By Joseph Patrick Kelly, College of Charleston 
and David Cason, University of North Dakota 

Donald Trump is the third U.S. president to pardon a large group of insurrectionists. His clemency toward those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection – including seditious conspiracy and assaults on police officers – was different in key ways from the two previous efforts, by Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1873.

But they share the apparent hope that their pardons would herald periods of national harmony. As historians of the period after the Civil War, we know that for Johnson and Grant, that’s not what happened.

When Johnson became president in 1865 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he faced a combative Congress. Though Johnson had opposed the secession of the Southern states before the Civil War began, he agreed with former Confederate leaders that formerly enslaved people did not deserve equality with White people.

Further, as a Southerner, he wanted to maintain the social conventions and economic structure of the South by replacing enslavement with economic bondage. This economic bondage, called sharecropping, was a system by which tenant farmers rented land from large landowners.

Tenants rarely cleared enough to pay their costs and fell into debt. In effect, Johnson sought to restore the nation to how it was before the Civil War, though without legalized slavery – and sought every avenue available to thwart the plans of the Radical Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress to create full racial equality.

Johnson signed an amnesty that gave a blanket pardon to all former Confederate soldiers. However, he required formerly high-ranking Confederate officials to individually seek pardons for their involvement in the rebellion. These officials faced permanent disfranchisement and could not hold federal office if they did not seek a pardon.

When Congress was in recess, Johnson vetoed two bills that had been passed: one to help find homes for formerly enslaved people who could no longer live on the property of their enslavers, and the other to define U.S. citizenship and ensure equal protection of the laws for Black people as well as White people.

Johnson also told Southern states not to ratify the 14th Amendment, whose purpose was to enshrine both citizenship and equal protection in the Constitution.

When Congress came back in session, it continued its effort of Reconstruction of the former Confederate states – reforming their racist laws and policies to comport with the liberty and equality the Union was committed to – by overriding Johnson’s vetoes and requiring former Confederate states to ratify the 14th Amendment as a condition of readmission to the Union, but Congress could not override the pardons the president had granted.

This continued political warfare resulted in Johnson being impeached – but not convicted or removed from office. But the back-and-forth also stalled Reconstruction and efforts toward racial equality, ultimately dooming the effort.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was not covered by Johnson’s general amnesty. As a former Confederate general, he had to apply for a personal presidential pardon, which Johnson granted on July 17, 1868. Two months later, Forrest represented Tennessee at the Democratic Party’s national convention in New York City.

He also took command of the Ku Klux Klan, the unofficial militant wing of the Democratic Party. Forrest initiated the title “Grand Wizard,” a bizarre title derived from his Civil War nickname, “Wizard of the Saddle.” He became a leader of former Confederates who resisted Reconstruction through violence and terror.

After his pardon, Forrest perfected a rhetorical technique for his extremism. His biographer Court Carney described it as a multistep process, starting with, “Say something exaggerated and inflammatory that plays well with supporters.” Then, deny saying it “to maintain a semblance of professional decorum.” Then, blur the threats with “crowd pleasing humor.” It proved an effective way of threatening violence while being able to deny responsibility for any violence that occurred.

Under Forrest’s leadership, membership in the violent, racist Ku Klux Klan spread almost everywhere in the South. Records are sketchy, so it’s impossible to say how many people were lynched, but the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 2,000 lynchings of Black Americans during Reconstruction. Black women and girls were often raped by klansmen or members of its successor militias.

It’s also not possible to say how many pardoned ex-Confederates participated in the lynchings. But the violence was so widespread that just about everyone, North and South, thought the political violence was a resumption of the Civil War.

In the Piedmont of the Carolinas, klan violence amounted to a shadow government of White nationalists. Grant ordered the U.S. Army to apprehend the klansmen, and a newly minted Department of Justice prosecuted the insurrectionists for violating Civil Rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments.

After several trials that proved to be what the federal judiciary’s official history calls “dramatic spectacles,” federal judges handed down conviction after conviction.

The federal government’s decisive action allowed for a relatively free presidential election in 1872. Black voters helped Grant win in eight Southern states, contributing to his landslide victory.

But after his reelection, Grant appointed a new attorney general, who dropped the pending klan cases. Grant also pardoned klansmen who had already been convicted of crimes.

Grant hoped his gesture would encourage Southerners to accept the nation’s new birth of freedom.

It didn’t. The pardons told former Confederates that they were winning.

John Christopher Winsmith, an ex-Confederate who embraced racial equality and whose father had been shot by the KKK, wrote to Grant in 1873, “A few trials and convictions in the U.S. Courts, and then the pardoning of the criminals” had emboldened what he called “the hideous monster – Ku Kluxism.”

And a new gang arose, too: the Red Shirts, who began to murder Black people openly, not even in secret as the klan did. Two of the Red Shirts were later elected to the U.S. Senate.

