, and actor John Garfield.

[jyndor]

my grandparents being absolute shitheads is almost certainly a response to the generational trauma associated with my family fleeing Ireland during the famine (a product of british imperialism). there is so much anxiety, depression, adhd, ptsd, etc in my family. I know a little of the traumas that my paternal grandma and grandpa went through to survive as children in absolute poverty in manhattan during and after the depression. I know that trauma had an impact on my grandparents when they got rich.

and that's just on my dad's side.

I can respect that without condoning the shitheadery, the racism, the buy-in to us american whiteness in the name of money and safety and power, the shit they did to THEIR kids, the shit THEIR kids did to MY generation. Empathy and understanding sure, but I don't know how to forgive them. or their parents, or THEIR parents, who had to endure God knows what to bring their families here but also who hurt those families in so many ways.

I feel very deeply the lack of culture, the emptiness of white us american-ness; I always have. when I was a baby and my parents chose to move from new york to delaware for a job, I felt the lack of family every holiday when my friends got to just go over to all their families' homes, or when they'd talk about hanging out after school with their grandparents and cousins. I felt the lack of culture when I'd see my friends going through confirmation or having bar/bat mitzvahs, or when I'd go hang out with my friends from cultures that they were still connected to.

so I have mixed feelings about going to family thanksgiving celebrations - and I am not going this year, I don't go most years tbh - because to me, the idea that my family would want to celebrate a holiday based on colonial mythology and genocide is particularly vomitous to me.

this year my sister is very ill and so my parents aren't doing anything (we might get together this weekend, but idk). my birthday is on the 30th, so maybe we'll say it's for that instead.

I think the most insidious part of thanksgiving is that on its face, it's hard to argue with it as a concept - families coming together to be thankful for another year survived together. but what has thanksgiving always been to me? arguing about politics, long drives up to new york and later connecticut, a lot of food I can't eat and don't want to eat, pretending everything's okay when it's not. luckily my parents' generation is pretty good about all cooking together - none of that women in the kitchen while the men watch football shit (at least none that I saw growing up).

thanksgiving to me on a personal level is a veneer of thankfulness over deep pains and divisions that hasn't been resolved. it's kind of like that on a larger scale too - the very mythology at the heart of thanksgiving, the idea that the pilgrims invited the wampanoag people to some great feast at all is a fucking delusional façade over the actual story.

a façade that was commemorated in 1863 by president lincoln, that great emancipator. this of course after the trail of tears in 1830, and centuries of genocide against native americans. and then fdr, that progressive hero, made it a national holiday in 1941. months before interning japanese americans.

and people have the nerve to complain about the "turkey genocide" every year (as a vegetarian myself I reject and denounce those idiots) while still accepting the existence of a holiday built on the genocide of actual people. I like the turkey pardoning but it's also like... what the fuck kind of american bullshit is that, we pardon turkeys every year (good and cool) while millions of people are incarcerated.

truth and reconciliation necessitates recognizing historical and current harm done and working to repair that harm done. we cannot do that while celebrating thanksgiving.

land back now. reparations now. decolonization globally and domestically NOW. I'll thank my ancestors for their survival on a different day. my birthday sounds like as good a day as any tbh - what better way to thank them than to have been born and continue to live? the only better way may be to fight the very thing that made them refugees in the first place - imperialism.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"David Dellinger and his friend Don Benedict caught a ride from New York to Washington, D.C., for the Lincoln’s Birthday weekend of 1940. Who knows where they stayed—on somebody’s floor, probably. It was the Depression, and Dellinger in particular knew all about roughing it. Benedict was hoping to learn from him on that score. They were in Washington because the two of them were part of a youth movement whose eager vanguard had descended on the city to agitate for jobs, rights, peace, and what they saw as justice. Both had backgrounds in the important Christian student movement of the era, Dellinger at Yale and Benedict at Albion, a little Methodist college in Michigan, and both now were graduate students at Union Theological Seminary in New York. There Dellinger had quickly formed a close bond with Benedict and Meredith Dallas, also from Albion. Pacifism, like socialism, was in the air at Union, at least among students.

Members of the American Youth Congress parade in gas masks on Fifth Avenue in New York City February 6, 1940 protesting impending war and publicizing the upcoming youth pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. Acme News Service. Washington Spark Flickr.

It was an exciting time, even if, like W. H. Auden, America’s young, having lived through “a low dishonest decade,” could feel the

Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives[.]

The students who made their way to Washington that weekend had come of age in the Great Depression. America’s collegians, once apathetic, were now far more conscious of injustice, chafing under the political constraints imposed by paternalistic faculty and administrators—and determined to stay out of war. “It was a time when frats, like the football team, were losing their glamor,” wrote the playwright Arthur Miller, recalling his days at the University of Michigan (Class of 1938):

Instead my generation thirsted for another kind of action, and we took great pleasure in the sit-down strikes that burst loose in Flint and Detroit…We saw a new world coming every third morning.

