Frank Beacham's Journal

On this day in 1957 — 65 years ago — the Soviet Union inaugurated the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite

On this day in 1957 — 65 years ago — the Soviet Union inaugurated the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite.

The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for "satellite," was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time on Oct. 4, 1957 from the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic.

Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds. It circled the Earth once every hour and 36 minutes. Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point) of 143 miles.

Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access to such equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft passed over America several times a day.

In January, 1958, Sputnik's orbit deteriorated, as expected, and the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.

Officially, Sputnik was launched to correspond with the International Geophysical Year, a solar period that the International Council of Scientific Unions declared would be ideal for the launching of artificial satellites to study Earth and the solar system. However, many Americans feared more sinister uses of the Soviets' new rocket and satellite technology, which was apparently strides ahead of the U.S. space effort.

Sputnik was some 10 times the size of the first planned U.S. satellite, which was not scheduled to be launched until the next year. The U.S. government, military and scientific community were caught off guard by the Soviet technological achievement, and their united efforts to catch up with the Soviets heralded the beginning of the "space race."

The first U.S. satellite, Explorer, was launched on January 31, 1958. By then, the Soviets had already achieved another ideological victory when they launched a dog into orbit aboard Sputnik 2.

The Soviet space program went on to achieve a series of other space firsts in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They included the first man in space, first woman, first three men, first space walk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact Venus and the first craft to soft-land on the moon.

However, the United States took a giant leap ahead in the space race in the late '60s with the Apollo lunar-landing program, which successfully landed two Apollo 11 astronauts on the surface of the moon in July, 1969.

Thanks History.com

On this day in 1944 — 78 years ago — President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to answer critics who made his Scottish terrier, Fala, a campaign issue in the heat of his re-election race

On this day in 1944 — 78 years ago — President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to answer critics who made his Scottish terrier, Fala, a campaign issue in the heat of his re-election race.

They claimed that Roosevelt had left Fala behind after a visit to the Aleutian Islands, and then sent a military ship to rescue the dog. The accusation was never proved.

“I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them,” Roosevelt said, in a rebuttal inspired by his friend, Orson Welles.

“You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog,” the president said.

Roosevelt’s words delighted the public and the controversy was dropped.

Fala often slept at the foot of F.D.R.’s bed and was close to him until the end of the president’s life. The dog attended the Roosevelt funeral.

After the president’s death, Fala went to live with Mrs. Roosevelt in Val-Kill. The dog survived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried beside him. The relationship of Roosevelt and Fala is immortalized by a statue at Roosevelt’s memorial in Washington, D.C.

Thanks New York Times!

On this day in 1940 — 82 years ago — the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States was imposed

Vietnam Veterans Against the War, 1972

Photo by Frank Beacham

On this day in 1940 — 82 years ago — the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States was imposed.

It came in the form of the Burke-Wadsworth Act, passed by Congress by wide margins in both houses. The measure gave birth to the Selective Service.

The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later, as Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had been a key player in moving the Roosevelt administration away from a foreign policy of strict neutrality, began drawing draft numbers out of a glass bowl.

The numbers were handed to the president, who read them aloud for public announcement. There were some 20 million eligible young men — 50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or illiteracy (20 percent of those who registered were illiterate).

In November, 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, and not merely a neutral bystander, the draft ages expanded. Men 18 to 37 were made eligible.

Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. But this changed in 1943, when a "quota" was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole.

Initially, blacks were restricted to "labor units," but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat.

"Conscientious objector" (CO) status was granted to those who could demonstrate "sincerity of belief in religious teachings combined with a profound moral aversion to war."

Quakers made up most of the COs, but 75 percent of those Quakers who were drafted fought. COs had to perform alternate service in Civilian Public Service Camps, which entailed long hours of hazardous work for no compensation.

About 5,000 to 6,000 men were imprisoned for failing to register or serve the nation in any form. These numbers were comprised mostly of Jehovah's Witnesses.

By war's end, approximately 34 million men had registered and 10 million served with the military. However, the draft laws remained intact.

