November 22, 2024 • 16 mins
Holly notes the racist views of one of Charles Brown's biographers. Tracy and Holly also discuss presidential proclamations and the ways Thanksgiving has been framed as a feel-good story over the years.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about Charles Brown slash Artemis Ward this week. Yep.
I also said that I would talk about don Ce
Sites this week. You did say that it was his biographer.
He wrote a biography of Ward in the I think
it was nineteen nineteen. I just want to warn anybody
because it's an interesting biography, but if you go to
(00:37):
read it, the introduction has a lot of gross racist
stuff in it, Yeah, which was definitely like part of
the time, but this writer's gross racist stuff is worse
than Ward's gross racist stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Like it's really like, uh, I don't even want to
tell the stories involved because so yucky. But like it's
one of those things where there's an instance where Charles
Ward does something to kind of like show how stupid
this black man he's talking to is, and then Sites
makes a comment on the whole thing that.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Is very, very gross.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So just if you want to go read some of
this stuff, please know it is laced throughout with things
like that, and it's not cool. It is worth reading
for the understanding of the situation, but obviously with the
lac that you know, it is gross and it sometimes
I mean I felt it was stomach journey. It was like, oh,
(01:42):
even for the time, you are really just no, yeah,
so brace yeah. Reading about some of his humor reminded
me a little bit of the era of comedy that
you and I lived through, but like our younger listeners
(02:04):
may not personally remember, right where there was kind of
a vibe of it being okay to be offensive as
long as you were being offensive to everyone, right, and
having like a weird edginess to all of the humor
that was kind of like would include a lot of
(02:28):
really racist and sexist jokes, but with such a broad
spectrum of them that it was like, well, it's not
that they're racist or sexist, it's that they are making
fun of everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I'm kind of glad that, not even kind of I've
generally I'm generally glad that for the most part, at
least the comedy I'm aware of has moved beyond that.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I mean, it still happened.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
What's that thing where you know, I mean, I understand
how somebody lands there and thinks that's okay, because I
am definitely like, I don't I don't take anything too
seriously myself, least of all. Right, But the problem is,
even if you're making fun of everybody, some of those
(03:14):
people are gonna be a punch down, and you are
going to reinforce gross stuff that hurts those people, Whereas
if you're punching up at people who have way more
power and privilege than you with your jokes, they are
going to be unharmed. Right, And that is why it
is not okay to use the I mess with everybody
like approach. There are still people learning that lesson or
(03:36):
not learning it as ps maybe, but that's yeah, Artemis.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Ward, Yeah yuck.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Now there's also the part of me, right that is like,
is this like a reverse uno that I'm just not
fully grasping. Was he doing some of these things as
this character who was obviously kind of a train wreck
to point out that they were gross?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, it's a little bit weird because everyone who knew
him writes about how kind and gentle he was with
everyone he encountered. But those are also people who also
say gross racist things and may not recognize that he
wasn't being kind and gentle, right, So it's a little
bit tricky.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I don't really ever post on any social media anymore
except for very occasionally Instagram. But one of the things
that I got really tired of was the people who
would say the thing quote ironically but like, really, you're
just saying the same thing. Yeah, And so I kind
(04:49):
of wonder if some of his humor fell into that.
Yeah I'm being ironic, but really you're still just you're
saying the same thing, right. That is that is the
trick of ironic humor. You cannot you can't always count
on your audience to get the joke.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, it's not amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, he's an interesting one. I like this
idea that you can pinpoint a moment where kind of
stand up comedy happened for the first time. I find
it hilarious that there's an elementary school named after him.
I'm like, but that's a weird. Yeah, it's a weird
(05:32):
a weird name choice in my opinion at this time.
I so, uh, there was an era. I mean, I'm
sure this still happens at some points, but like, there
there was kind of an era in writing when it
was way more common to render thickly all the way
through the writing someone's accent and dialect. Yeah, like Bram
(05:57):
Stoker did this also in a lot of his work.
I find it so exhausting to read works that are
written like that, And somehow, by coincidence, I wound up
with the two longest passages.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Of his writing. I did not do that on purpose. Yeah,
I find it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
As someone who loves to read and has always been
a really good reader, I find it tiring to try
to get through it. It's tricky differently than when I
am reading you know, historical documents that have non standard
today spellings, or things that were printed at a time
(06:41):
when they the long s's that looks like f's were
in use. Like, that's a little bit different way of
brain power needing to be put toward it than the
invented spellings and phonetic renderings of things that are part
of this.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, anyway, Charles Brown yep, which makes me go, are
you the it's Charlie Brown named for you? I don't
look it up.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
It is funny. The one thing that I find kind
of hilarious is how he was kind of like the
predecessor by minutes to Mark Twain. They definitely had similar style,
So I don't know if that's just because they were
dressing in the manner of the day, or if it's
because Twain kind of modeled himself on Artemis Ward Charles Brown.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I don't know, yeah, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. One of our episodes this week was about Franksgiving. O. Yes,
it was Thanksgiving a week earlier. I have so many
(08:00):
on this one. I have a lot of thoughts too.
As I was doing research on this, I had a
bunch of things bookmarked, and I I think I've said before,
like I'll just I'll bookmark broadly and then.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I will go back to go through stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And one of the things I had bookmarked as like
a local news article that was kind of generally about this.
But this article stated with lots of authority that Thanksgiving
is always the last Thursday in November, and I was like, nah,
that is not correct. Something I wanted to put in
(08:39):
the episode and I just didn't feel like had a
good place in the rhythm of how things were going
is that in Oklahoma, there was some debate about which
day the banks would be closed. The state was observing
Thanksgiving on the thirtieth, but the bank holiday had already
(09:03):
been established as a twenty third and Attorney General mac
Williamson issued a legal opinion in this matter that had
a little poem in it, And the poem went thirty
dates half September, April, June, and November. All the rest
have thirty one until we hear from Washington. What are
(09:27):
some of your thoughts, Holly? While we were recording, I
just scribbled on my notepad that I keep by my computer,
sweet baby, Gredo Thanksgiving, get your act together. Here's my thing.
Two things. One, how much like legislative time was wasted
(09:50):
on like making the president proclaim it every time? Just
a lot right, like well just said it and forget it.
But I think But two, what it really really reminded
me of as like it was getting into the nitty
gritty of we're gonna change it to give more space.
(10:13):
Everybody's freaking out, But we already printed the things, and
we're already and we already had the thing, and we're
doing it this way. We've always done it this way.
Why do we want to change it? Reminded me of
anybody that's worked in like a corporate setting or even
a not corporate setting has had this moment where like
there's some process or even lack of process that has
(10:35):
been the standard mode of doing things that has problems.
But even when somebody presents a solution that will require
a little transition awkwardness, people are so mad about that
part that they can't get past it and they fight fight.
I mean, I've been on both sides of that equation
where I'm like whoa, and also, come on, you guys,
(10:58):
this is never going to get better if we don't
have this two.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Weeks that stink.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, And that's what it made me think of, Like
just if everybody could just chill out for like a minute, Yeah,
we can make this decision. We know it's going to
be awkward. I'm a big fan of the let's just
celebrate it twice if you love the other one so
much while we figure this out. But I did it
made me think about that a lot. I was not
(11:22):
really as focused on, like the time spent doing the proclamations,
because presidents and governors issue a lot of proclamations about
a lot of stuff, and so like that did not
I didn't even really think about that as a factor
in all of it. The amount of debating that could
go into the passage of laws and like whether to
(11:45):
ask the president to issue a proclamation that did crack
me up a little bit. Also just I mean I
said it in the episode, it was really not necessary
to manufacture a connection to the like the the you know,
sort of mythical first Thanksgiving, right, because the Thanksgiving holiday
(12:08):
has always been about, uh, like the identity of the
United States as a nation, you know, since there started
to be national proclamations about it. Uh, and very very
often connections uh to.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
To wars, wars that.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The you know, the nation and the you know, the
legislative branch and the executive branch believed were being undertaken
for just reasons, right, And the idea that like Providence
was smiling on our war effort because our war effort
(12:46):
is good, like that underpinned so much of it, uh,
Which that's a whole other can of worms. But like
we uh, it's probably a little harder for a kindergartener
to rap their head around then a feel good story
about sitting down to a big dinner. But like those connections,
(13:08):
there was plenty of other fuel for elementary school classes
and whatever that did not involved having children make paper
headdresses and wear them, for example. I know there are
still schools that are doing that. Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
(13:33):
I forgot. What is the thing that somebody coined that
was about things will inevitably be compared to Hitler. There's
some term that somebody coined on the internet, some law, somebody.
I'm just gonna google it. This is Godwin's law, which
is as online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
(13:54):
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. One, of course, was
not coined until apparently nineteen ninety according to this Google
search that I've just done, so many decades after franksgiving discussion.
(14:15):
But yeah, not a new phenomenon, No, not in the least.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I also marveled throughout, even though I have read some
of these documents we referenced at, just how much the
idea of a separation of church and state was such
a fib.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, it is such a fib Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
One of the things that I read about Washington's proclamations
specifically was that like Washington's proclamations definitely draw on the
idea of God and prayer, but without specifying any particular
(15:01):
religion or denomination or sect within a religion, but still
with the presumption that everyone has like a commonality to
their religious belief that involves.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
God in prayer. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But yeah, the idea that the like that the first
presidents or the so called founders were not really focused
on God does not hold up in this episode.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Anyway, I hope if folks are preparing for their own
Thanksgiving meal, I hope those preparations are going well, I know,
and stuff can start really early with making sure you
can find the right potatoes for your potato casserole.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Or whether they're going to be sold out.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Of Cranberry's at the grocery store, so you know, whatever
you're working on with that in my and I hope
it's all going really well. And if you are having
a Thanksgiving holiday in a couple weeks or a week,
I guess, you know, I hope that's going to be
great as great as possible. If you want to send
us a notes about this or any other podcast or
(16:15):
history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else
you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(16:38):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about Charles Brown slash Artemis Ward this week. Yep.
I also said that I would talk about don Ce
Sites this week. You did say that it was his biographer.
He wrote a biography of Ward in the I think
it was nineteen nineteen. I just want to warn anybody
because it's an interesting biography, but if you go to
(00:37):
read it, the introduction has a lot of gross racist
stuff in it, Yeah, which was definitely like part of
the time, but this writer's gross racist stuff is worse
than Ward's gross racist stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Like it's really like, uh, I don't even want to
tell the stories involved because so yucky. But like it's
one of those things where there's an instance where Charles
Ward does something to kind of like show how stupid
this black man he's talking to is, and then Sites
makes a comment on the whole thing that.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Is very, very gross.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So just if you want to go read some of
this stuff, please know it is laced throughout with things
like that, and it's not cool. It is worth reading
for the understanding of the situation, but obviously with the
lac that you know, it is gross and it sometimes
I mean I felt it was stomach journey. It was like, oh,
(01:42):
even for the time, you are really just no, yeah,
so brace yeah. Reading about some of his humor reminded
me a little bit of the era of comedy that
you and I lived through, but like our younger listeners
(02:04):
may not personally remember, right where there was kind of
a vibe of it being okay to be offensive as
long as you were being offensive to everyone, right, and
having like a weird edginess to all of the humor
that was kind of like would include a lot of
(02:28):
really racist and sexist jokes, but with such a broad
spectrum of them that it was like, well, it's not
that they're racist or sexist, it's that they are making
fun of everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I'm kind of glad that, not even kind of I've
generally I'm generally glad that for the most part, at
least the comedy I'm aware of has moved beyond that.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I mean, it still happened.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
What's that thing where you know, I mean, I understand
how somebody lands there and thinks that's okay, because I
am definitely like, I don't I don't take anything too
seriously myself, least of all. Right, But the problem is,
even if you're making fun of everybody, some of those
(03:14):
people are gonna be a punch down, and you are
going to reinforce gross stuff that hurts those people, Whereas
if you're punching up at people who have way more
power and privilege than you with your jokes, they are
going to be unharmed. Right, And that is why it
is not okay to use the I mess with everybody
like approach. There are still people learning that lesson or
(03:36):
not learning it as ps maybe, but that's yeah, Artemis.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Ward, Yeah yuck.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Now there's also the part of me, right that is like,
is this like a reverse uno that I'm just not
fully grasping. Was he doing some of these things as
this character who was obviously kind of a train wreck
to point out that they were gross?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, it's a little bit weird because everyone who knew
him writes about how kind and gentle he was with
everyone he encountered. But those are also people who also
say gross racist things and may not recognize that he
wasn't being kind and gentle, right, So it's a little
bit tricky.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I don't really ever post on any social media anymore
except for very occasionally Instagram. But one of the things
that I got really tired of was the people who
would say the thing quote ironically but like, really, you're
just saying the same thing. Yeah, And so I kind
(04:49):
of wonder if some of his humor fell into that.
Yeah I'm being ironic, but really you're still just you're
saying the same thing, right. That is that is the
trick of ironic humor. You cannot you can't always count
on your audience to get the joke.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, it's not amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, he's an interesting one. I like this
idea that you can pinpoint a moment where kind of
stand up comedy happened for the first time. I find
it hilarious that there's an elementary school named after him.
I'm like, but that's a weird. Yeah, it's a weird
(05:32):
a weird name choice in my opinion at this time.
I so, uh, there was an era. I mean, I'm
sure this still happens at some points, but like, there
there was kind of an era in writing when it
was way more common to render thickly all the way
through the writing someone's accent and dialect. Yeah, like Bram
(05:57):
Stoker did this also in a lot of his work.
I find it so exhausting to read works that are
written like that, And somehow, by coincidence, I wound up
with the two longest passages.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Of his writing. I did not do that on purpose. Yeah,
I find it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
As someone who loves to read and has always been
a really good reader, I find it tiring to try
to get through it. It's tricky differently than when I
am reading you know, historical documents that have non standard
today spellings, or things that were printed at a time
(06:41):
when they the long s's that looks like f's were
in use. Like, that's a little bit different way of
brain power needing to be put toward it than the
invented spellings and phonetic renderings of things that are part
of this.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, anyway, Charles Brown yep, which makes me go, are
you the it's Charlie Brown named for you? I don't
look it up.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
It is funny. The one thing that I find kind
of hilarious is how he was kind of like the
predecessor by minutes to Mark Twain. They definitely had similar style,
So I don't know if that's just because they were
dressing in the manner of the day, or if it's
because Twain kind of modeled himself on Artemis Ward Charles Brown.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I don't know, yeah, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. One of our episodes this week was about Franksgiving. O. Yes,
it was Thanksgiving a week earlier. I have so many
(08:00):
on this one. I have a lot of thoughts too.
As I was doing research on this, I had a
bunch of things bookmarked, and I I think I've said before,
like I'll just I'll bookmark broadly and then.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I will go back to go through stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And one of the things I had bookmarked as like
a local news article that was kind of generally about this.
But this article stated with lots of authority that Thanksgiving
is always the last Thursday in November, and I was like, nah,
that is not correct. Something I wanted to put in
(08:39):
the episode and I just didn't feel like had a
good place in the rhythm of how things were going
is that in Oklahoma, there was some debate about which
day the banks would be closed. The state was observing
Thanksgiving on the thirtieth, but the bank holiday had already
(09:03):
been established as a twenty third and Attorney General mac
Williamson issued a legal opinion in this matter that had
a little poem in it, And the poem went thirty
dates half September, April, June, and November. All the rest
have thirty one until we hear from Washington. What are
(09:27):
some of your thoughts, Holly? While we were recording, I
just scribbled on my notepad that I keep by my computer,
sweet baby, Gredo Thanksgiving, get your act together. Here's my thing.
Two things. One, how much like legislative time was wasted
(09:50):
on like making the president proclaim it every time? Just
a lot right, like well just said it and forget it.
But I think But two, what it really really reminded
me of as like it was getting into the nitty
gritty of we're gonna change it to give more space.
(10:13):
Everybody's freaking out, But we already printed the things, and
we're already and we already had the thing, and we're
doing it this way. We've always done it this way.
Why do we want to change it? Reminded me of
anybody that's worked in like a corporate setting or even
a not corporate setting has had this moment where like
there's some process or even lack of process that has
(10:35):
been the standard mode of doing things that has problems.
But even when somebody presents a solution that will require
a little transition awkwardness, people are so mad about that
part that they can't get past it and they fight fight.
I mean, I've been on both sides of that equation
where I'm like whoa, and also, come on, you guys,
(10:58):
this is never going to get better if we don't
have this two.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Weeks that stink.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, And that's what it made me think of, Like
just if everybody could just chill out for like a minute, Yeah,
we can make this decision. We know it's going to
be awkward. I'm a big fan of the let's just
celebrate it twice if you love the other one so
much while we figure this out. But I did it
made me think about that a lot. I was not
(11:22):
really as focused on, like the time spent doing the proclamations,
because presidents and governors issue a lot of proclamations about
a lot of stuff, and so like that did not
I didn't even really think about that as a factor
in all of it. The amount of debating that could
go into the passage of laws and like whether to
(11:45):
ask the president to issue a proclamation that did crack
me up a little bit. Also just I mean I
said it in the episode, it was really not necessary
to manufacture a connection to the like the the you know,
sort of mythical first Thanksgiving, right, because the Thanksgiving holiday
(12:08):
has always been about, uh, like the identity of the
United States as a nation, you know, since there started
to be national proclamations about it. Uh, and very very
often connections uh to.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
To wars, wars that.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The you know, the nation and the you know, the
legislative branch and the executive branch believed were being undertaken
for just reasons, right, And the idea that like Providence
was smiling on our war effort because our war effort
(12:46):
is good, like that underpinned so much of it, uh,
Which that's a whole other can of worms. But like
we uh, it's probably a little harder for a kindergartener
to rap their head around then a feel good story
about sitting down to a big dinner. But like those connections,
(13:08):
there was plenty of other fuel for elementary school classes
and whatever that did not involved having children make paper
headdresses and wear them, for example. I know there are
still schools that are doing that. Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
(13:33):
I forgot. What is the thing that somebody coined that
was about things will inevitably be compared to Hitler. There's
some term that somebody coined on the internet, some law, somebody.
I'm just gonna google it. This is Godwin's law, which
is as online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
(13:54):
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. One, of course, was
not coined until apparently nineteen ninety according to this Google
search that I've just done, so many decades after franksgiving discussion.
(14:15):
But yeah, not a new phenomenon, No, not in the least.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I also marveled throughout, even though I have read some
of these documents we referenced at, just how much the
idea of a separation of church and state was such
a fib.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, it is such a fib Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
One of the things that I read about Washington's proclamations
specifically was that like Washington's proclamations definitely draw on the
idea of God and prayer, but without specifying any particular
(15:01):
religion or denomination or sect within a religion, but still
with the presumption that everyone has like a commonality to
their religious belief that involves.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
God in prayer. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But yeah, the idea that the like that the first
presidents or the so called founders were not really focused
on God does not hold up in this episode.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Anyway, I hope if folks are preparing for their own
Thanksgiving meal, I hope those preparations are going well, I know,
and stuff can start really early with making sure you
can find the right potatoes for your potato casserole.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Or whether they're going to be sold out.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Of Cranberry's at the grocery store, so you know, whatever
you're working on with that in my and I hope
it's all going really well. And if you are having
a Thanksgiving holiday in a couple weeks or a week,
I guess, you know, I hope that's going to be
great as great as possible. If you want to send
us a notes about this or any other podcast or
(16:15):
history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else
you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(16:38):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.