Many such Americans worried that war would undo whatever progress had been made by the New Deal, while undermining civil liberties. Stuart Chase, a popular economics writer and FDR associate whose 1932 book, A New Deal, provided ideas and a name for the White House program, argued that by avoiding war we might achieve

the abolition of poverty, unprecedented improvements in health and energy, a towering renaissance in the arts, an architecture and an engineering to challenge the gods.

But if war were to come, he wrote, we would see

the liquidation of political democracy, of Congress, the Supreme Court, private enterprise, the banks, free press and free speech; the persecution of German-Americans and Italian-Americans, witch hunts, forced labor, fixed prices, rationing, astronomical debts, and the rest.

Delegates to the American Youth Congress march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House Feb 9, 1940 where they were addressed by President Franklin Roosevelt. International News Photo, Washington Area Spark Flickr.

If Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t go far enough, it had at least offered hope. But in foreign affairs even this scant comfort was absent. During the thirties students had seen the rise of Hitler, the fascist triumph in the Spanish Civil War, and a series of futile appeasement measures culminating in the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which triggered war with Britain and France. As Dellinger, Benedict, and thousands like them arrived in Washington, tiny Finland was still fighting with unexpected ferocity to repel an invasion by the Soviet Union, which had cynically agreed with Germany to divide Europe between them. The Red Army even joined in the dismembering of Poland. On the other side of the world, China had been struggling since 1937 against a brutal Japanese invasion.

Hope springs eternal, but on the morning of Saturday, February 10, 1940, even the nasty weather augured ill. Washington was rainy and cold as a young woman on horseback—dressed as Joan of Arc—led a procession of idealistic young Americans along Constitution Avenue. Many were in fanciful costumes. The rich array included some in chain mail and others dressed as Puritans. A delegation from Kentucky rode mules. Signs and banners held aloft by the students that weekend bore antiwar slogans, including, loans for farms, not arms; jobs not guns; and, in sardonic reference to the discredited crusade of the Great War, the yanks are not coming.

The context of their march was the national struggle over what role America should play in the European war—a war that had happened despite the best efforts of well-meaning people the world over to avoid it by means of rhetoric, law, arms control, appeasement, and every other method short of actually fighting about it. Now that it was at hand, America’s young were far more opposed to intervention than their elders, and this was a source of conflict on campus. At Harvard’s graduation a few months later, class orator Tudor Gardiner reflected the attitudes of many students in calling aid for the Allies “fantastic nonsense” and urging a focus on “making this hemisphere impregnable.” When Gardiner’s predecessor by twenty-five years recalled, at a reunion event, that “We were not too proud to fight then and we are not too proud to fight now,” recent graduates booed. But when commencement speaker Cordell Hull, FDR’s secretary of state, called isolationism “dangerous folly,” Harvard president James Bryant Conant nodded in support. Scenes like this would play out at campuses all across the country.

Delegates to the American Youth Congress with the U.S. Capitol in the background Feb 9, 1940 call for more jobs not war. The image is an undated Harris & Ewing photograph from the Library of Congress.

The students who converged on Washington for the Lincoln’s Birthday weekend brought with them their generation’s disdain for war. Marching in a steady drizzle, they were bound, these tender youths, for the White House, to which they had foolishly been invited by Eleanor Roosevelt—herself an active pacifist during the interwar years. “Almost six thousand young people marched,” her biographer reports, “farmers and sharecroppers, workers and musicians, from high schools and colleges, black and white, Indians and Latinos, Christians and Jews, atheists and agnostics, freethinkers and dreamers, liberals and Communists.”

Dellinger and Benedict were part of this “extraordinary patchwork,” the two seminarians having made the trip from New York by car with some other young people. Dellinger in particular was already being noticed, as he always seemed to be. Years later he would recall (clearly as part of this weekend) being invited by the First Lady to a White House tea in early 1940 with other student leaders who had, as he put it, organized a protest that she supported. Benedict’s memoir recalls that the two of them went to Washington that same month and attended “a huge rally, with thousands massed around the White House” to hear remarks by the president and the First Lady. “Dave and I talked a lot about demonstrating,” Benedict writes, adding: “Both of us knew the value of drama.”

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For the White House, it made sense to pay attention to the young, many of whom would be just old enough to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Before the Depression, college students were solidly Republican, but as the thirties wore on and their social consciousness expanded, they swung increasingly to Roosevelt’s Democrats. The AYC [American Youth Congress] was both a cause and effect of this change and enjoyed the warm support of Eleanor Roosevelt, who over the several years of its existence had raised money for it, defended it in her newspaper columns, procured access to important public figures, and even scheduled face time with the president. For the big weekend event she had gone all out, prevailing on officials, hostesses, and her husband to accommodate the anticipated five thousand young people in every possible way. An army colonel named George S. Patton housed a bunch of the boys in a riding facility the First Lady had recently visited. She lined up buses; helped with costumes and flags, meals and teas; and arranged at least one of the latter at the White House—consistent with Dellinger’s recollection.

