History Hustle

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Historically, the tepee has been used by some Indigenous peoples of the Plains in the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies of North America, notably the seven sub-tribes of the Sioux, among the Iowa people, the Otoe and Pawnee, and among the Blackfeet, Crow, Assiniboines, Arapaho, and Plains Cree. They are also traditional on the other side of the Rocky Mountains by tribes such as the Yakama and the Cayuse. They are still in use in many of these communities, though now primarily for ceremonial purposes rather than daily living. While Native American cultures and civilizations and First Nation band governments from other regions have used other types of dwellings (pueblos, wigwams, and longhouses), tepees are often stereotypically and incorrectly associated with all Native Americans in the United States and Aboriginal Canadians.

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April 10, 1866, The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is formed.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA®) was the first humane society to be established in North America and is, today, one of the largest in the world.

Our organization was founded on the belief that animals are entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law. Headquartered in New York City, the ASPCA maintains a strong local presence, and with programs that extend our anti-cruelty mission across the country, we are recognized as a national animal welfare organization. We are a privately funded 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation, and are proud to boast more than 2 million supporters across the country.

The ASPCA’s mission, as stated by founder Henry Bergh in 1866, is “to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States.”

https://www.aspca.org/

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Evicted sharecropper reading the Bible.
Butler County, Missouri. 1939
Photograph by Arthur Rothstein

In early 1939, Arthur Rothstein documented a bitter roadside protest in southeastern Missouri. During the 1930s the government paid landowners to take thousands of acres out of cultivation, while mechanization also reduced the value of physical labor. In January of 1939, cotton farmers across the Missouri Bootheel evicted thousands of sharecroppers and tenant workers and their families from the land where they had lived and worked for years, or even decades.

Organizers from the Southern Tenant Farm Union and local ministers appealed to Christian principles to promote a demonstration by farm laborers. By mid-January more than a thousand evicted people were camped out along the region’s highways. Most of the protesters were Black, like this elderly worker reading his bible in a roadside tent. White sharecroppers who shared their plight joined the protest, making this an early example of an integrated demonstration for economic justice.

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Babe Ruth led a ‘dream team’ containing future hall of famers Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Fox, Lefty Grove, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer and manager Connie Mack on the very first Major League tour of Japan in 1934.

The team was greeted by 500,000 Japanese when the ship docked in Yokohama. From the start, the focus centered around ‘the Babe’. Huge crowds greeted him where he went. For his part, Ruth let his larger than life persona shine. He joked and signed autographs everywhere he went.

On the field he did not fail to produce either, slamming 12home runs in 18 days. Every time he came to bat the entire stadium crowd rose to its feet and cheered.

There are two statues in Japan commemorating this tour. One is in Koshien Stadium near Osaka. This is ‘hallowed’ home to the Hanshin Tigers and the beloved National High School Baseball Tournament (Japan’s March Madness). The other is in Yagiyama Zoo (formerly a baseball ground) on the spot where Ruth hit his first homer in Japan.

This tour serves to remind us that baseball is a sport that brings two very different cultures together. The irony is that 7 years later the two counties would be at war.

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Photograph of Frantz Fanon in the 1950s

Frantz Fanon, 1925 - 1961 was a political philosopher and psychiatrist. Born in the French colony of Martinique he fled the island to join the Free French Army during World War Two, serving in North Africa and the liberation of France in 1944. During this time he experienced racism from the military authorities as well as the French people he had helped to liberate. After the war he studied psychiatry and worked in the then French metropolitan department of Algeria. When the war to liberate that country began in 1954 he joined the anti-colonial FLN and was expelled from Algeria, fleeing to Tunisia. He wrote extensively on the subjects of racism and colonialism and the psychiatric effects it had on both the colonised and the colonisers (he had treated both torture victims and torturers during the guerrilla war in Algeria). In his most famous book "The Wretched of the Earth," "Les Damne de la Terre." He makes an argument for the use of violence in cases where all others political means have failed. In 1960 he was diagnosed with leukemia and in the strange power play politics of the time it was the CIA who invited him to the United States to undergo treatment. He died in December 1961 and his body was returned to Algeria to be interred. To this day Fanon is one of the foremost scholars on the subjects of racism and colonialism. he was an inspiration to anti-colonial figures such as Nelson Mandela.