Historians of the Gilded Age are certainly familiar with the nefarious deeds of the evangelical “vice-hunter,” Anthony Comstock, but they may not know the story of Ida Craddock, a sex educator, scholar, and sexual mystic who challenged Comstock face-to-face, and who inspired her contemporaries by her courage. SEX RADICAL, the latest film from award-winning writer/director Andy Kirshner tells Craddock’s remarkable story. It will premiere at the end of this month, both theatrically and online.
“Faces of the First Red Scare”: Documenting Red Scare Deportees
Below is an interview with Dr. Kenyon Zimmer, a historian of transnational radicalism. Recently, as I was editing a piece for our blog, I stumbled across his personal website where he has published a comprehensive digital archive of Red Scare deportees. I thought our readers could benefit from this resource, both for their own research and for the classroom. It is also a wonderful example of a digital history project, and Zimmer gives us insight into the surprising responses he’s had to it.
Interview with SHGAPE President Al Broussard
My recent scholarship explores civil rights, African American activism and racial justice in the western states and territories. My first book, Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the West, 1900-54, based largely on my doctoral dissertation, explored many of these questions in a far western city with a global reputation for tolerance and civility toward racial minorities. I argued, among other things, that while western cities like San Francisco, and you could include Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, were clearly more progressive than cities in the South, the progressive mystique that they portrayed was largely a facade.