The event in Washington was billed as “a monster lobby for jobs, peace, civil liberties, education and health,” but it turned out to be the Götterdämmerung for the youth congress, and a landmark in the decline of America’s vigorous interwar peace movement. Nothing could more effectively symbolize the movement’s tender idealism, fair-weather pacifism, and ecclesiastical aura than an American college student dressed as the Maid of Orleans—a sainted military hero—on horseback, just months before France itself fell to an onslaught of modern mechanized warfare. Of course the American Joan of Arc, whoever she was, can be read as a symbol of hope for France because, in fact, the Yanks were coming, even if most of them didn’t know it yet. On the other hand, hopes for peace were starting to look more like delusions, even to those who held them, and here the symbolism becomes even richer, for Joan embodies three powerful drivers of the era’s American peace movement: She is young, she is female, and she is religious.

A few of the 3,000 youth that arrived for the opening of the three day American Youth Congress February 9, 1940 that will lobby Congress for passage of a youth bill to provide education and jobs. Washington Area Spark Flickr.

Many of these activists regarded abolitionism as the forerunner of their reformist enterprise, so it was fitting that here they were, in 1940, rallying for righteous change on the weekend of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. By now the students have reached the White House, arriving an hour early to hear the president. They had to leave their banners and placards outside the gates, where the guards on duty counted 4,466 gaining admission to the South Lawn—no doubt including Dellinger and Benedict. They grew colder and wetter as they waited.

After a while the American Youth Congress’s national chairman, Jack McMichael, a southern divinity student who had earlier spoken out against the violent abuse and disenfranchisement of blacks, took the microphone on the South Portico and led the students in singing “America the Beautiful.” And then, at long last, he introduced the president, describing our troubled country as a place where Americans dream of “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but face the threat of bloodshed.

Now war, which brings nothing but death and degradation to youth and profit and power to a few, reaches out for us. Are we to solve our youth problem by dressing it in uniform and shooting it full of holes? America should welcome and should not fear a young generation aware of its own problems, active in advancing the interests of the entire nation…They are here to discuss their problems and to tell you, Mr. President, and the Congress, their needs and desires…I am happy to present to you, Mr. President, these American youth.

When FDR finally appeared, looking out with Eleanor over a sodden crowd dotted with umbrellas, he wore a strange smile—and gave them a blistering earful, dismissing as “unadulterated twaddle” their concerns about Finland and warning them against meddling in subjects “which you have not thought through and on which you cannot possibly have complete knowledge.” Concerning their cherished Soviet Union, FDR said that in whatever hopes the Soviet “experiment” had begun, today it was “a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.” It was a shocking public rebuke to the students as well as the First Lady. The young compounded the fiasco by booing and hissing, creating a public relations nightmare in a nation that took a dim view of such a response to the president. Later that afternoon the First Lady had to sit still at an Institute plenary session, calming herself by knitting, while the fiery antiinterventionist John L. Lewis pandered to his student audience by heaping abuse on FDR. He would support Willkie in the coming election.

Besides Dellinger, other future activists who stood in the rain for Roosevelt’s “spanking,” as some newspapers called it, included future Representative Bella Abzug of New York and the writer Joseph Lash, who would win the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Eleanor Roosevelt and help found with her (and Niebuhr) the liberal but anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action. Woody Guthrie was on hand, too, to write the student movement’s requiem. The folk singer, not yet a celebrity, arrived by riding the rails from Texas. Stunned by the president’s public scolding of the idealistic youngsters, Guthrie wrote a song on the spot entitled, “Why Do You Stand There in the Rain?”

It was raining mighty hard in that old Capitol yard When the young folks gathered at the White House gate. … While they butcher and they kill, Uncle Sam foots the bill With his own dear children standing in the rain.

Without money, Dellinger and Benedict made like Guthrie by riding the rails to get home—a first for Benedict but something Dellinger had been doing on and off for several years. After the excitement of the weekend they entered the railyard in darkness, careful to elude watchmen, and hunted for a train heading north. When they found one, they couldn’t gain access to any of the boxcars, but finally climbed aboard an open coal car, the freezing wind whipping them as they picked up speed, the air thick with choking dust and smoke. Miserable as it was, they were moving too fast to get off. It was an omen, perhaps, of the nature of their journey to come.

- Daniel Akst, War By Other Means: How the Pacifists of World War 2 Changed America for Good. New York: Melville House, 2022. p. 4-6, 7-8, 17-19.