Of the more than 72,000 men registering as conscientious objectors (CO), nearly 52,000 received CO status. Of these, over 25,000 entered the military in noncombatant roles, another 12,000 went to civilian work camps and nearly 6,000 went to prison.

Draft evasion only accounted for about four percent of the total inducted. About 373,000 alleged evaders were investigated with just over 16,000 being imprisoned.

The large cohort of Baby Boomers who became eligible for military service during the Vietnam War was responsible for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college students.

Besides being able to avoid the draft, college graduates who volunteered for military service (primarily as commissioned officers) had a much better chance of securing a preferential posting compared to less-educated inductees.

As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more young men were drafted for service there, and many of those still at home sought means of avoiding the draft.

Since only 15,000 National Guard and Reserve soldiers were sent to Vietnam, enlistment in the Guard or the Reserves became a popular means of avoiding serving in a war zone.

For those who could meet the more stringent enlistment standards, service in the Air Force, Navy or Coast Guard was a means of reducing the chances of being killed. Vocations to the ministry and the rabbinate soared, because divinity students were exempt from the draft.

Doctors and draft board members found themselves being pressured by relatives or family friends to exempt potential draftees.

Some conscientious objectors objected to the war based on the theory of Just War. One of these, Stephen Spiro, was convicted of avoiding the draft, but given a suspended sentence of five years. He was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford.

There were 8,744,000 service members between 1964 and 1975, of whom 3,403,000 were deployed to Southeast Asia.

From a pool of approximately 27 million, the draft raised 2,215,000 men for military service (in the United States, Vietnam, West Germany and elsewhere) during the Vietnam era.

The draft has also been credited with "encouraging" many of the 8.7 million "volunteers" to join rather than risk being drafted. The majority of servicemen deployed to Vietnam were volunteers.

Of the nearly 16 million men not engaged in active military service, 57 percent were exempted (typically because of jobs including other military service), deferred (usually for educational reasons), or disqualified (usually for physical and mental deficiencies but also for criminal records including draft violations).

During the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon campaigned on a promise to end the draft. He had first become interested in the idea of an all-volunteer army during his time out of office, based upon a paper by Martin Anderson of Columbia University.

Nixon also saw ending the draft as an effective way to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement, since he believed affluent youths would stop protesting the war once their own probability of having to fight in it was gone.

There was opposition to the all-volunteer notion from both the Department of Defense and Congress, so Nixon took no immediate action towards ending the draft early in his presidency.

Instead, the Gates Commission was formed, headed by Thomas S. Gates, Jr., a former Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower administration. Gates initially opposed the all-volunteer army idea, but changed his mind during the course of the 15-member commission's work.

The Gates Commission issued its report in February, 1970, describing how adequate military strength could be maintained without having conscription. The existing draft law was expiring at the end of June, 1971, but the Department of Defense and Nixon administration decided the draft needed to continue for at least some time.

In February, 1971, the administration requested of Congress a two-year extension of the draft, to June 1973. It was approved.

Meanwhile, military pay was increased as an incentive to attract volunteers, and television advertising for the U.S. Army began. With the end of active U.S. ground participation in Vietnam, December, 1972 saw the last men conscripted, who were born in 1952 and who reported for duty in June, 1973.

On February 2, 1972, a drawing was held to determine draft priority numbers for men born in 1953, but in early 1973 it was announced that no further draft orders would be issued.

In March, 1973, 1974 and 1975, the Selective Service assigned draft priority numbers for all men born in 1954, 1955 and 1956, in case the draft was extended, but it never was. Jeff Mellinger, the last drafted enlisted ranked soldier still on active duty, retired in 2011.

The pressures of the draft during the Vietnam war had a great effect on the music produced in the period and shaped the classic rock and roll that is still played today.

Today is Uncle Sam’s birthday

Today is Uncle Sam’s birthday.

Legend has it that the man who gave rise to the iconic symbol of the United States was born on Sept. 13, 1766 — 256 years ago — in Arlington, Massachusetts. His name was Samuel Wilson, a meatpacker in upstate New York.

Wilson helped feed American soldiers in the War of 1812, the fight between the United States and Britain that also inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

According to the legend, a worker wisecracked that the letters “U.S.” on Mr. Wilson’s shipping crates stood for “Uncle Sam” Wilson. The joke that the shipments came from Uncle Sam turned him into a stand-in for the federal government.

The somewhat random comment was picked up by others, and he started to appear in drawings in newspapers in the 1830s.

Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who gave us the donkey as a symbol for Democrats and the elephant for Republicans, made Uncle Sam’s goatee famous.

No matter that Mr. Wilson, who died in 1854, was clean-shaven. His name, but not his likeness, was turned into a patriotic symbol replicated forevermore in political cartoons, ads, posters and fine art.

Thanks New York Times!

On this day in 1953 — 69 years ago today — Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, the future 35th president of the United States, married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island

On this day in 1953 — 69 years ago today — Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, the future 35th president of the United States, married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.

Seven years later, the couple would become the youngest president and first lady in American history.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was born into a prominent New York family in 1929 and grew into an avid horsewoman and reader. In 1951, after graduating from George Washington University, Jackie, as she was called, took a tour of Europe.

That fall, she returned to the U.S. to begin her first job as the Washington Times-Herald's "Inquiring Camera Girl." Shortly afterward, she met a young, handsome senator from Massachusetts named John Kennedy at a dinner party in Georgetown.

They dated over the next two years, during which time Jackie mused at the idea that she might actually marry a man who was allergic to horses, something she never thought she would have considered. In 1953, the two were engaged, when Kennedy gave Jackie a 2.88-carat diamond-and-emerald ring from Van Cleef and Arpels.

"Jack," as Kennedy was called, and Jackie married on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island. Jackie wore an ivory silk gown made by Ann Lowe, an African-American designer.

The Catholic mass was attended by 750 guests and an additional 450 people joined the wedding reception at Hammersmith Farm. The couple danced to the Meyer Davis Orchestra's version of "I Married an Angel." Davis had also performed at Jackie's parents' wedding and at Kennedy's inaugural ball.

Thanks History.com

On this day — 88 years ago — the Textile Strike of 1934 began

On this day — 88 years ago — the Textile Strike of 1934 began.

It would be the largest strike in the labor history of the United States, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states.

The strike swept through Southern cotton mills, outpacing the union organizers and employing "flying squadrons" which traveled by truck and on foot from mill to mill, calling the workers out.

Textile workers in the North went out on strike in great numbers as well, although they were spread more evenly across different industries and had more diverse grievances than the Southern cotton mill workers. Within a week, hundreds of thousands of textile workers nationwide had left their jobs and the industry was shut down.

The mill owners were initially taken by surprise by the scope of the strike. They immediately took the position that these flying squadrons were, in fact, coercing their employees to go out on strike.

Gov. Ira Blackwood of South Carolina took up this theme, announcing that he would deputize the state's "mayors, sheriffs, peace officers and every good citizen" to maintain order, then called out the National Guard with orders to shoot to kill any picketers who tried to enter the mills.

Mill owners persuaded local authorities throughout the Piedmont region to augment their forces by swearing in special deputies, often their own employees or local residents opposed to the strike. In other cases, they simply hired private guards to police the areas around the plant. Violence between guards and picketers broke out almost immediately.

In Honea Path, South Carolina, my hometown, seven picketers were shot to death and more than twenty-seven others were wounded on September 6th. Most were shot in the back as they were fleeing the picket line.

There was no National Guard on duty — only anti-union workers deputized by my grandfather, Dan Beacham, who ran Chiquola Mill. The bloody riot at the town's cotton mill on that warm Thursday morning shaped the lives of two generations to follow — not because of the shock of what was known, but by what was unknown.

Fear, threats and intimidation were used to silence the story of the greatest tragedy in the town's history. My grandfather, who was also the mayor and town judge, organized the posse of gunmen who fired on their fellow workers in 1934. It was a communal town secret for more than 60 years.

Today is the 87th anniversary of the murders in Honea Path. Over time, I have learned more about the story and I found the answer to a burning question: How did friends and neighbors in my small hometown reach the point of killing each other over a labor dispute? It never made sense to me.

Essentially, from my research, the “why” was reduced to a simple formula: Religious Fundamentalism + Corporate Greed = Mass Murder. As modern industrial philosophy was being formed in the 1930s, fundamentalist preachers sided with the mill owners over their workers. An explosion was triggered.

I have written the full, updated story of the Chiquola Mill killings in the new fourth edition of Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder. It is a compelling story and the first real history of Honea Path. It’s available at: http://tangiblepress.net/Whitewash.html

In order that the murders in Honea Path not be forgotten —on the 80th anniversary — I produced a 48-minute audio documentary. You can listen or download it for free at the link below.

Window from the abandoned mill is where gunmen fired at the workers. It has since been destroyed.

Photo by Frank Beacham

Why Does Honea Path, South Carolina Not Acknowledge Its Own History?

If you visited my hometown of Honea Path, S.C. on this 88th anniversary of the most important event in its history, you will witness something very odd. There will be no acknowledgement by the town of the 1934 killings at Chiquola Mill. Total silence!

This tiny town never acknowledges the anniversary of the outright murder of seven mill workers or twenty-seven others, most shot in the back after demonstrating to establish a labor union at the mill. All were heroes who changed this country for the better, but it appears that Honea Path would rather forget the tragedy.

The story has been erased, not only from the history books, but from the public consciousness of those people most affected by it. An instrument of fear was so powerful that parents were afraid to tell the story to their own children. It formed a lifelong social contract for the entire community's survival.

Remnants of the old textile mill still stand, though years ago there was funding to tear it down. The town government was so incompetent, the money was wasted. A demolition company took what was valuable and then sold bricks from the mill on eBay as souvenirs of the “historic” mill. The town even turned down grants to turn the abandoned mill into a textile museum that could have brought tourists to the sleepy town.

So why does Honea Path refuse to remember its past? I’ve thought a lot about that question. I think it’s a combination of old time stubborn Southern pride, belief in corporate-generated myth and collective mendacity — the fog of lies created to hide the truth about the past. This silence comes down to the very essence of what history is about. It's the story of our lives. To hide it is to deny the forces that shaped our very being.

If you think all this is very passive, think again. During a visit to Honea Path over the Christmas holiday in 1996, my family’s long-time physician confronted me in a very public way at lunch hour in a local restaurant and proclaimed loudly that I should be shot for writing about the story. No jury, he shouted to the gathered diners, would convict the shooter. He wasn't kidding.

Due to the residual propaganda put out by the old mill owners — including my grandfather, who ran the mill — many in the town somehow feel ashamed about what happened in 1934. They shouldn't feel fear or shame at all. Though the workers efforts ended in defeat and much suffering to follow, the deaths of the Honea Path Seven were certainly not in vain. The disillusionment of the workers and the outrageous conduct by the mill owners made a strong impression on the Roosevelt Administration.

This helped spur passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Out of these laws came reforms that vastly improved the lives of all workers in the United States. These laws abolished employment of children under sixteen in the mill, helping young people stay in school to get an education. The establishment of the minimum wage and the 40-hour work week came directly out of the Honea Path tragedy.

Though Honea Path has a rich history, the town has tried hard to forget. It’s a sad story. However, the good news is intelligent young students often call me, asking about the event they find so hard to understand. I try to help them learn the truth — one person at a time. In this environment, it is the only way to keep the story alive.

—

A few years back, I published a multimedia e-book of Mill Town Murder for e-book reading devices and computers. The format didn’t take off and publishers quit carrying the titles.

So, on this 88th anniversary of the Honea Path shootings, I am giving them away. Go here for the download for the computer of your choice. They still work on most computing devices.

