Who were the Broadcast 41?

Why did images of white, nuclear families dominate television in the 1950s? Why has it taken nearly 70 years for images of a diverse America—featuring people of color, immigrants, women as independent social beings—to appear on prime time television?  Challenging the longstanding belief that what appeared on television screens in the 1950s and after resulted from some social consensus, The Broadcast 41 addresses these and other questions by telling two intersecting stories.

Shirley Graham Du Bois and Black Women in Classical Music

Just sharing a great article for Women's HIstory Month about the invisible history of Black women's contributions to classical music, including Shirley Graham Du Bois, whose Tom Tom was the first opera produced by a Black woman when it premiered in 1932.

Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, and Ghosts

I just stumbled across this article, which combines three wonderful items: Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, and ghosts. Hughes was a poet and writer who was blacklisted in the 1950s and the subject of much government and anti-communist organization concern because of his powerful voice and the respect he commanded. The Chicago Defender was one of the most important African American newspapers.

Wartime Propaganda

In a recent essay, John Pilger recalls the inspiring opposition of journalists, intellectuals and writers to rising waves of fascism, authoritarianism, repression, and censorship in the US and internationally during the 1930s. Today, in contrast, he writes, what we have are "silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear." 

Lillian Hellman, censored in Florida, knew a thing or two about blacklists

Author Lillian Hellman's plays have been pulled from the shelves of Orange County Public School libraries in Orlando, Florida, victims of House Bill 1069--a bill restricting everything from pronoun use to sex education and other issues deemed offensive by Florida conservatives.

Vera Caspary on Otto Preminger

Reading a new Wiki entry on Otto Preminger, described as "the classic author and director par excellence, master of precision and finesse, sometimes tyrannical sometimes engaging on his sets, fervent defender of democracy and always in conflict with established conventions," I couldn't help think about Vera Caspary's experiences with him.

Why is queer media history always about men?

The New Yorker just reviewed Paramount+'s new streaming series, Fellow Travelers. I'm so glad to see more media about the blacklist era, especially stories that explore the sordidness of anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn (who were front men for a dense network of gossips and homophobes).