Paramilitary groups established anti-democratic one-party rule in every former Confederate state, imposing discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow, which were enforced by lynchings and other forms of racial violence.

The federal government took no substantive action against this for a century, until the 20th century’s Civil Rights Movement sparked change. And it wasn’t until 2022 that Congress passed an anti-lynching bill.

Joseph Patrick Kelly is professor of literature and director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston, and David Cason is associate professor in Honors, University of North Dakota 

The post Pardons for insurrectionists lead to racial violence and turmoil appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

As a child, I was naturally curious, always asking, “Why?” and “How?” I think back to my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Gregory, at Winton Terrace, who taught me to seek answers through the five W’s and H: who, what, when, where, why and how. But my first real lesson in curiosity came from my mother, Alice, who often said, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” That lesson came after one of my famous foot stomps and whispered rebellions: “I can’t wait until I’m grown and move out.”

One day, a door-to-door salesman knocked on our door, selling encyclopedias. I begged my mother to buy a set. Eventually, after much pleading, she did. Those books became my first portal to the world. I spent hours flipping through pages, absorbing stories and histories — but even then, I knew there were gaps.

Fast forward to today, and my journey for knowledge continues — from encyclopedias to modern tools like Statista for data analysis and AI tools like ChatGPT. As technology evolves, I have grown increasingly curious about how AI handles historical information, especially Black cultural narratives, and what I have discovered is concerning.

There’s a problem with AI and history. Recently, I tested ChatGPT’s Consensus feature, which pulls from peer-reviewed studies. My question was historical rather than scientific: “In the 19th century, Samuel George Morton published Crania Americana, claiming that brain size determines intelligence. How did his work impact society?” Morton’s “findings” were used to justify slavery and racial hierarchies. His work was a lie, disguised as science, reinforcing systemic oppression.

What’s troubling is that AI tools are perpetuating these same biases.

As 2025 began, I realized we are at risk of losing more than we have gained in this digital age. If we do not take control of our stories now, algorithms will replicate the very biases that sought to silence us in the past reminiscent of the Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow laws and countless other moments of cultural erasure throughout U.S. history.

The danger lies in algorithmic bias. AI systems are trained on data riddled with historical gaps and prejudice. They absorb societal norms that elevate certain stories while erasing others. Black voices already marginalized in traditional archives face an even greater threat of digital invisibility. It is unsettling to think that as book bans spread across the country, AI could amplify this suppression. What happens when these systems recommend content? Whose stories get prioritized? Without active intervention, AI risks becoming a gatekeeper of knowledge, reinforcing exclusion instead of dismantling it.

Here’s a real example of digital erasure. I put my theory to the test with a simple question: “Who was the first all-Black high school boys’ basketball team to win a state championship?” Within seconds, ChatGPT responded: “Crispus Attucks High School in Indiana, 1955.”

It was not wrong, but it was not complete. The system omitted Lockland Wayne High School in Ohio, a significant piece of Black history that I personally helped document. In 2016, my close family friend Albert Seay, a proud graduate of Lockland Wayne High School, asked me to help document its basketball team’s story for Wikipedia. The research took 12 months of trial and error, persistence and countless edits. But the result was a Wikipedia entry that told the story of the first all-Black high school to win a state championship in 1952, three years before Crispus Attucks.

This achievement was monumental. It happened during segregation, at a time when Black athletes faced enormous barriers. A key figure in the story was Coach Joe Martin, whose leadership guided Lockland Wayne to historic victories. Coach Martin later became an assistant coach at the University of Cincinnati, where he helped shape the city’s basketball legacy.

Yet when I asked ChatGPT, Lockland Wayne’s legacy and Coach Martin’s contributions were missing. It makes me wonder what else is missing. What other stories are being erased, distorted or overlooked?

AI Bias: A Digital Warning. When I pressed ChatGPT further, it apologized and confirmed that Lockland Wayne’s victories were historically accurate, but the damage was done. Imagine your child preparing a Black history presentation using AI as their primary source. What critical stories will be left out?

One of my mother’s greatest lessons was, “You can never go back.” The omission of Lockland Wayne shows what happens when we do not actively protect our stories. AI tools are only as good as the data they are fed, and right now, that data is incomplete and biased. When others control our narrative, they distort it.

Preserving our history is wealth building. Some might ask, “Why focus on history when we need to build wealth?” To that, I say: “We cannot build wealth if we do not own our stories.” Our history is part of our cultural capital. The stories we tell shape how we see ourselves, how others see us and how we move in the world. Preserving our history is preserving intellectual property, and ownership of that narrative is essential to building generational wealth.

Think about how other communities build wealth through media, education and culture. Hollywood, publishing, museums and universities all profit from storytelling. Who owns the archives? Who controls the images of our ancestors, our movements and our contributions? If we do not claim it, others will.

Wealth is not just about money. It is about power, influence and legacy. Protecting our history means ensuring future generations see themselves reflected with dignity and pride.

