#ghostcurriculum

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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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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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A Lesbian Artist Who Painted Her Circle of Women at the Turn of the 20th Century

WASHINGTON, DC — Tucked into a far corner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an exhibit showcases the extensive career of artist Romaine Brooks, a turn-of-the-20th-century icon who’s since bee…

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Flamboyant in style and exaggerated in proportion, the zoot suit is linked to a relatively small subculture, yet it represents a significant moment in the history of menswear. Its exact origin is unknown, but it was closely associated with urban youths, particularly those of African American, Latino, Jewish descent, and those from immigrant communities, who frequented swing clubs and dance halls during the 1930s and early 1940s. Their zoot suits, defined by overtly broad shoulders with wide, pegged sleeves, narrow hips, and deeply pleated pegged trousers, allowed for ease of movement while creating an image of extreme dandyism.

LACMA has made a pattern for this suit available, and it’s delightful reading for those of us who enjoy seeing how historic clothing was really put together.

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These 100-Year-Old Colour Portraits Of New York Immigrants Reveal Incredible Outfits

Digital colourisation shows off the most amazing clothes from around the world.

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This scrap of cloth is one of the saddest artifacts at new DC museum

Many visitors walk right past it, but those who read the description tend to stop in their tracks and linger, studying the 150-year-old scrap of fabric. It’s known as “Ashley’s Sack,” and belonged to an enslaved woman named Rose at the Middleton Place rice plantation in Charleston, South Carolina.

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Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, Harlem, New York, 1940

More photographs by Alexander Alland, this time part of a series he shot in 1940 of members of the Commandment Keepers congregation in New York.

The Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, one of the oldest and largest communities of black Hebrews in the United States, was founded in Harlem in 1919 by Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew (1892-1973). Though this congregation traces its origin to the activities of those who came to New York during the first waves of black migration and immigration, it was in the post World War II years that the community took root. Rabbi Matthew created a number of auxiliary organizations, and today there are seven black synagogues in the downstate New York area that trace their origins directly to Rabbi Matthew and his congregation. The synagogue is located in Harlem.