Category: Us History

Polly Wants a President

2/17/2023

Cheryl Harness
She's historical

Let your imagination listen to the great historical menagerie of presidential pets and you’ll hear the sounds of their feathered friends, like Thomas Jefferson’s mockingbirds, or Calvin Coolidge’s canaries and maybe his pet goose – OR parrots? George and Martha Washington had more than one. When President James Madison and his wife moved into the White House in 1809, so did Dolley Madison’s green and yellow macaw parrot.

  Dolley was known for her fashionable turbans and often, for Polly, the big bright, squawk-ative bird on her shoulder, helping to greet her guests. And how thrilling, when high-spirited Polly swooped about the high-ceilinged rooms and dive-bombed the company! Later, she was part of the scary War of 1812 drama, when, in 1814, red-coated British soldiers torched the White House. But at least Dolley made sure they didn’t get their hands on the precious painting of President Washington, or her precious Polly.

            Just months later, General Andrew Jackson led a rough, frontier army down the Mississippi River to drive the British out of New Orleans. Victorious Andy Jackson, national hero, ended up being President, from 1829 to 1837. That old soldier knew a lot of salty language and so did his pet parrot, Poll. We know this because in 1845, he attended ex-President Jackson’s funeral – at least until a shocked human carried poor Poll out of the room. Too much sad excitement had set him to squawking curse words!

            At the end of the 1800s, President William McKinley amused himself by teaching his yellow-headed Mexican parrot how to whistle “Yankee Doodle.” After Mr. McKinley died of an assassin’s bullet, in 1901, former Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took office. He and First Lady Edith Roosevelt and their six children had LOTS of pets, including a big, beautiful parrot named Eli Yale. Eli was a deep blue hyacinth macaw.

            There would be other presidential parrots. After all, the big worldwide parrot family has 350 species. Parakeets, for instance: John F. Kennedy’s little girl had two of them. Lyndon B. Johnson’s family kept lovebirds, little candy-colored parrots. But more than a century has passed since a big, big-beaked macaw like Polly or Poll has lived in the White House. Deep blue Eli Yale was the last - so far.

Macaws are large, long-tailed parrots, from Mexico, Central and South America. Wikimedia

Dolley Madison

Andrew Jackson owned an African grey parrot. Wikimedia

Cockatiels, cockatoos, and large flightless kakapos are just a few of the many kinds of parrots. One of the biggest is the gentle, South American hyacinth macaw – from head to tail, more than three feet long! Wikimedia

Teddy Roosevelt with Eli Yale. Wikimedia

MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Polly Wants a President." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank,
13 Mar. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
polly-wants-a-president.

2 Comments

Standing with Dr. King

1/18/2023

1 Comment

Amy Nathan
Stories that Surprise and Inspire

The view from the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Credit: Courtesy Library of Congress

On August 28, 1963, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and looked out at a sea of faces reaching as far as the eye could see. More than 200,000 people had gathered there to take part in one of the largest protest rallies in United States history: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Standing there that day, Dr. King delivered a stirring speech: his “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s a speech that has been voted the best political speech given in the United States during the 20th century, according to a group of 137 experts on speechmaking who were asked to pick the century’s 100 top speeches.

In this speech, Dr. King called for an end to segregation and discrimination, which had led to so many people being treated unfairly just because of the color of their skin. He spoke of his dream that one day the nation would live up to the idea set forth in its Declaration of Independence—that “all men are created equal.” He spoke also of his dream that one day black children and white children would treat each other as sisters and brothers.

Today, visitors to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can stand on the very spot where Dr. King stood more than fifty years ago to deliver his famous speech. The location is marked by these words that have been chiseled into a stone landing about eighteen steps down from the top:

I HAVE A DREAM

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM

AUGUST 28, 1963

Carving these words into the stone step came about because of a tourist from Kentucky who visited the Lincoln Memorial in 1997 and wondered why there wasn’t a sign to let people know where Dr. King had stood. This visitor wrote to his representative in Congress, who agreed that marking the spot was a good idea and had Congress passed a law to allow that to happen. To figure out exactly where Dr. King stood, officials at the National Park Service, which manages the Lincoln Memorial, carefully studied photos and video that had been taken during the speech. Then, in 2003, they arranged for a local stone cutter to carve the words into the step where they decided Dr. King had stood.

You have to look closely to find those words in the stone. They’re not highlighted in a bright color. But when you find them, you can stand up on that step and look out as Dr. King did, and try to imagine how he must have felt as he shared his hopes and dreams for his country with that huge crowd..

Click here for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

Click here for article Sources.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and others marching toward the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Credit: Courtesy Library of Congress

These words carved into a step at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., mark the spot where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Credit: Courtesy National Park Service

Amy Nathan is the author of Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round into the Civil Rights Movement, which tells of another civil rights milestone that took place on August 28, 1963—the day Dr. King gave his famous speech. That same day, about forty miles away from the Lincoln Memorial, a once-segregated amusement park at last dropped segregation, and a very young girl took a very special ride on a merry-go-round.