Mill Town Murder-.ePub; Mill Town Murder-.Mobi

Funeral of textile workers killed in Honea Path, South Carolina during the Textile Strike of 1934. It was the largest funeral in the town’s history.

The mill management would not allow the funerals to be held in mill-owned churches.

“Honea Path,” a song written and performed by Matthew Grimm and Red Smear

Howard Zinn was born 100 years ago today

Howard Zinn, May 2009

Photo by Frank Beacham

Howard Zinn was born 100 years ago today.

Zinn was an academic historian, author, playwright and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88, he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential, A People's History of the United States.

Zinn wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, as well as of the labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work.

Born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, Zinn’s father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary, emigrated to the U.S. with his brother Samuel before the outbreak of World War I. Howard's mother, Jenny, emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk.

Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children.

Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending 10 cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens' collected works. He also studied creative writing at Thomas Jefferson High School in a special program established by poet Elias Lieberman.

Eager to fight fascism, Zinn joined the Army Air Force during World War II and was assigned as a bombardier in the 490th Bombardment Group, bombing targets in Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

A U.S. bombardier in April, 1945, Zinn dropped napalm bombs on Royan, a seaside resort in southwestern France. The anti-war stance Zinn developed later was informed, in part, by his experiences.

On a post-doctoral research mission nine years later, Zinn visited the resort near Bordeaux where he interviewed residents, reviewed municipal documents and read wartime newspaper clippings at the local library. In 1966, Zinn returned to Royan after which he gave his fullest account of that research in his book, The Politics of History.

On the ground, Zinn learned that the aerial bombing attacks in which he participated had killed more than 1,000 French civilians as well as some German soldiers hiding near Royan to await the war's end. The events that are described "in all accounts," he found, as "une tragique erreur" that leveled a small but ancient city and "its population that was, at least officially, friend, not foe."

In The Politics of History, Zinn described how the bombing was ordered — three weeks before the war in Europe ended — by military officials who were, in part, motivated more by the desire for their own career advancement than in legitimate military objectives.

He quotes the official history of the U.S. Army Air Forces' brief reference to the Eighth Air Force attack on Royan and also, in the same chapter, to the bombing of Pilsen in what was then Czechoslovakia. The official history stated that the famous Skoda works in Pilsen "received 500 well-placed tons," and that "because of a warning sent out ahead of time the workers were able to escape, except for five persons."

Zinn questioned the justifications for military operations that inflicted massive civilian casualties during the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II; Hanoi during the War in Vietnam; and Baghdad during the war in Iraq and the civilian casualties during bombings in Afghanistan during the current and nearly decade-old war there.

In his pamphlet, “Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence,” written in 1995, he laid out the case against targeting civilians with aerial bombing.

After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill, graduating with a B.A. in 1951.

At Columbia University, he later earned an M.A. (1952) and a Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science (1958). His masters' thesis examined the Colorado coal strikes of 1914.

In 1964, Zinn accepted a position at Boston University, after writing two books and participating in the Civil Rights movement in the South. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular at the university with as many as 400 students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. A professor of political science, he taught at Boston University for 24 years and retired in 1988 at age 64.

"He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior," said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at Boston University. Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in 1979 defended the right of the school's clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line.

Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. He wrote a history textbook, A People's History of the United States, to provide other perspectives on American history. The textbook depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans for civil rights.

The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1981. In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many high school and college history courses, and it is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy.

The New York Times Book Review stated in 2006 that the book "routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year.” Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist.” He suggested looking at socialism in its full historical context as a popular, positive idea that got a bad name from its association with Soviet Communism.

Zinn was swimming in a hotel pool when he died of an apparent heart attack in Santa Monica, California, on January 27, 2010. He was 87.

Here, Zinn appears for an interview with Bill Moyers

Hipsters: Real vs. Fake

Harry “the Hipster” Gibson

Photo by William P. Gottlieb

Hipsters: Real vs. Fake

It makes my skin crawl whenever I hear a young person refer to his or herself as a “hipster.”

