Proctor & Gamble ad, 1898. Source: LOC.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, we say, and Americans have long associated good hygiene with moral and spiritual purity. On this episode, we dig into the changing ways we’ve defined what it is to be clean.

We’ll meet an 18th-century Pennsylvania woman who didn’t immerse herself in water for 28 years, and ask how Americans like her kept clean without getting wet. We’ll also hear about the campaign to clean up New York City in the mid-19th century, and question the extent to which germ theory really revolutionized sanitary practices. And we’ll consider a dark chapter in the history of cleanliness, when social reformers in the early 20th-century set out to “sanitize” America’s racial profile.

Guests Include:

• Kristen Egan, Mary Baldwin College, on a 1915 novel about a very, very clean utopia.
• Jennifer Marshall, University of Minnesota, on Depression-era soap carving contests.
• Charletta Sudduth, University of Northern Iowa, on the racial valence of cleanliness in the Jim Crow South.
• Owen Whooley, University of New Mexico, on what 19th century Americans knew — and didn’t know — about the connection between filth and cholera.

Show Segments:

Listen to individual segments from the episode.

Further Exploration:

Resources galore! Peruse a list of outside sources used in the making of this episode, and get some hygiene tips from earlier generations of Americans.

Music from the Episode:

A full listing of the tracks, and links to buy them yourselves.

Even Further:

The listener discussion that helped shape the show.

Advertisement for cocaine toothache drops, 1885.

In December, recreational marijuana use became legal in Washington and Colorado. But back in the early 20th century, both states were among the first to ban the drug. If that seems like a radical change, well – it’s hardly the first time a drug has undergone a major image overhaul in America. This week, we trace the changing face of drugs – and drug users – in the U.S.

We start in the 19^th century, when opium and cocaine were perfectly legal, and heroin was touted as for cure for morphine addiction. And we bring the story right on up through the 1970s, when Vietnam vets and suburban housewives triggered two very different drug panics. Throughout, we’ll look trace the story of the criminalization – and in the case of pot, decriminalization — of those substances. Along the way, we explore the influence of the medical establishment, as well as the role of popular culture, in shaping American attitudes about drugs.

Guests Include:

• Isaac Campos, University of Cincinnati

• Emily Dufton, George Washington University

• Anne Foster, Indiana State University

• David Herzberg, University of Buffalo

• Jerome Jaffe, University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

• Mike Jay, independent scholar

• Jeremy Kuzmarov, University of Tulsa

Further Exploration

Listen to individual show segments.

Listen to an extended version of Brian’s interview with David Herzberg.

And, resources galore! Enjoy some outside links compiled by the BackStory team to dig deeper into the history of drug use in the US, and consult a bibliography of sources used in the making of this episode.

Even Further

Read the listener discussion that helped shape this episode.

See the music used in this episode.

Listen to music about drugs.

Loading sugar cane in Hawaii, 1917 (Library of Congress)

From the triangle trade to labor struggles in Hawaii to the rise of high-fructose corn syrup, sweetness in America has always been politically charged. Why has sugar been so intimately linked to power over the centuries? How has our national sweet tooth shaped our political and economic priorities?

In this episode, the History Guys will explore sweetness in American history.  The Sugar Act of 1764 helped feed colonial resentment of Great Britain, paving the way for protests and, ultimately, the American Revolution. A century and a half later, US tariff walls gave Puerto Rican sugar a ready market – but pushed the territory toward a one-crop economy that later collapsed.

Through the 19th century, sugar was intimately linked to slavery; free blacks in the 1830s boycotted slave-produced sugar in a stand against the “peculiar institution.” A century later, the sugar beet industry revolutionized the rural Midwest, bringing with it questions about the role of foreign migrant workers and urban factory workers. So where does sugar fit into labor history in the US? How has this tasty cash crop affected our environment and our economy? And what does it tell us about globalization before the 20th century?

Please help us shape this episode — post your ideas, stories, and questions below!

Read up on the origins and history of the idea of race.
Peruse an excerpt from The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon Reed, which won the 2009 Pulitizer Prize in History.
Watch Barack Obama’s March 2008 speech about race.
Listen to the story of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that ended laws against intermarriage or read about it.

Slavery & Science — Historian Daryl Scott discusses rise of scientific racism and how race has evolved–and not evolved–in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Historian Daryl Scott discusses rise of scientific racism and how race has evolved–and not evolved–in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Excerpted from: Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity

Were the categories of “black” and “white” already in place when Africans first came to America, and if not, when did they take shape? How did the founders think about race, and what are we to make of the contradictions between the public writings of men like Jefferson and their behavior in private? What is the “one-drop rule,” and where did it come from? In what ways have religion and science affirmed and challenged notions of racial difference? It’s not hard to see the progress that’s been made on the road to racial equality, but what have been the major setbacks and reversals along the way?

Guests include:

*Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon Reed (The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family) reflects on why Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, continues to be so controversial

*Historian Daryl Scott (Howard University) parses the differences between race consciousness and racism throughout the 20th century

Features & Highlights

Hear more about racial purity and racism in these interviews with Annette Gordon Reed and Daryl Scott. Listen here.

Further Reading

Want to dig deeper into the history of racial purity? The BackStory research team has compiled a comprehensive list of resources for further explanation. Read on.

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is behind bars. For African-Americans, that figure is one in 15. In this hour, the History Guys ask whether we’ve always been so fond of the lock & key, and look at how our prison system has been structured in the past. Washington DC Corrections Director Devon Brown discusses the racial disparity, and historian Rebecca McLennan explains why 19th century prison labor was not only central to America’s penal system, but also to its economy. And we head out to the side of the highway to speak with some members of the local jail’s work gang.

Show Highlights

• Chain Gang, Revisited — 20th Century History Guy Brian Balogh spends some time on the side of the highway with the work crew from Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. He asks whether prisoners see their work as public humiliation or reward for good behavior.
• A Debt to Society — Historian Rebecca McLennan explains why 19th century prison labor was not only central to America’s penal system, but also to its economy.