#United States history

[logorrhea5mip]

Okay. So I know I'm 2 days late for the 4th of July but I only now remembered this gem of a story.

We love to dunk(deservedly) on American pride/patriotism. But you probably didn't know how bad the story of Mount Rushmore, one of the most important places of the American mythos, is.

Like, not just bad, it is so mindnumbingly evil that it's almost unbeliveable it's not a children's movie plot.

To start off, it's built on stolen Indian land, and not "just" stolen like the rest of the country, it was extra stolen.

The mountain itself was among the natives called Six Grandfathers and it's one of the most important spiritual sites for many local tribes.

Then, the United States in the mid 19th century signed a deal with the local tribes, granting the tribes the right to their land (which belonged to them for millennia prior) in exhcange for some concessions.

The US broke the treaty immediately, a war broke out, the US lost, and signed another similar treaty, then they found gold a few years later, went to war again, won this time and did a genocide, emptied the land and sold some off it to white settlers.

Many decades later, in the 1920s, the local government working with sculptor G. Borglum(who also made monuments to the Confederacy, and was a known KKK supporter) decided they wanted to make a tourist attraction.

So they carved into a 3-times-stolen, Native American holy mountain, the faces of George Washington(who earned himself the nickname Burner of Towns from the local population), Thomas Jeferson(a racist, rapist, pedophile and owner of 260 slaves), Theodore Roosevelt(quote:"I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are") and Abraham Lincoln(by far the least worst one, but still a racist, imperialist, standard US president material). With dynamite.

[leonczolgosz]

[troythecatfish]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"SHE POSED AS MAN EVEN TO DRAFT CARD," Toronto Star. January 5, 1943. Page 2. ---- Mildred Allen, 29. is shown as she was arrested in Chicago. Police said she admitted having posed as a man for 15 years. Detectives said she was carrying a draft card bearing the name of Thomas Vernon. She was held without a formal charge.

[dailyhistoryposts]

On This Day In History

November 13th, 1922: Zucht v. King United States Supreme Court upholds mandatory vaccinations in public schools in a 9-0 ruling, even if there was no ongoing outbreak.

[cauli-flawa]

Note that this is for USAmericans mainly because I wanna know about my country's way of teaching history before i jump to conclusions

"The darker parts of US history" means stuff like US colonialism, bigotry, the KKK, COINTELPRO, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, CIA-backed coups, Vietnam, the Marshall Islands, etc. Basically, topics you would find in A People's History of the United States.

[katchwreck]

[indynerdgirl]

The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis is an oil painting by John Trumbull. The painting was completed in 1820 and hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The painting depicts the surrender of British Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, ending the siege of Yorktown, and virtually guaranteeing American independence. Included in the depiction are many leaders of the American troops that took part in the siege. [X]

[hooked-on-elvis]

December 1948: Elvis (at 13 years old) checked out the book 'Courageous Heart' from the library at Humes High School in Memphis. I'm positive this book is "Courageous Heart: A life of Andrew Jackson for young readers" (1934) by Bessie Rowland James, Marquis James.

[liluglydudefromdetroit]

Every time a black face makes progress for black faces, the United States will surely be there to extinguish that light

[dngrcpckwithmurdericing]

using bucky barnes's 'murder walk' to regain space

This is Sunn m'Cheaux and he's amazing, and also this is a perspective worth hearing.

[retropopcult]

"Confederate veteran reunion, Washington, 1917. Most of these men had grandfathers or great-grandfathers who were soldiers in the American Revolution and fathers or grandfathers who fought in the War of 1812.”

[leonczolgosz]

Billy Possum, the sequel to Teddy bears

Billy Possum was the proposed sequel to the Teddy Bear after William Howard Taft was elected president following Theodore Roosevelt.

Teddy bears were introduced after Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a tied-up bear while hunting, seeing it as unfair and cruel to the bear. A political cartoon was drawn depicting this which was very popular, and the increasing cuteness in different iterations of the drawing led to people viewing bears as cute and thus, becoming an idea for a new toy.

The closest comparison I can come up with is if after Harambe was killed, plushie gorillas became so popular that it became a cultural staple.

Anyways, after Taft was elected, people came to him with their idea for the next big toy, Billy Possum. The name Billy, of course, was a shortening of his name, similar to Teddy, but instead of the possum being something that Taft defended and people took as a sign of his humanity and it becoming cute in the social eye, it was just because Taft liked to eat possum meat. Needless to say, it didn't catch on.

Here's a modern recreation of the pattern, and I must say, as someone with a lot of stuffed animals, I would never have bought this either.

[troythecatfish]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"DRAFT ENDS EIGHT-YEAR MASQUERADE AS WOMAN," Toronto Star. April 9, 1943. Page 2. ---- Because his companions called him "Sissy," Reb Lucian Dookrey, 26, of Blossom, Texas, eight years ago donned women's clothing. He was held for physical examination in the garb, LEFT, and charged with failing to register for the draft. RIGHT, Dookrey is seen after a haircut and change of clothing

[dailyhistoryposts]

On This Day In History

December 26th, 1862: The largest mass execution in U.S. history takes place. 38 Native Americans were publicly hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, as part of the Dakota War of 1862.