Hashtag History

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the case of Sylvester Davis and Andrea Perez, a couple from Los Angeles, California, who were denied a marriage license in 1948 on account of the fact that Davis was African American and Perez was Mexican American (though, at the time, this categorized her as white). They sued and eventually won on the grounds that the state’s ban on interracial marriage directly violated the protections provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.Perez v. Sharp laid the groundwork both for Loving v. Virginia, the federal case that legalized interracial marriage, but it also laid the groundwork for Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing Mary Edmonia Lewis. Lewis was a sculptor who went on to become the first African American and Native American to achieve international recognition.This will come as no surprise that Lewis, as both a woman AND as a Black woman, faced obstacle after obstacle in achieving such success. One such incident was when she was put on trial for and eventually kicked out of college on charges that she had poisoned her white roommates. After this, she moved to Boston where many white artists appreciated and funded her artwork while talking behind her back about how she was essentially just a token of the abolitionist movement. She eventually left the United States, moving to Rome, Italy, where she joined a vibrant community of expatriate artists. Here, she became a well-known sculptor who – unlike so many others in her profession – refused the help of assistants so that no one could ever claim that her work was not her own. Since her passing in 1907, she has gained more recognition with some of her pieces on display at the Smithsonian. But Lewis still does not receive the full recognition and acknowledgment she should, and so I’m so excited to introduce you all to her today.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the Red Summer and the 1919 Race Riots. These were a series of violent riots that took place during the summer of 1919 – some of the most notable being in Chicago, Washington DC, and Omaha – as a result of particularly high racial tensions in the United States at the time. These riots, lasting over a series of months, became known as the Red Summer because of how much blood was shed in such a short period of time.We are of course going to discuss what all of those factors were (The Great Migration, the return of Black World War I veterans being treated like shit after serving the country, segregation, and so on and so forth). The factors that were most poignant in the Summer of 1919 were multiple likely-false allegations of sexual assault by Black men against white women. In Chicago in particular, the moment that ignited the fire that summer took place on July 27th when a seventeen-year-old Black boy was swimming in Lake Michigan. He floated across the invisible line (one that didn’t exist outside of fake social constructs) that divided the white side of the beach from the Black side of the beach. When he did this, a white man threw a rock at him, eventually causing him to drown. Do I need to tell you that the white man wasn’t arrested for the boy’s murder?As a result, a week-long riot broke out in Chicago, leading to the deaths of 38 people, more than five hundred people injured, and more than 1,000 Black residents losing their homes. And that’s just in Chicago—that isn’t even touching on the other riots that took place that summer in Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and more.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the political ideology of America First. This is the concept that America needs to prioritize America—our domestic interests above those of other nations. And, in theory, that sounds like a good idea, right? Putting American families and the American economy first, not engaging in foreign conflicts are participating in international treaties that don’t directly benefit the US. But this philosophy also comes with a lot of criticism too: It weakens international alliances. When we need help, who is coming to save us when we have burned all our bridges? Through tariffs and trade wars, depending solely on domestic goods becomes more expensive for the American people. And then, of course, there are the historical parallels to times in the past when the US – so focused on the US – made the decision to allow fascism to thrive abroad. And, when we exclude ourselves so much from foreign nations, what reason would they have to intervene in our affairs when we are being taken over by fascism? In a quote from Sarah Churchwell, author of the book Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “the American Dream” - she said, “What may seem at first glance merely a patriotic or nationalistic slogan – one that implies economic protectionism – in fact has a much longer and darker history in American political discourse than many people realize." And that is the history we will be getting into this week.While we will of course explore the philosophy of America First this week, our primary focus will be on that long and dark history behind the phrase. Its early roots in McKinley in the late-1800s and his tariff policy, in Wilson’s reelection campaign in 1916 about keeping America out of World War I, in 1940 with the Founding of the America First Committee (which boasted prominent members like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford), and then, of course, in 2016 and again in 2024 with the Trump Administrations’ focus on border security, foreign relations, tariffs, and burning our alliances with foreign nations.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, an American pathologist who was once highlighted on the cover of Time Magazine as THE “Cancer Fighter." He served as director of the Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research, the first director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and did groundbreaking research for the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research.But that’s not why we’re talking about ol’ Corny today. No, we are talking about him because, in 1932, he was exposed by a letter he had written the year prior while working in clinical research in Puerto Rico. In this letter, he wrote that he considered Puerto Ricans to be “beyond doubt the laziest, most degenerate, and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere.” But, oh, wait. It gets so much worse. He continues in this letter to say, “What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more.” But wait…there’s more…that we will get to later in the episode.Despite this horrendously racist and alarming language/admission, Rhoads of course went on to receive several awards, such as the Legion of Merit, several honorary doctorates, and a Memorial Award in his honor through the American Association for Cancer Research (though this one was renamed in 2002 after his awful 1931 letter recirculated). We should also mention that his research was instrumental in helping the US Army develop chemical weapons during World War II.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast