#americanhistory

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, 11 Nov 1865, Dr Mary Edwards Walker receives the Medal of Honor from US President Andrew Johnson for her services as a field surgeon in the American Civil War.

A lifelong "dress reformer", she wore trousers under short dresses and eventually switched to trousers and jackets. She was frequently arrested for her choice. "I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes," she said.

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Dr Mary Edwards Walker in later life. She is a white woman with white hair wearing trousers, a frock coat and a topper. She still has the medal on the breast of her coat.
Dr Mary Edwards Walker in a dress in around 1863, wearing the medal. She is a white woman with dark hair tied back.

Marooned by Joseph Kelly, 2018

Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin

For readers of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower , a groundbreaking history that makes the case for replacing Plymouth Rock with Jamestown as America's founding myth.




We all know the great American origin story. It begins with an exodus. Fleeing religious persecution, the hardworking, pious Pilgrims thrived in the wilds of New England, where they built their fabled city on a hill. Legend goes that the colony in Jamestown was a false start, offering a cautionary tale. Lazy louts hunted gold till they starved, and the shiftless settlers had to be rescued by English food and the hard discipline of martial law. Neither story is true. In Marooned , Joseph Kelly reexamines the history of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians. In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny in America's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into the wilderness. The British caste system meant little on this frontier: those who wanted to survive had to learn to work and fight and intermingle with the nearby native populations. Ten years before the Mayflower Compact and decades before Hobbes and Locke, they invented the idea of government by the people. 150 years before Jefferson, they discovered the truth that all men were equal. The epic origin of America was not an exodus and a fledgling theocracy. It is a tale of shipwrecked castaways of all classes marooned in the wilderness fending for themselves in any way they could--a story that illuminates who we are today.

Recommended reading:

Militarizing the Border
When Mexicans Became the Enemy
By Miguel Antonio Levario

It's not super long, a lot of it is just the citations and bibliography, but it packs a lot of info and gives good insight on some of the current events going on now and where their roots stem from.

Especially when it comes to immigration law, rhetoric, and border patrol.

It also gives people a good start so ppl can look into it further.

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781623493028/militarizing-the-border

Love is like an itchin' in my heart...

, 22 Oct 1966, The Supremes become the first all-woman group to get to no 1 in the US Billboard album charts with The Supremes A' Go-Go.

Listen to their version of Get Ready: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD_7_MhgHhc

Cover of the album, showing the members of the Supremes dancing

, 20 Oct 1917, US suffragist Alice Paul is arrested at the silent sentinels picket of the White House.

Two days later she is sentenced to 7 months in the notorious Occoquan workhouse. At the start of November, Paul and fellow suffrage campaigner Rose Winslow go on hunger strike and are force fed. A week after that, Paul is sent to the psychiatric ward in an attempt to discredit her.

Lucy Branham, a white woman, holds a banner demanding Alice Paul be treated as a political prisoner.

American author & public intellectual was 100 years ago!
You can find a large array of Vidal's own texts as well as secondary literature on topics such as , sexuality & gender or in his works.

2 high piles of books on & by Gore Vidal, pictured in SUB Göttingen library