When we own our stories, we create industries, books, films, tech, education that keep wealth circulating within our communities. So yes, we must build wealth. But if we lose control of our history, we lose control of the narrative that underpins all wealth-building efforts.

Our 2025 Playbook: Reclaim, Protect, Pass Down. The 2025 playbook outlined in “The Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” is a 920-page agenda aimed at rolling back Civil Rights protections, suppressing Black history and silencing our contributions. It is not just about AI bias — it is about political forces actively working to dismantle our progress.

But we have our own playbook. We are the Griots, the keepers of stories. Like the Indigenous people of the Americas, we cannot rely on mainstream narratives or AI tools to tell our stories. We must do it ourselves. For centuries, Indigenous communities have preserved their histories through oral traditions, songs and art. We must do the same. Our stories are living archives of truth, resilience and identity. They endure — even when the world tries to erase them.

What we must do now to reclaim our stories is support Black museums and archives, donate to Black history initiatives, make Black history part of everyday life — not just a once-a-year celebration — teach our children to question AI outputs and dig deeper.

Because we are enough. Our stories are enough. We do not need validation from AI to know our worth, but we do have a responsibility to ensure our history is preserved, celebrated and passed down to future generations.

Together, we can say with pride: ‘We Are Enough,’ and build our wealth. In this digital age, storytelling is resistance. If we do not take control of our narratives now, future generations will inherit stories written by those who never lived our experiences. Let us ensure that does not happen. We are more than data points. We are living history. Let us write a 2025 Playbook that ensures our legacy endures.

The post We are enough: Writing, teaching and owning our history appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Christopher Ferguson, Auburn University

It’s a common seasonal refrain: “Christmas just isn’t like it used to be.”

This is not a new complaint. History shows that Christmas traditions are just as subject to change as any other aspect of human societies, and when customs change, there are always some who wish they could turn back the clock.

In the 1830s, the English solicitor William Sandys compiled a host of examples of Britons bemoaning the transformation of Christmas customs from earlier eras. Sandys himself was especially concerned about the decline of public caroling, noting the practice appeared “to get more neglected every year.” He worried that this “neglect” was indicative of a wider British tendency to observe Christmas with less “hospitality and innocent revelry” in the 19th century than in the past.

Yet the 19th century also produced new holiday customs. In fact, many of the new Christmas practices in Sandy’s time went on to become established traditions themselves – and are now the subject of nostalgia and fretted over by those who fear their decline. Take, for example, the humble Christmas card. My research shows that these printed seasonal greetings borrowed from the customs of the past to move Christmas into a new age.

A British tradition

Annual sales and circulation of Christmas cards have been in decline since the 1990s. Laments over the potential “death” of the Christmas card have been especially vocal in the United Kingdom, where the mailing of Christmas greetings to family and friends via printed cards was long considered to be an essential element of a “British Christmas.”

Indeed, historians Martin Johnes and Mark Connelly both argue that throughout the 20th century the Christmas card was viewed as just as essential a part of Britain’s distinctive blend of holiday traditions as children hanging stockings at the end of their beds, Christmas pantomimes, and the eating of turkey and Brussels sprouts.

Yet, as these same historians are quick to note, at one time Britons did none of these things at Christmas. Each of these traditions became an element of the customary British Christmas only during the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th.

This makes them all relatively new additions to the country’s holiday customs, especially when viewed in light of Christmas’ more than 2,000-year history.

Industrial revolution and Christmas cards

The custom of mailing printed Christmas cards began in the middle decades of the 19th century and was a product of the industrial revolution. It was made affordable by new innovations in printing and papermaking and more efficient modes of transportation such as the railway.

The development of this new tradition was also facilitated by Parliament’s introduction of the Penny Post in 1840, which allowed Britons to mail letters to any address in the United Kingdom for the small price of a penny stamp.

Most historians date the Christmas card’s arrival to 1843, the same year in which Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Carol.”

In that year, the inventor and civil servant Henry Cole commissioned the artist John Callcott Horsley to design a card to help Cole handle his Christmas correspondence more efficiently.

Printed versions of Cole’s card were also made available for sale, but the high price of one shilling apiece left them outside the bounds of affordability for most of the Victorian population.

Cole’s experiment, however, inspired other printers to produce similar but more affordable Christmas cards. The use of these cheaper cards began to spread in the 1850s and had established itself as a holiday tradition by the final decades of the century.

A Victorian invention?

While the Christmas card may have seemed like an entirely new invention to Victorian senders and receivers, the first Christmas card’s design was actually influenced by other, older British holiday traditions.

As historians Timothy Larsen and the late Neil Armstrong have demonstrated, Christmas’ status as an established holiday meant that new Christmas customs developed during the 19th century needed to connect with, supplement or replace already existing traditions. The Christmas card was no exception to this recorded pattern.

In 1843, many Britons bemoaned the disappearance of a variety of “Old English” Christmas customs. Foremost among these were traditions of Christmas “hospitality,” including Christmas and New Year’s visiting, when family, friends and neighbors went to each other’s homes to drink toasts and offer best wishes for the holiday and the coming year.

Scholars argue popular belief in these traditions depended on a mixture of recalled reality and constructed fictions. Foremost among the latter were the popular stories depicting “old English hospitality” at Christmas by the American writer Washington Irving, published in the 1820s. In fact, Britons regularly invoked Irving’s accounts of Christmas at the fictional country house, Bracebridge Hall, when debating the changing character of their nation’s Christmas observances.

Regardless of these “old” customs’ historical reality, they nevertheless came to feature prominently in discussions regarding the supposed disappearance of a range of community level Christmas observances, including feasting, caroling and public acts of charity.

All of these, it was believed, were endangered in an increasingly urban Britain characterized by class tensions, heightened population mobility and mass anonymity.

A union of the old and the new

While it is unclear whether these ongoing debates inspired Cole’s decision to commission his 1843 Christmas card, the illustration Horsley designed for him alluded to them directly.

The card features a family framed by trestles adorned with holly and mistletoe, accompanied on either side by charitable scenes involving the feeding and clothing of the poor. The center of the card – and the symbolic center of Horsley’s Christmas vision – however, is the family of three clearly defined generations enjoying a collective feast, including the classic English Christmas pudding.

They face the viewer, their glasses raised in a toast, directly above a banner wishing them a “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” The central visual imagery of the card – as a “paper visitor” to the home of the recipient – replicates the social act of toasting associated with the older custom of holiday visits.

In fact, Horsley’s design invoked many of the same elements featured in Irving’s stories. This is not surprising, given that in later life Horsley recalled the impact of reading Irving’s depictions of the “Christmas at Bracebridge Hall” as a boy, and how he and his sister Fanny had been “determined to do our best to keep Christmas in such a notable fashion.”

Refashioning ‘old English hospitality’

Early Christmas cards favored similar imagery associated with the “Old English” Christmas of carolers, acts of charity, the playing of country sports, games such as blindman’s bluff, copious greenery, feasting and the toasting of Christmas and the New Year.

These Christmas cards were thus novel, industrial products adorned with the imagery of British Christmases past.

The development, and ultimate triumph, of the Christmas card in Victorian Britain demonstrates how nostalgia was channeled into invention. The Christmas card did not revitalize the traditions of Christmas and New Year’s visiting; it offered a paper replacement for them.

Industrial production and transportation transformed the physical visitor into a paper proxy, allowing more people to visit many more of the homes of others during the holiday season than they ever would have been able to in person.

The desire to hold on to one element of an older, supposedly declining Christmas tradition thus proved instrumental in helping to create a new holiday tradition in the midst of unprecedented changes in the character of communications and social relations.

Today, a similar context of social and technological changes has caused some to predict the “death” of the Christmas card. The history of the 19th century suggests, however, that should the tradition die, whatever replaces it will thrive by drawing selectively on the Christmas customs of the past.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Christopher Ferguson, Auburn University

Read more:

• Why does red wine cause headaches? Our research points to a compound found in the grapes’ skin
• Here’s why Christmas movies are so appealing this holiday season
• How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food

Christopher Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Feature Image: The first Christmas card with the words ‘A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to You.” Artist John Callcott Horsley via Wikimedia Commons

The post How nostalgia led to the invention of the first Christmas card appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Valerie M. Fridland, University of Nevada, Reno

Few words so rile language purists as the use of the adverb “literally” in a figurative sense, as in, “That movie literally blew my mind.”

But as a linguist who studies how English has changed over the centuries, I can promise that, while it might feel like nails screeching on a blackboard, the use of nonliteral “literally” developed as an organic and dynamic outgrowth of the very human desire to communicate emotion and intensity.

The literal past

The word literal first appeared in English in the late 14th century, borrowed from French. In turn, French “literal” came from Latin “littera,” with the original meaning of “pertaining to alphabetic letters.” It is this same root that delivered to English the words “literate” and “literature,” both harking back to the idea of knowing one’s “letters.”

In early English use, literal referred to the straightforward meaning recoverable from reading a religious text, as in this example from the Wycliffe Bible dating to 1383, “Holy scripture hath iiij vndirstondingis; literal, allegorik, moral, and anagogik.” The word literal as used here contrasts a direct – literal – reading of scripture’s meaning to other more symbolic or metaphorical ones.

By the late 16th century, though, literal begins to be used not just in reference to a type of reading but also as a way to emphasize that one wants one’s words to be taken literally.

This development is already a semantic leap in that, when used this way – as in, “John literally died of thirst” – the word provides no meaning contribution other than emphasizing to a listener that a speaker means it precisely as said. After all, assuming John did indeed die owing to a lack of hydration, what does a speaker really gain by saying “He literally died of thirst” versus simply “He died of thirst”?

