BackStory with the American History Guys » agriculture

American as Pumpkin Pie: A History of Thanksgiving

VFHwebdev — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:00:15 +0000

When we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we think we know what we’re commemorating. But if an actual Pilgrim were to attend your Thanksgiving, chances are he’d be stunned by what he saw there. In this episode, historian James McWilliams discusses why the Puritans would have turned up their noses at our “traditional” Thanksgiving foods. Religion scholar Anne Blue Wills reveals the Victorian origins of our modern holiday, and one woman’s campaign to fix it on the national calendar. An archeologist at Colonial Williamsburg explains what garbage has to tell us about early American diets. And legendary NFL quarterback Roger Staubach describes what it was like to spend every turkey day on the football field.

Guests Include:

Roger Staubach, former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys
Anne Blue Wills, Professor of Religion and author of “Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines Made Thanksgiving” (PDF)
Joanne Bowen, Curator of Zooarchaeology at Colonial Williamsburg
James McWilliams, historian and author of A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America

Web Exclusives

So that you might have something to look at while listening to a couple of highlights from our show, we compiled two special audio slide shows. Watch them here.

Even Further

Full Show Transcript

The Extraordinary Ordinary: Populism in America

cm6ay — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:32:52 +0000

Joe the Plumber and his geographic equivalent, “Main Street,” were both major figures in Election ’08. “We the People” have finally spoken and… wait a second, who’s “we” and what did “we” say, anyway? On this show, we’ll explore the many faces of populism — that notion of the power of ordinariness that Americans have both idealized and feared. We’ll ask how a term describing a 19th century agrarian reform movement came to stand in for the interests of average Americans, and explore the connections between populism and American religion. Was our Revolution the work of The People or a few powerful people? How, historically, have we translated “the voice of the people” into a language that makes sense to all of us? Of course we want to hear from you, the People of BackStory — send us your ideas, questions, and stories, and you might be invited to join us on the air!

Environmental Crisis!

VFHwebdev — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:30:12 +0000

It seems that Americans are finally waking up to the reality of climate change, but scientists tell us it may be too little, too late. This may be the most far-reaching environmental threat Americans have ever faced, but it’s certainly not the first. In this hour, we consider the history of American anxieties about the environment. Historian Bill Cronon weighs in on when “nature” became a thing to protect and not to fear. And we travel up to Shenandoah National Park to look for remnants of the communities displaced to make way for Nature. Also — Mother Nature’s gender, Populist politics, and the merits of an apocalyptic mindset.

Related Links

See what environmental historian Bill Cronon is up to!

Hear more stories of the removal from the Shenandoah Valley…

Take a look at an interactive timeline of environmental history.

Shenandoah Removals

VFHwebdev — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:58:31 +0000

Jesse Dukes’ story on the Shenandoah was inspired by Justin Reich’s article, Recreating the wilderness: Shaping narratives and landscapes in Shenandoah National Park.

Here are two pieces of archival tape, courtesy of the Carrier Library at James Madison University.

In this piece, Dorothy Noble Smith, who conducted a private oral history project, reads aloud the lyrics to a song written by Roy Harris’ father. Harris had earlier asserted that his father “never got over” leaving the Blue Ridge Mountains. The song lyrics are:

“I spent my life in the Blue Ridge Hills
Where I coudn’t hear nothing but the whippoorwills
There the lightning blazed such a beautiful sight
I could hardly tell when it grew night
But now I’m down in this low land
Where the water is warm and the land is poor”

Listen to the song:

In this 1983 recording, interviewer Dorothy Noble Smith asks Roy Harris of Grottoes, VA, his feelings on having to leave his home in Brown’s Gap, which later became Shenandoah National Park. He says that he did not mind, but that his father never got over it. Harris also tells that the park did not help his father re-settle, but later admits they paid his father for his land in Brown’s Gap, which allowed him to settle in Stony Point, Virginia. Only he says: “They gave him about half of what it was worth.”

Listen to Roy Harris’ story