Ghost Curriculum

American history: so much more interesting than you've been led to believe. A supplement to Washington State's 8th grade US History curriculum, in which we don't "skip all the cool stuff."

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‘Let’s Suck This Week Less Than We Did Last Week’: An Oral History of The Stranger

Twenty-five years after its debut, here is the story of an independent newspaper in Seattle that spawned Dan Savage and won a Pulitzer Prize.

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I wish I had specific information about this pic but I don’t, here’s what the blurb under it said in the encyclopedia I got it from:

Activism by ACT UP and other groups, such as this protest dramatizing the wide-ranging targets of AIDS, helped to raise public consciousness about the breadth of [it], and governmental negect.

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This is from ACT UP’s famous Seize Control of the FDA demonstration, October 11, 1988! Specifically, this is a die-in staged by an ACT UP/New York affinity group, the Candelabras. According to his biography, the person lying front and center is David Wojnarowicz, the artist and AIDS activist who is also known for the jacket he wore to this protest reading “IF I DIE OF AIDS — FORGET BURIAL — JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.”

Other tombstone placards read: “I GOT THE PLACEBO — R.I.P.”; “AZT WASN’T ENOUGH”; “DEAD FOR LACK OF AEROSOL PENTAMIDINE”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF AL-721”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF DEXTRAN SULFATE”, “BECAUSE WOMEN WITH AIDS DIE TWICE AS FAST.”

According to activist Douglas Crimp, “The success of SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA can perhaps best be measured by what ensued in the year following the action. Government agencies dealing with AIDS, particularly the FDA and NIH, began to listen to us, to include us in decision-making, even to ask for our input. […] Following the FDA action, ACT UP continued to lobby for parallel trials, meeting with NIH and FDA officials, negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, and testifying before congressional committees. One year after SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA, ACT UP’s idea, now called Parallel Track, was accepted by the NIH and FDA and went into effect for ddI (dideoxyinosine), the first antiviral AIDS drug to become available since AZT.”

More on Seize Control of the FDA:

ACT UP’s actual 40+-page handbook that prepared activists for the action

Footage of the action, including this die-in.

Coverage of the action in the documentary on ACT UP, United in Anger (2012)

Firsthand account of the action by activist Mark Harrington in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience (scroll to page 335; Harrington’s whole chapter, “AIDS Activists and People with AIDS: A Movement to Revolutionize Research and for Universal Access to Treatment,” is worth reading and starts on page 323.)

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Outline of human figure with writing “Lost Angeles” on column at homeless camp in Los Angeles, California, 1987.

Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

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The women of the CIA and the hidden history of American spycraft

These women are fighting sexism and keeping the nation safe at one of the oldest boys' clubs in the country.

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Photograph of Sandra Day O'Connor Being Sworn in a Supreme Court Justice by Chief Justice Warren Burger, Her Husband John O'Connor Looks On, 9/25/1981

Series: Reagan White House Photographs, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989. Collection: White House Photographic Collection, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989

Announced as President Reagan’s intended nominee on July 7, 1981, and formally nominated on August 19, Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first woman Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court thirty-five years ago on September 25, 1981. O’Connor worked as a lawyer and then a judge in Arizona before becoming an Associate Justice in the U.S. Supreme Court. She retired in 2006. 

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Dolores Madrigal remembered being told that her sterilization could be reversed. Jovita Rivera and Georgina Hernández said they were bullied by doctors and nurses who declared their children burdens on California taxpayers. Melvina Hernandez did not find out that her tubes had been cut until four years after her son was born.

In 1975, these four women were among the 10 plaintiffs who filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court claiming that the Los Angeles County U.S.C. Medical Center was systematically sterilizing Spanish-speaking mothers who delivered their babies via cesarean section.

Madrigal v. Quilligan was, from its outset, the kind of striking David-versus-Goliath story that Hollywood and history books usually love — Erin Brockovich with an East L.A. twist. It was championed by a Latina fresh out of law school, and backed by the marginalized feminist wing of a growing Chicano activist movement. It was directed against some of most the powerful institutions in the state, including the Department of Health and the University of Southern California. The events in the trial even had a famous setting: For decades, Los Angeles County hospital served as an exterior shot for the soap opera “General Hospital.” And the claims were disturbing — that the hospital had made a practice of misleading women about sterilization and coercing them into giving consent.

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Gay rights demonstration, Albany, New York, 1971

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The Month That Killed the Sixties

An oral history of how everything went to hell in December 1969. Fred Hampton was killed by the police, the hippie spirit died at Altamont, and the Weathermen went underground.

It’s worthwhile for anyone who wants to see social change today to understand exactly how the wheels came off the black and leftist social movements of the 1960s.

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The Refugees

The 1968 U.S. Marine Corps training film instructs U.S. soldiers in Vietnam on how to take care of civilian refugees seeking assistance.

Another C-SPAN historical film, this was originally produced by the US Marine Corps to train Marines in how to treat refugees from the conflict between the Vietcong and the US-backed Republic of Vietnam.

1968 was one of the most violent years of the war. From a Marine Corps history:

The year 1968 was the year of the Tet Offensive including Khe Sanh and Hue City. These were momentous events in the course of the war and they occurred in the first three months of the year. ... The bloodiest month of the war for the U.S. forces was not January nor February 1968, but May 1968 when the Communists launched what was called their "Mini-Tet" offensive. This was followed by a second "Mini-Tet" offensive during the late summer which also was repulsed at heavy cost to both sides. By the end of the year, the U.S. forces in South Vietnam's I Corps, under the III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF), had regained the offensive. By December, enemy-initiated attacks had fallen to their lowest level in two years. Still, there was no talk of victory. The Communist forces remained a formidable foe and a limit had been drawn on the level of American participation in the war.

The

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“SEXUAL PREFERENCE IS IRRELEVANT TO FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT” – “SEXUAL PREFERENCE IS IRRELEVANT TO ANY EMPLOYMENT” – “DENIAL OF EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IS IMMORAL,” Barbara Gittings (front), Ernestine...

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The Last Two Days

Another C-SPAN historical film, The Last Two Days documents President John F. Kennedy’s trip to Texas in 1963.

From Kennedy’s last public speech, given the morning he was assassinated:

This is a very dangerous and uncertain world. ... We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom, and I think we will continue to do our duty. I’m confident, as I look to the future, that our chances for security, our chances for peace are better than they were in the past. With that strength is a determination to not only maintain the peace, but also the vital interests of the United States.

During my childhood, American adults of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations could all remember where they were when they heard that Kennedy was shot. In my own adulthood, the most similar “we all remember where we were” historical moment has been the September 11 attacks.

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UFOs, the U.S. Government, and the Space Age

Today in America there seems to be an increase fascination with aliens and UFOs. One of the most infamous reports of a UFO crash happened on July 8, 1947 outside the New Mexico town of Roswell. 

In celebration of that event, we wanted to share some information about a visit between NACA’s (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics– the predecessor of NASA) Western Coordination Officer, Edwin P. Hartman and John K. Northrop of Northrop Aircraft.  Mr. Hartman would often travel to different aerospace companies and would document industry activities. On May 3, 1950, Mr. Hartman went on a scheduled visit to Northrop Aircraft Inc. and met with Mr. John K. Northrop. During Mr. Hartman’s visit, Northrop told him privately that he thought atomic powered saucers from other planets were possible. Mr. Northrop also stated that some Northrop men flying a P-61 in the Fort Worth TX area chased a bright aerial object (possibly a flying saucer?) but had to abandon the chase before reaching the object because of lack of oxygen.  A B-36 was sent to continue the chase but it was unsuccessful. 

Also posted is the original memo (without the UFO discussion) of Mr. Hartman’s visit to Northrop Aircraft, Inc. indicating that they discussed missile development and the development of computing machines. Northrop’s computing machine named “Mad Ida” could gobble data 10 times faster than MIT’s computing machine.

Series: Confidential Reference Memorandums, 1940-1962. Record Group 255: Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1903 – 2006. 

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The March on Washington: on August 28, 1963, work in the nation’s capital came to a halt as thousands of demonstrators made their way to Washington. The city had never seen a demonstration of this magnitude. Around the world, millions watched on television as 250,000 people of different backgrounds came together to demand social justice. The events that day helped mark the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and reminded Americans of the nation’s long pursuit to fulfill its founding principles of liberty and equality for all.

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In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive pill. Within a few years, millions of American women were “on the Pill.” Doris Wagner began using it in 1962 after she and her husband David had their fourth child. The required regimen—one a day for twenty days then five days off—made remembering to take the pill a source of anxiety for the couple. David, an engineer, designed a dispenser to alleviate the problem. Most American pharmaceutical companies that sold birth control pills adopted his idea.

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Daughters of Bilitis breakfast (left-to-right: Del Martin, Josie, Jan, Marge, Bev Hickok, Phyllis Lyon), San Francisco, California 1959. Photo from BoxTurtleBulletin.com, c/o GLBT History Museum. On...