Not only do most people today not even understand what the term means, but they live in a corporate-infused world where it is now almost impossible to be truly hip.

The New York Times recently wrote about the origins of the word hipster, which might help to explain to those who don’t understand the history of the word and how it has changed over time.

Though the word has been in use for a long time, the Times credits the jazz clubs of 1940s Harlem for making the term popular. In the 40s, a Bronx-born, Juilliard-trained musician, Harry Raab, helped popularize the word with his stage name: Harry “the Hipster” Gibson. His big hit was “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine.”

At the time, “hipster” was used to describe someone who saw him or herself as hip and ahead of the curve, Lewis Porter, a jazz historian at Rutgers University, told the Times.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word is also thought to be a modernized version of “hepcat,” which had the same meaning in jazz circles.

Porter added that the word might also have been used to describe white jazz musicians like Gibson, who played in traditionally black clubs. “That certainly was not its original meaning, but that could have become attached to it later on,” he said.

In his 1957 essay, “The White Negro,” Norman Mailer examined beatnik culture, posing the theory that to be a hipster was to be a white American who adopted black culture, world views and music as an act of rebellion against capitalist greed, wartime violence and the ever-present specter of nuclear war.

Hipster was used to refer to members of the Beat Generation, who virtually all defied and criticized the white, capitalist establishment culture of the 1950s. All lived cheaply and outside the scope of mainstream consumerism. Virtually all true hipsters observed the counter culture ethics of the 1960s.

Jack Kerouac described 1940s hipsters as "rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere [as] characters of a special spirituality.” Near the beginning of his poem, Howl, Allen Ginsberg mentioned "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

The New York Times said it has used the word “hipster” more than 3,000 times since 1851. Yet, the newspaper said, the bulk of those references came after the year 2000, when most of the people who used the term were only wannabes.

The Times said it typically used the word to describe a class of people who moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The problem with that, of course, is that if one could afford to live in Brooklyn after the boom, they were not genuine hipsters.

Today, the hipster subculture is composed of affluent or middle class youth who reside primarily in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is broadly associated with indie and alternative music, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, vintage and thrift store-bought clothing, generally progressive political views, organic and artisanal foods and alternative lifestyles.

The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas. Often the world hipster is now used as a pejorative term to describe someone who is pretentious, overly trendy or effete.

In Rob Horning's April, 2009 article, The Death of the Hipster, he wrote that the hipster might be the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics."

Of all places, Time magazine, described the modern hipster phenomenon in a July, 2009 article:

“Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care.”

One of the benefits of getting older is being able to easily see through the pretensions of youth. Whenever someone living in a major city like New York tells you today he or she is a “hipster,” run for the hills. Fraud is written all over them.

Thanks New York Times!

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was born 93 years ago today

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was born 93 years ago today.

She was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis. They remained married until his death in 1975.

For the final two decades of her life, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had a career as a book editor. She is remembered for her contributions to the arts and preservation of historic architecture, her style, elegance and grace.

She was the oldest daughter of Wall Street stockbroker, John Vernou Bouvier III, and socialite, Janet Norton Lee, who divorced in 1940. In 1951, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature at George Washington University and went on to work for the Washington Times-Herald as a photographer.

In 1952, Jacqueline met Congressman John F. Kennedy. Shortly after, he was elected to the United States Senate and the couple married the following year. They had four children, two of whom died in infancy.

In the White House, she aided her husband's administration with her presence in social events and her highly publicized restoration of the White House.

On November 22, 1963, she was riding with her husband in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, when he was assassinated. Kennedy and her children withdrew from public view after his funeral.

She died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer, at age 64 on May 19, 1994.

Jacqueline Bouvier at age 16

Come to the Edge, a book by Christina Haag, is an exquisite love story about the author’s relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr.

Beyond that main story, the book has some revealing sketches about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, John’s mother.

On Mrs. Kennedy 92nd birthday, I highly recommend reading Come to the Edge to glean Haag’s astute perceptions about Mrs. Kennedy’s “unerring artist’s eye.”

After visiting Red Gate Farm, Mrs. Kennedy’s 464-acre retreat on the southwestern end of Martha’s Vineyard, Haag wrote a memorable passage:

“I remember looking in the kitchen for a glass one morning. Instead, I found vases and, attached to the inside of the white cabinet door, an unlined index card in her hand — which flowers in which vase in which room. It surprised me,” Haag wrote.

“When I saw a small carafe of sweet peas or a clutch of dahlias in a room, it seemed unplanned — as though they had just happened there, as though they belonged. Or there’d be a path that appeared to go nowhere, but when you reached a meandering end, you felt its purpose. What seemed happenstance was crafted, chosen by her unerring artist’s eye.”

It was a favorite part of the book for me, and an “ah-hah” moment in understanding the unique artistic talents of the former first lady.

That was the genius of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Emmett Till was born 81 years ago today

Emmett Till was born 81 years ago today.

Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.

Visiting relatives from Chicago in Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region, the trouble started when Till spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there.

Several nights later, Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes.

Then they shot Till through the head and disposed of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Till’s body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later.

Till was returned to Chicago and his mother, who had raised him mostly by herself, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing.

Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body were published in black magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the condition of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the country critical of the state.

Although initially local newspapers and law enforcement officials decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they soon began responding to national criticism by defending Mississippians, which eventually transformed into support for the killers.

The trial attracted a vast amount of press attention. Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder, but only months later, in a magazine interview, protected against double jeopardy, they admitted to killing him.

Till's murder is noted as a pivotal event motivating the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Problems identifying Till affected the trial, partially leading to Bryant's and Milam's acquittals, and the case was officially reopened by the United States Department of Justice in 2004.

As part of the investigation, the body was exhumed and autopsied resulting in a positive identification. He was reburied in a new casket, which is the standard practice in cases of body exhumation.

His original casket was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Events surrounding Emmett Till's life and death, according to historians, continue to resonate, and almost every story about Mississippi returns to Till, or the region in which he died, in "some spiritual, homing way."

Till continues to be the focus of literature and memorials. A statue was unveiled in Denver in 1976 (and has since been moved to Pueblo, Colorado) featuring Till with Martin Luther King, Jr. Till was included among the forty names of people who had died in the Civil Rights Movement (listed as martyrs) on the granite sculpture of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated in 1989.

In 1991, a seven-mile stretch of 71st Street in Chicago, was renamed "Emmett Till Road." Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, attended many of the dedications for the memorials, including a demonstration in Selma, Alabama on the 35th anniversary of the march over the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

She later wrote in her memoirs” "I realized that Emmett had achieved the significant impact in death that he had been denied in life. Even so, I had never wanted Emmett to be a martyr. I only wanted him to be a good son. Although I realized all the great things that had been accomplished largely because of the sacrifices made by so many people, I found myself wishing that somehow we could have done it another way."

Till-Mobley died in 2003, the same year her memoirs were published.

James McCosh Elementary School in Chicago, where Till had been a student, was renamed the "Emmett Louis Till Math And Science Academy" in 2005.

The "Emmett Till Memorial Highway" was dedicated between Greenwood and Tutwiler, Mississippi, the same route his body took to the train station on its way to Chicago.

In 2007, Tallahatchie County issued a formal apology to Till's family, reading "We the citizens of Tallahatchie County recognize that the Emmett Till case was a terrible miscarriage of justice. We state candidly and with deep regret the failure to effectively pursue justice. We wish to say to the family of Emmett Till that we are profoundly sorry for what was done in this community to your loved one.”

The same year, Georgia congressman John Lewis, whose skull was fractured while being beaten during the 1965 Selma march, sponsored a bill that provides a plan for investigating and prosecuting unsolved Civil Rights era murders. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was signed into law in 2008.

Till's mother over his casket

Roy Bryan, left, and J.W. Milam on trial in Sumner, Mississippi, September, 1955 for the killing of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago.

Photo by Ed Clark

Bob Dylan performs “The Death of Emmett Till”