MLA 8 Citation
Nathan, Amy. "Standing with Doctor King." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 12
01 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Standing-With-Doctor-King.

1 Comment

Mary E. Lease, Queen of the Populist Tornado

1/11/2023

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Cheryl Harness
She’s historical!

The United States, in the 1880s, had become an industrial power in the world, but factory workers could hardly feed their families. Miners spent long days down in the dangerous dark, digging a wealth of coal out of the earth, yet they were dirt-poor. Farm families were going broke too. They barely had the money to pay rich bankers the interest on loans they took out to buy seeds or to pay what the railroad charged to ship the crops that hadn’t dried up in a drought or got gobbled by hungry grasshoppers. Many a broke homesteader went back east. Lettered on the covers of their wagons: “IN GOD WE TRUSTED. IN KANSAS WE BUSTED!”

               Mary E. Lease, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher, went to Kansas, but she stayed there. And she was among the multitudes, who wondered why so many Americans were so poor in a country that was so rich? Where was the money going? Judging from what she read in the papers and heard down at the general store, the money seemed to be in the pockets of men who owned the mines, factories, railroads, and banks. And rather than pay people decent wages, they seemed to be paying politicians to make laws to help them stay rich and get richer. Sound familiar?

In the early 1890s, folks got together and formed their own “People’s (or Populist) Party.” What did they want? Fairness, more government regulations, less silver, and more printed paper money. It wouldn’t be worth as much; but at least there’d be more of it to go around! And right in the middle of this uprising was fiery Mrs. Lease.

               At rallies around the Midwest, the South, even at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Mrs. Lease whipped up the crowds, crying out, “We are for humanity against the corporations – for perishing flesh and blood against the money bags!” People called her a “Patrick Henry in petticoats,” after the great Revolutionary War speechmaker. “Wall Street owns the country. When I get through with the silk-hatted easterners, they will know that the Kansas prairies are on fire!”

               Oh, they knew it all right, for a while anyway. While it raged, this political tornado blew nine Populists into Congress. But the people’s movement fizzled out in the early 1900s. At least old Mrs. Lease lived to see some populist dreams come true. In the early 1930s, when so many Americans hit bottom, Franklin D. Roosevelt became President. Under FDR’s “New Deal” policies, the people got help from their very own government and the Wall Street banks and businesses were reined for a considerable time. Ah, but they’ve regained much of their former power and Mary E. Lease lies restless in her grave.

Mary Elizabeth Lease, “the Kansas Pythoness”

The perfect browsing volume for Women's History Month, Cheryl Harness's Rabble Rousers offers short, spirited profiles of twenty women who, like Mary E. Lease, impacted life in America by speaking out against injustice and fighting for social improvements. The folksy, friendly narrative introduces such fascinating figures as Sojourner Truth, abolitionist preacher; Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War physician; Margaret Sanger, birth control pioneer; and Doris Haddock, a ninety-two-year-old champion of campaign-finance reform. The book spans over two hundred years of American history and includes time lines for such important social movements as abolition, woman suffrage, labor, and civil rights. Readers inspired by these fiery women can use the civil action tips and resources in the back of the book to do some of their own rabble-rousing. For more information, click here.
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MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Mary E. Lease: Queen of the Populist Tornado." Nonfiction Minute, iNK
Think Tank, 12 Apr. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
mary-e-lease-queen-of-the-populist-tornado.

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The Race For the Sky

12/6/2022

6 Comments

Roxie Munro
Visual Thinker

Who would build the world’s tallest building – the powerful Bank of Manhattan Trust Company down on Wall Street or Walter P. Chrysler, the automobile tycoon up on 42nd Street? It was early 1929, and a race for the sky raged in New York City. In late summer, the newspapers reported that the bank soared to 973 feet, just two feet higher than planned for the Chrysler Building. To the king of cars this was intolerable, so he turned to his architect, William Van Alen, who decided to outfox the competition.

Five months later, people in New York were treated to an extraordinary sight. In 90 minutes, a splendid tower, topped by a silvery spire, with triangular windows, emerged from the building’s open roof. Secretly assembled in the fire shaft, it rose to a height of 1,046 feet, making the Chrysler Building the world’s tallest building.

Van Alen had given Chrysler a structure that not only scraped the sky, he also, most imaginatively, used details of cars as decorations. Near the top of the building perched eight eagle-headed gargoyles, based on the hood ornament of a 1929 Chrysler Plymouth. Thirty-six stories above the street, there’s a wrap-around frieze of stylized cars featuring real metal hubcaps and four giant radiator caps.

For a few months, until the Empire State Building took over as the world’s tallest building, Chrysler relished his number one status. His lavish apartment was near the top, and he boasted to friends and foes alike that he had the highest toilet in the city. So there he sat, on his porcelain throne, delighting in his elevated position.

Chrysler and Van Alen expected rave reviews when the building was completed, but that didn’t happen. “The height of commercial swank,” sneered The New York Times. “Stunt design, with no serious significance,” sniffed The New Yorker, and another newspaper accused the spire of having the “appearance of an uplifted swordfish.”

But things change. Now some 75 years later, the Chrysler Building is many people’s favorite skyscraper, and recognized as an outstanding example of Art Deco, the style of the twenties and thirties. Above all, there’s that incomparable swordfish-nose spire.

It was Van Alen’s aim to have the triangular windows lit up at night. And now, long after his death, they do, launching the Chrysler Building into the Manhattan sky with all the fantasy and glitter of the Jazz Age.

The Chrysler Building as seen from the Empire State Building in 1954. The building is considered a leading example of Art Deco architecture. The corners of the 61st floor are graced with eagles; on the 31st floor, the corner ornamentation are replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps. Wikimedia Commons

The Chrysler Building (right) which stands at Lexington and 42nd Street n New York City was the tallest building in the world from May 27, 1930 to April 30, 1931 when it was surpassed by the Empire State Building (left). Roxie Munro

The beautiful spire of the Chrysler Building was built indoors then raised up. This shows workers partway through the process. Roxie Munro

There are two sets of lighting in the top spires and decoration. The first are the V-shaped lighting inserts in the steel of the building itself. Added later were groups of floodlights directed back at the building. This allows the top of the building to be lit in many colors for special occasions. Roxie Munro

The Chrysler Building has lost the race as the tallest building in New York City -- although it is still right up there:) Note that the heights in this chart are expressed in meters which means that you have some math to do in order to compare the other buildings to Chrysler's 1,046 feet.

Roxie Munro is not only an author, but she is also an illustrator.
She did the art for Gargoyles, Girders & Glass Houses by Bo Zaunders, a superb picture book tribute to seven of history's most celebrated architectural wonder-workers; It takes readers from the domes of Florence to the mosques of Turkey, from the Eiffel Tower to the Chrysler Building. Stunning illustrations and lively text evoke the passion and genius of builders whose inspiring work spans five centuries and six countries. For more information, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Munro, Roxie. "The Race for the Sky." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 5 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/ The-Race-For-The-Sky.

6 Comments

The Orphan Trains: Seeking Homes for Homeless Children

9/22/2022

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Andrea Warren
Giving Voice to Children in History

Charles Loring Brace, a young Presbyterian minister with a big heart, was deeply distressed at the plight of the tens of thousands of abandoned children who roamed the streets of New York City in the early 1850s. Brace saw them everywhere. To stay alive, they had to beg and steal. In even the coldest weather, they had to sleep outdoors.

Some of the street children were orphans. Others had been turned out by parents too poor to feed them. Or they had become lost in the vast city, or had run away because of abuse. Many were the children of immigrants and had no other family in this country.

Brace was determined to do something. He raised money and started the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) to assist homeless children. While he started several beneficial programs for them, mostly he wanted to find them families—ones that would nurture, protect, and love them. Small town and farm folks would be best, he reasoned. He felt they were goodhearted and would be touched by the children’s plight and want to help. The child they took would help with chores and field work, just as all children did at that time.

Could such a plan work? He decided to find out.

So began what was soon known as the orphan trains. CAS assumed guardianship of orphans and children whose families couldn’t—or wouldn’t—care for them. Many lived in CAS facilities for months, growing strong and ready for travel. Then, in groups averaging 25 to 50, the children boarded trains dressed in new clothing, hair neatly trimmed, and bibles in hand. Posters went up in small towns along the tracks, announcing when the children would arrive. When they did, they were lined up, looked over, and matched with interested families. Whenever possible, CAS agents traveling with the children placed siblings together or near each other. They also tried to follow up on every placement, moving children to new homes if there were problems.

Between 1854 and 1930, a quarter-million children made this journey in search of families to call their own. Sometimes they were taken only to be laborers or were never truly loved or accepted. But for most it worked well, and for some it worked splendidly. Said one rider who found a happy home at the end of the ride, “My life began when I got off that train.”

Charles Loring Brace (1826-1890) was an American philanthropist who contributed to the field of social reform. He is considered a father of the modern foster care movement and was most renowned for starting the Orphan Train movement of the mid-19th century, and for founding Children's Aid Society.

This is a well-known photograph of a train carrying homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest.

Local committees formed across the Midwest in order to oversee the placement of the children. The committee that produced the above poster was associated with CAS, while the one at right was a local Chicago group. They were well meaning, but the promise of receiving a child FREE on a ninety-day trial seems callous at best. The poster above announces that "distribution" will take place at the opera house.

Andrea Warren has written two books about the Orphan Trains. In Orphan Train Rider, she tells the story of a 9-year old who rode the train to Texas in 1926. We Rode the Orphan Trains tells of the many children who rode the trains as a journey of hope. Andrea is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

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Polly Wants a President

Standing with Dr. King

Mary E. Lease, Queen of the Populist Tornado

The Race For the Sky

The Orphan Trains: Seeking Homes for Homeless Children

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