The advantage is that using “literally” signals that what was said was unusual, unbelievable or remarkable in some way, steering a listener toward a literal rather than a perhaps more likely figurative interpretation.

After all, dying of thirst is not something you hear about every day, though suffering from thirst to the point where one feels like dying is a more universal experience. Such pragmatic enhancement of the word’s original meaning hints at how its modern marking of strong emphasis came into play.

Bleached beyond recognition

The second piece of the puzzle of how “literally” became nonliteral requires a brief foray into how word meanings organically evolve over time as they are put to work by speakers.

A very germane example comes from “very,” a word in which its most common meaning – “extremely” – is but a shadow of its original sense.

In Middle English, “very” carried the meaning of “actual” or “true,” as in being “verray in worde and dede” – that is, true in word and deed. Yet, when something is true, particularly when used in its “actual” sense, it suggests that it embodies the highest degree of whatever quality is described as true.

So, for instance, if someone is a “true fool,” they exhibit such a high degree of foolishness they are taken for an actual fool. Used this way, two distinct but related meanings – “true” and “to an extreme degree” – come to coexist.

By the 16th century, intensity rather than trueness had become the word very’s primary sense, through a process that linguists refer to as “semantic bleaching.” Interestingly, words whose meanings involve truth, such as very, really and truly, are particularly prone to semantic bleaching. And “truth,” as in “exactly as said or written,” takes us back to “literally.”

A little less literal

Recall that “literally” once pertained only to contrasting a literal versus metaphorical reading.

But, as with “very,” by the 16th century, its meaning shifts away from this purely referential meaning to a more rhetorical one: “Literally” had shifted to emphasizing a speaker’s literalness and flagging it as remarkable in some way.

At that point, providing expressivity rather than a true or literal reading had become its primary role. Just consider an argument between spouses, where one says “I literally called you three times.” The purpose of “literally” here is really only one of underscoring the implication that calling three times was excessive and unusual.

From there to hyperbolically saying “I was literally dying of thirst” is just one step further down the road of semantic bleaching. The figurative reading becomes more and more possible, as speakers capitalize exclusively on the expressive force rather than the word’s former shell of literality.

This is really no different than saying something like “I am truly dying over here” when one is frustrated, but is, in fact, not actually dying. It is intensity conveyed, not imminent death, as “truly” has moved from marking truth to marking emphasis.

Sign of the times

But what of using “literally” to mean something seemingly contradictory to its original meaning?

On that front, it is certainly far from the first word in English to have shifted toward its opposite. For instance, when in 1667’s “Paradise Lost” John Milton writes, “The Serpent … with brazen Eyes And hairie Main terrific,” the word “terrific” is absolutely intended in its original sense of “terrifying”“ as opposed to our modern “fabulous” take.

Sometimes, conflicting senses even exist at the same time. Think of how “clipping” can be about cutting something away or pulling something together. Likewise, consider the often oppositionally employed verb “to cleave,” with which one either tears apart or sticks together. In this bigger semantic picture, using “literally” nonfiguratively is really nothing to get worked up over.

The gist is that language changes because of how it finds itself most gainfully employed by speakers as it winds its way through time.

Literally’s main problem is that, unlike “terrific” or “very,” its semantic past has not yet faded from collective memory. But for those who still cling to its literalness despite the fact that Frances Brooke, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain all embraced its figurative glory, it may simply be time to literally let go.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Valerie M. Fridland, University of Nevada, Reno

Read more:

• Misspoke: The long and winding road to becoming a political weasel word
• Presidential pauses? What those ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ really tell us about candidates for the White House
• From ‘dada’ to Darth Vader – why the way we name fathers reminds us we spring from the same well

Valerie M. Fridland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Feature Image: Did your head literally explode? No, but you can say it did. John Lund/Stone via Getty Images

The post Love it or hate it, nonliteral ‘literally’ is here to stay appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Rodney Walker
walkerprof1@gmail.com   

     Bill Goines is an American hero with an exceptional life story—they say it’s destined for the Big Screen. He completed three tours in Vietnam fighting the Communist Viet Cong and orchestrated over 100 dangerous missions without ever getting shot before attaining the highest enlisted rank in the U.S. Navy.      

    While the community of U.S Navy SEALs largely accepted him for his superior abilities, he still struggled for racial acceptance at home during the Civil Rights era–many anecdotal experiences in segregated downtown Norfolk.

     His story reflects the core essence of the films: “Hidden Figures”, “Black Panther” and “Captain America” all rolled into one. And his Combat V awards tell the story.

The post Book tells story of first Black Navy SEAL Bill Goines appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Professor Sterling Haynes

Be glad that an African American Man saved the food supply chain.

Frederick McKinley Jones was born on May 17, 1893, in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a naturally skilled mechanic, he furthered his knowledge through self-education, and reading study materials.

In the 1900s reliable food distribution was an ongoing mess. Blocks of ice used to keep food cold would melt on hot summer days, spoiling entire shipments of products.

To redeem this logistics issue, Inventor Frederick Jones and Sound Equipment Manufacturer Joseph Numero created the Thermo King company in 1938.

Jones developed the first portable refrigeration units for troops stationed overseas in World War II. Soldiers were supplied with fresh food, cold drinks, medicine, and plasma. Jones was awarded the Mobile Refrigeration U.S. Patent No. 2,303,857.

Mobile refrigeration technology gave birth to the frozen food industry. Food banks can rely on massive distribution networks to transport fresh meat from farmers across the country on a regular basis.

Jones became the first African American to be elected to the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers and awarded the National Medal of Technology. He died on February 21, 1961, from lung cancer. He held more than sixty patents and was inducted in the national inventor’s hall of fame in 2007.

Award winning cartoon characters are created by Sterling Haynes for “Sketching with Sterling” on WCTV. My.viebit.com to watch episodes.

The post Black History: First portable refrigerator developed by Cincinnatian in 1893 appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Andrea Vale

Stacker News

In many Americans’ recollections, the Emancipation Proclamation was a landmark piece of legislation that officially abolished slavery in the United States. But, like many important historical moments, the truth is more complicated.

Jan. 1, 2024, marks 161 years since the day the Emancipation Proclamation was announced by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. At the time, the Civil War had been raging for three years. Lincoln’s declaration was a watershed moment in the war, which up until then had been formally fought with the central goal of keeping the Confederacy from seceding from the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation changed that, however, and explicitly redirected the struggle toward ending slavery in the United States.

However, the language of the Proclamation was limited in scope. Although it famously declared that “all persons held as slaves … are, and henceforward shall be free,” this didn’t apply to all states and was conditioned on a Union victory in the Civil War. Ending slavery began with the Emancipation Proclamation—but it would be years before former enslaved people gained citizenship, suffrage, and the ability to hold public office.

Stacker used historical records, academic commentary, and political reporting to describe the key events following the Emancipation Proclamation that led to the full abolition of slavery. In reality, the road to freedom was a years-long process of political legislation and cultural shifts; history, however, tends to remember dramatic moments the best, especially those with such moving and empowering language as the Emancipation Proclamation contained.

Though the events covered here end with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the advancement of emancipation continues far beyond this—even more so when one broadens the concept of “freedom” to encompass the larger freedoms of African Americans in general.

For instance, at the same time that formerly enslaved people were first being granted basic rights in society, the Ku Klux Klan emerged in 1865 with the agenda of squashing these efforts. It wasn’t until 1870 that Hiram Revels was elected to the Senate as America’s first Black senator. It took nearly a century after that for the Supreme Court to rule that “separate but equal” schooling policies inherently denied African Americans equal protection under the Constitution.

Read on to discover what it took beyond the Emancipation Proclamation to make formerly enslaved people full, recognized members of the United States.

1863: The Emancipation Proclamation is issued

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation—but despite popular cultural opinion, it did not actually end slavery in the United States. This was partially because of its limited wording: Though it stated that “all persons held as slaves … are, and henceforward shall be free,” this only applied to states that had seceded from the Union. Loyal states and some members of the Confederacy the Union had captured were exempt.

Perhaps most importantly, the promised freedom of enslaved people was conditional. It would only be granted if the Union won the Civil War, which, at the time of the Proclamation, was in its third year.

The Emancipation Proclamation also stated men of color would be allowed to join the Union army, an invitation they gladly accepted. By the end of the Civil War, nearly 200,000 Black men had fought as soldiers for the Union.

1863: Lincoln meets with Frederick Douglass

Famed freedom champion Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved man, had a particular gripe concerning the abolition of slavery: He believed enslaved people could only find full liberation by participating in the Civil War.

After the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, Douglass finally had the go-ahead to begin recruiting the first official regiments of Black soldiers into the Union Army, including his two sons. During the war, many of these soldiers faced torture and reenslavement by the Confederate army. Douglass was so enraged he publicly criticized President Lincoln for neglecting to protect them, resulting in the two meeting at the White House for the first time on Aug. 10, 1863.

The meeting went reasonably well. Though Lincoln couldn’t address Douglass’ grievance on equal pay for Black soldiers, he agreed to sign any commission for Black soldiers the secretary of war recommended.

Douglass was invited to the White House at least three more times by Lincoln and was present at the president’s swearing-in for his second term, during which he publicly declared that slavery was “one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come.”

1863: The Conkling letter

Just a few weeks after meeting with Frederick Douglass, a letter from Lincoln to old friend James C. Conkling was read publicly at a mass meeting of Unionists in Springfield, Illinois. The location was timely and deliberate: Lincoln knew Union Democrats and Republicans were becoming concerningly polarized in Illinois, divided over varying opinions on the cause of the Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved people. The Conkling letter addressed this directly and bluntly, defending the Emancipation Proclamation in no uncertain terms.

In it, Lincoln wrote, “You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.”

Reception to the public reading was enthusiastic and widespread: The entire letter was printed in its entirety in national letters in the days following, and it sparked a rally of over 50,000 in Springfield who met Lincoln’s words with cheers and tears.

1863: The Gettysburg Address

On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered a remarkably short but undeniably impactful speech at the cemetery’s dedication at Gettysburg, the site of the deadliest battle of the Civil War. Lincoln’s speech followed the words of famous orator Edward Everett, who spoke for more than two hours beforehand. He later lamented that he failed to have as much impact as Lincoln achieved in just two minutes.

In his speech, Lincoln famously remarked that the “great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion” to ensure “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Though he only referred to slavery opaquely as it fell under the umbrella of ‘freedom,’ the speech still marked the first time he noted the abolition of slavery as a stated goal of the Civil War.

His speech resulted in mixed reviews from papers that both panned and praised this speech. While Republicans (Lincoln’s party) mostly stayed loyal to the president, more radical Democrats felt Lincoln’s words reframed the justification for war, not to keep states from seceding but to free enslaved people.

Just a year after Lincoln publicly delivered the Gettysburg Address, a version of it was published and spread nationally in “Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors.” It is remembered as one of America’s most pivotal speeches.

The post The Emancipation Proclamation in practice: A timeline – Part 1 appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

Wanda Haynes,

Certified Sommelier

Fact is often stranger than fiction and this is certainly true in a brand of wine from Australia. The brand is “19 Crimes”, and the history behind the labels is incredible. The men and women featured on the labels are real and not fictional characters. 

British rogues guilty of at least one of the 19 crimes were sentenced to live in Australia, rather than be put to death. This type of punishment was referred to as “transportation” and began around 1783. Many of the criminals perished at sea during the long trip to Australia.

Often the crimes were committed in the name of political rebellion, and by today’s standard would be considered less offensive.

Treasury Wine Estates is the company that manufactures 19 Crimes they have locations in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and in the US. 

Hard Chard features the only female convict on their list of criminals. Jane Castings was a mother of four children. She was sentenced to seven years transportation for receiving stolen cheese and bacon. Hard Chard is a delicious partially oaked chardonnay, and is full bodied, rich, and loaded with grilled pineapple.

The Banished This red blend has a touch of sweetness, and produced from Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache. The wine has plenty of dark chocolate and warm vanilla tastes. James Wilson Joined the British Army as a 17-year-old under an assumed name. In 1866 he was arrested for deserting his military duties, and sentenced to death. However, this sentence was commuted to life. He too was transported to Australia. 

To see their entire portfolio of wines, go to: www.19crimes.com

The post Explore the unique labels of 19 Crimes wine: real criminals, unforgettable characters appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By Cody Hefner

chefner@cincymuseum.org

Paleontologists from around the world will descend on Cincinnati this fall for the 83^rd Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP). As the lead on bringing the prestigious meeting to Cincinnati, Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) will host the opening reception on October 18. The meeting will take place from October 18–21.

Following the opening reception at CMC, the SVP meeting will take over the Duke Energy Convention Center where paleontologists, preparators, writers, artists and enthusiasts will convene to share the latest research, attend workshops and go on field trips to view some of the region’s paleontological resources.      

Colleagues at the University of Cincinnati are also instrumental in organizing the SVP annual meeting.

“Having 1500 scientists come to Cincinnati from around the world highlights our status as a center of excellence in paleontological research and collection care,” says Glenn Storrs, Ph.D., Associate Vice President for Science & Research and Withrow Farny Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Cincinnati Museum Center. “The meeting caps a nearly 200-year history of paleontological investigation and study here and Cincinnati Museum Center is proud to host this signature event.”

The location for the 2023 SVP annual meeting couldn’t be more perfect, both from an ongoing research and historical perspective. CMC houses one of the largest vertebrate paleontology collections in the country with over 30,000 specimens from a broad range of geographic areas and time periods. The collection has a particular emphasis on Paleozoic and Quaternary fossils from the Ohio Valley tri-state region, in addition to specimens of Jurassic dinosaurs, Mesozoic marine reptiles and Cretaceous/Paleocene microvertebrates. The collection is showcased in CMC’s Dinosaur Hall inside the Museum of Natural History & Science, where six rare dinosaurs are on display, including a 60-foot Galeamopus fully excavated by CMC and the world’s only exhibited Torvosaurus skeleton, a fierce 35-foot carnivore.

CMC also has a robust invertebrate paleontology collection that includes approximately 110,000 specimen lots and is internationally-known for its Ordovician fossil collection. Many of these will be featured in CMC’s newest permanent gallery Ancient Worlds Hiding in Plain Sight, opening in late September and sure to draw plenty of interest from SVP meeting attendees.

Cincinnati sits just miles away from Big Bone Lick, the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology, where mastodon bones were first discovered in 1739. Big Bone Lick was also the site of the first American paleontological excavation in 1807, led by William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame on the orders of President Thomas Jefferson. The existence of such large bones led to revolutionary theories on extinction, evolution and climate change.

Professor Margaret Lewis, President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, said, “The year 2023 represents the 83^rd annual meeting of the SVP. We’re delighted that the society we will be holding the meeting in a venue that is historically important for American and global vertebrate paleontology and a vibrant center for paleontological research.”

The 2023 SVP meeting logo also has a Cincinnati connection. The logo features the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Daspletosaurus, which can be seen on display in CMC’s Dinosaur Hall. The blue border symbolizes Cincinnati’s location on the banks of the Ohio River and the lower boundary features a silhouette of the city’s skyline, including prominent architectural icons Union Terminal, Music Hall and the Roebling Bridge.

The SVP is the world’s foremost forum on vertebrate paleontology. The society is made up of scientists, students, artists, preparators, advocates, writers and scholars around the globe dedicated to the study, discovery, interpretation and preservation of vertebrate fossils. Visit vertpaleo.org for more information.

The 2023 SVP Annual Meeting Host Committee includes:

• Glenn Storrs, Ph.D., Cincinnati Museum Center
• Joshua Miller, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
• Jonathan Calede, Ph.D., The Ohio State University at Marion
• Brooke Crowley, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
• Brenda Hunda, Ph.D., Cincinnati Museum Center
• Takuya Konishi, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
• Carlos Peredo, Ph.D., Miami University
• Julie Reizner, Northern Kentucky University
• Cameron Schwalbach, Cincinnati Museum Center

The post Museum Center lands meeting of Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Conference appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .

By the Rev. Norman Franklin

Herald Contributor

There is trending the idea that we need to be selective about the history we want to learn, that there are certain things that should be dismissed and certain things that should be reframed, polished and offered for study in glowing narratives of national inspirations.

Monuments are erected with narratives that present  the person or event with exaltations of wisdom, foresight and triumph against overwhelming circumstances. If the monuments are erected in the premises of selective history, they are mythopoetic and misleading.

America has an abhorrent history fostered in a loathsome ideology of divinely ordained ethnic privileges. A grotesque system that for nearly four centuries subjected enslaved Africans to murder, rape, destruction of family, robbery of self-esteem and the value of their humanity.

The idea of superiority and privilege based on race didn’t end with the abolishment of chattel slavery, it metastasized into the social construct that colored life in America well into the mid-20th century and, indeed, even now.

White America is embarrassed by its sordid transgressions of the past, and, since authority rest in their hands, there are legislative initiatives to hide the dirty linens on  the back shelf of the closet, or in the farthest corner of the attic and out of sight, out of mind. We can reframe it, revise it, polish it up, focus only on the positive things of history.

There is merit to the philosophy of positive affirmation. There also is merit in knowing the truth, particularly pertaining to seeding the minds of the generation of leaders now progressing through the education system. If the truth of history is not laid out for  them to process and to consider the flaws of our political and social systems, they will not perceive that there is a need to remove the injustices inherent in the system and correct the flaws revealed in the study of history.

The attitudes of the era of Black Codes and the Jim Crow South were most poignantly exacted in August 1955, in a faraway corner of the Mississippi Delta. The obscure town of Money, a bastion of the social construct of White Supremacy, became the place of uncovering, the place that revealed to the nation and the world, the ugliness of race hatred.

President Joe Biden has designated monuments to the remembrance of this pivotal event. Three sites are designated memorial monuments to remember the killing of Emmitt Till, remember the arrogance, the attitudes, the presumptions that led men to think it was all right to kill Black innocence and boast about it.

Memorials are to remind us of a time, an era, an event that changed the course of human history – when Jesus instituted the observance of the ‘Lord’s Supper’ He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me – remember how I have suffered for you.” In the case of Emmitt Till, we are challenged to never again allow the consciousness of the nation to acquiesce to the social construct that prevailed in that era.

The three sites are Graball Landing, where the disfigured body of the 14-year-old Till was recovered, the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where the sickle of race hatred decapitated justice for the grieving African American family, and the Roberts Temple Church of Christ in Chicago where the nation was forced to reckon with the consequences of a system of injustice placated by indifference to the sufferings of a people striving to exercise their equal rights as citizens of this great nation.

The church, the site of Till’s funeral, is a monument to the courage of a mother who shared her appall, her grief, her pain and her tears with the world, and gave her son’s grotesque, disfigured body as a monument to sear the conscience of America and to energize the Civil Rights Movement.

These monuments stand against the tide of aggressors who would push a redacted history. “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history – we’re making it clear, crystal clear,” Biden said.

Editor’s Note: The views expressed in commentary piece do not necessarily the express the opinions of The Cincinnati Herald.

The post Commentary: There is power in remembering history appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .