Accidents happen. But what infuriated me was the unwillingness to clean the mess up. That is why, to this day, I will not buy gas at an Exxon station.
This Date in History
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donbosco
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I wrote this upon the passing of Dr. John Hope Franklin in 2009. It was printed in ‘The Carrboro Citizen.’
“The open mind of John Hope Franklin.” The life of John Hope Franklin has now been celebrated, as it should, in publications across the world. Adding substantively to those august acknowledgments and outpourings of genuine affection is beyond this commentary. Still, Dr. Franklin did touch my life as historian and as activist.
Dr. Franklin’s work informs my classroom in many ways. In teaching courses on the history of the American South, I loan out my copy of ‘The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860’ pretty much every semester. This semester, an adult student, an African-American woman born in Alabama into a family of sharecroppers, has it and is applying it to research she is doing for a final paper. She had first heard of Dr. Franklin in a video we viewed, ‘Dr. Frank: The Life and Times of Frank Porter Graham’ as he spoke of how Graham had never worried about how people might view his associations, instead seeking out diverse ways of seeing in order to further deepen his own. Dr. Franklin appears in the video a tall and formal man carefully choosing his words so as to most precisely portray the life of the man in question. Graham (most known for being president of #UNC 1930-1949) took much heat over his associations but never let that stop him from seeking the exchange of ideas and the concomitant progress they might bring to bear on the world.
I met Dr. Franklin through Sam Reed. Sam was Ukraine-born, a tireless worker for equal rights and a communist. At the age of 80, Sam founded the newsletter “The Trumpet of Conscience” and in his retirement here in (Durham) North Carolina worked tirelessly to bridge racial divides. Scholars like William Chafe, James David Barber, and Dr. Franklin were persuaded and cajoled by Sam Reed to write for “The Trumpet.” In 1995, I worked on various projects sponsored by Sam and the publication. When Dr. Franklin spoke at the 10th anniversary of Sam’s publication in 1996, he referred to himself as a “Friend of The Trumpet.” He was also a friend of Sam Reed’s and much in the spirit of Frank Porter Graham, John Hope Franklin also sought associations that others might shun. After all, Sam was a known communist who had, during the days of the most stringent McCarthyism, served time for expressing himself in ways unpopular to the powers that be.
Dr. Franklin’s life was also one of articulating ideas unpopular with those that run society. That was, in fact, the essence of his history. And Dr. Franklin’s research was deep and full, impeccably documented and unassailable as to his interpretation of sources, assuring that his work could never be successfully attacked on grounds of scholarship. Historical actors that challenge the prevailing thought assail hegemony. We can all take a great cue from Dr. Franklin in both remaining open to radical voices and minding our own pronouncements for their accuracy. Positive change needs such scholars and thinkers and hard workers as Dr. Franklin, Sam Reed, and Frank Porter Graham. That to me is the inspiration of Dr. Franklin. [End 2009 Article]
In 2021 I added the following (edited slightly in 2023)…
I think that homage holds up relatively well. I still find that trio of scholar-activists admirable and worthy of emulation.
UNC has had a rough row to hoe in the years since 2009, most recently over the badly bungled mis-hiring of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Geeta N. Kapur has written about the university and race in, "To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation's Oldest Public University.” In a July 7, 2021 article in “Facing South” online magazine she recounted the following about Frank Porter Graham: “In a keynote speech he delivered to an integrated audience of 1,500 people in Birmingham, Alabama in 1938 at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, an organization committed to improving social justice, civil rights, and instituting electoral reforms to repeal the poll tax in the South, President Graham said, ‘The black man is the primary test of American democracy and Christianity.’
President Graham was also a fierce defender of academic freedom. In his inauguration speech on Nov. 11, 1931, he told us: “Along with culture and democracy, must go freedom. Without freedom there can be neither true culture nor real democracy. Without freedom there can be no university. Freedom in a university runs a various course and has a wide meaning. In the university should be found the free voice not only for the unvoiced millions but also for the unpopular and even the hated minorities. Its platform should never be an agency of partisan propaganda but should ever be a fair forum of free opinion.”.� https://www.facingsouth.org/.../voices-uncs-troubled...
Historical context is important. In its fullest realization it can liberate. It can also, if manipulated or half-recognized give cover where none is due. John Hope Franklin, Frank Porter Graham, and Sam Reed were born, respectively, in 1915, 1886, and 1906. They each saw clearly the wrongness in both the racism rampant during their lives and in the half-remembering of it, proving that clear vision for the generations that went before us was, indeed, possible, albeit perhaps rarer than it should have been.
[Added 2024] Of late the assault on Dr. Graham’s ‘Free Voice in The University’ as political forces gather mandates on What may be taught and How. Florida serves as a Model it appears and men and women grasping the levers of power and clutching purse strings in North Carolina want no more discussion of ideas unpopular to them. My Deddy said “The hit dog always yells,” and the truth of past and present threaten to strike them squarely. They and their lackeys betray themselves. It seems that they could not care less. They don’t respect the work lives of the Franklins, Grahams, or Reeds of our past and would rather erase them. The battle is on. Holding actions look like stalemates but consider the alternative.
[Added 2025] Updating this message to note that at this time the North Carolina General Assembly is in deep consideration of the passage of the NC REACH Act (So dangerously fully titled as ‘Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage’) — it having gone to the Senate Committee on Rules and Operations on March 17 — This bill which would control the testing, weight of grading, and the nature of the way material related to the Foundations of American Democracy, a program already mandated by the legislature through the UNC System Board of Governors, will be studied while requiring copies of course syllabi at each of the 17 campuses of the UNC system and the Community Colleges. You can read the bill here: https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewBillDocument/2025/1704/0/DRS45133-MT-7A I have no doubt that Dr. Graham would have been in Raleigh fighting this breach of Academic Freedom tooth and nail. Dr. Franklin would have joined him.
On September 22, 1947 John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) published ‘From Slavery to Freedom,’ the formative survey text even today in AFAM History. This link from the NC Department of Cultural Resources celebrates that historical work. https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../scholaractivist-john-hope...
Dr. Franklin was the President of the #OAH, #AHA, & #SHA and spent most of his career in N.C., finishing at #Duke. The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies is located there. He passed away on March 25, 2009. He was 94 years old. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. John Hope Franklin passed on at the age of 94 on March 25, 2009.
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Going go be a long hard slog turning congress and state houses purple let alone blue.
1812 In opposition to the redrawing of districts to favour incumbents in an upcoming election, the Boston Gazette published a satiric cartoon that graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, “The Gerry-mander”; the term gerrymander thus entered the American lexicon.
gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering). The term is derived from the name of Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose administration enacted a law in 1812 defining new state senatorial districts. The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans. The outline of one of these districts was thought to resemble a salamander. A satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that appeared in the Boston Gazette graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, “The Gerry-mander,” fixing the term in the popular imagination.
A basic objection to gerrymandering of any kind is that it tends to violate two tenets of electoral apportionment—compactness and equality of size of constituencies. The constitutional significance of the latter principle was set forth in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued in 1962, Baker v. Carr, in which the Court held that the failure of the legislature of Tennessee to reapportion state legislative districts to take into account significant changes in district populations had effectively reduced the weight of votes cast in more populous districts, amounting to a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1963, in Gray v. Sanders, the Court first articulated the principle of “one person, one vote” in striking down Georgia’s county-based system for counting votes in Democratic primary elections for the office of U.S. senator. One year later, in Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court declared that congressional electoral districts must be drawn in such a way that, “as nearly as is practicable, one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” And in the same year, the Court affirmed, in Reynolds v. Sims, that “the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis.”
1812 In opposition to the redrawing of districts to favour incumbents in an upcoming election, the Boston Gazette published a satiric cartoon that graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, “The Gerry-mander”; the term gerrymander thus entered the American lexicon.
gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering). The term is derived from the name of Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose administration enacted a law in 1812 defining new state senatorial districts. The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans. The outline of one of these districts was thought to resemble a salamander. A satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that appeared in the Boston Gazette graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, “The Gerry-mander,” fixing the term in the popular imagination.
A basic objection to gerrymandering of any kind is that it tends to violate two tenets of electoral apportionment—compactness and equality of size of constituencies. The constitutional significance of the latter principle was set forth in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued in 1962, Baker v. Carr, in which the Court held that the failure of the legislature of Tennessee to reapportion state legislative districts to take into account significant changes in district populations had effectively reduced the weight of votes cast in more populous districts, amounting to a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1963, in Gray v. Sanders, the Court first articulated the principle of “one person, one vote” in striking down Georgia’s county-based system for counting votes in Democratic primary elections for the office of U.S. senator. One year later, in Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court declared that congressional electoral districts must be drawn in such a way that, “as nearly as is practicable, one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” And in the same year, the Court affirmed, in Reynolds v. Sims, that “the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis.”
donbosco
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Heather Cox Richardson's message for today looks back on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire:
"March 25, 2025 (Tuesday)
On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and screams. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making.
“The people had just begun to jump when we got there,” Perkins later recalled. “They had been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do jump, the[y] were trying to get that out and they couldn’t wait any longer. They began to jump. The…weight of the bodies was so great, at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.”
By the time the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was out, 147 young people were dead, either from their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation.
Perkins had few illusions about industrial America: she had worked in a settlement house in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago and was the head of the New York office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for workers. But even she was shocked by the scene she witnessed on March 25.
By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what had happened on their watch. “I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,” Perkins said. “It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were sorry…. We didn't want it that way. We hadn’t intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people of the City of New York and the State of New York to face.”
The Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, Al Smith—who would a few years later go on to four terms as New York governor and become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928—went to visit the families of the dead to express his sympathy and his grief. “It was a human, decent, natural thing to do,” Perkins said, “and it was a sight he never forgot. It burned it into his mind. He also got to the morgue, I remember, at just the time when the survivors were being allowed to sort out the dead and see who was theirs and who could be recognized. He went along with a number of others to the morgue to support and help, you know, the old father or the sorrowing sister, do her terrible picking out.”
“This was the kind of shock that we all had,” Perkins remembered.
The next Sunday, concerned New Yorkers met at the Metropolitan Opera House with the conviction that “something must be done. We've got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action….” One man contributed $25,000 to fund citizens’ action to “make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.”
The gathering appointed a committee, which asked the legislature to create a bipartisan commission to figure out how to improve fire safety in factories. For four years, Frances Perkins was their chief investigator.
She later explained that although their mission was to stop factory fires, “we went on and kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions and then to report all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects.”
And they did. Al Smith was the speaker of the house when they published their report, and soon would become governor. Much of what the commission recommended became law.
Perkins later mused that perhaps the new legislation to protect workers had in some way paid the debt society owed to the young people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “The extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated,” she said. “It was, I am convinced, a turning point.”
But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state’s labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his “misleading statements” were “cruel and irresponsible.” She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.
In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover’s plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”
She promised to find out.
Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.
In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.
In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.
Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire into the heart of our nation’s basic social safety net.
'There is always a large horizon…. There is much to be done,” Perkins said. “It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.'"
"March 25, 2025 (Tuesday)
On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and screams. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making.
“The people had just begun to jump when we got there,” Perkins later recalled. “They had been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do jump, the[y] were trying to get that out and they couldn’t wait any longer. They began to jump. The…weight of the bodies was so great, at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.”
By the time the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was out, 147 young people were dead, either from their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation.
Perkins had few illusions about industrial America: she had worked in a settlement house in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago and was the head of the New York office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for workers. But even she was shocked by the scene she witnessed on March 25.
By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what had happened on their watch. “I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,” Perkins said. “It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were sorry…. We didn't want it that way. We hadn’t intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people of the City of New York and the State of New York to face.”
The Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, Al Smith—who would a few years later go on to four terms as New York governor and become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928—went to visit the families of the dead to express his sympathy and his grief. “It was a human, decent, natural thing to do,” Perkins said, “and it was a sight he never forgot. It burned it into his mind. He also got to the morgue, I remember, at just the time when the survivors were being allowed to sort out the dead and see who was theirs and who could be recognized. He went along with a number of others to the morgue to support and help, you know, the old father or the sorrowing sister, do her terrible picking out.”
“This was the kind of shock that we all had,” Perkins remembered.
The next Sunday, concerned New Yorkers met at the Metropolitan Opera House with the conviction that “something must be done. We've got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action….” One man contributed $25,000 to fund citizens’ action to “make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.”
The gathering appointed a committee, which asked the legislature to create a bipartisan commission to figure out how to improve fire safety in factories. For four years, Frances Perkins was their chief investigator.
She later explained that although their mission was to stop factory fires, “we went on and kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions and then to report all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects.”
And they did. Al Smith was the speaker of the house when they published their report, and soon would become governor. Much of what the commission recommended became law.
Perkins later mused that perhaps the new legislation to protect workers had in some way paid the debt society owed to the young people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “The extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated,” she said. “It was, I am convinced, a turning point.”
But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state’s labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his “misleading statements” were “cruel and irresponsible.” She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.
In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover’s plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”
She promised to find out.
Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.
In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.
In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.
Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire into the heart of our nation’s basic social safety net.
'There is always a large horizon…. There is much to be done,” Perkins said. “It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.'"
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- 1,102
1915 American domestic Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was placed under a quarantine on North Brother Island, New York City, that lasted until her death in 1938; a typhoid carrier, she was allegedly responsible for multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary (born September 23, 1869, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland—died November 11, 1938, North Brother Island, Bronx, New York, U.S.) was an infamous typhoid carrier who allegedly gave rise to multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary Mary Mallon (left), known as Typhoid Mary, in quarantine on North Brother Island, New York City, early 20th century.
In 1906, after 6 people in a household of 11 where Mallon had worked in Oyster Bay, New York, became sick with typhoid, the home’s owners hired New York City Department of Health sanitary engineer George Soper, whose specialty was studying typhoid fever epidemics, to investigate the outbreak. Other investigators were brought in as well and concluded that the outbreak likely had been caused by contaminated water. Mallon continued to work as a cook, moving from household to household until 1907, when she resurfaced working in a Park Avenue home in Manhattan. The winter of that year, following an outbreak in the Manhattan household that involved a death from the disease, Soper met with Mallon. He subsequently linked all 22 cases of typhoid fever that had been recorded in New York City and the Long Island area to her.
Again Mallon fled, but authorities led by Soper finally overtook her and had her committed to an isolation centre on North Brother Island, part of the Bronx, New York. There she stayed, despite an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, until 1910, when the health department released her on condition that she never again accept employment that involved the handling of food.
Four years later Soper began looking for Mallon again when an epidemic broke out at a sanatorium in Newfoundland, New Jersey, and at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan; she had worked as a cook at both places. Mallon was at last found in a suburban home in Westchester county, New York, and was returned to North Brother Island, where she remained for the rest of her life. A paralytic stroke in 1932 led to her slow death six years later.
Mallon claimed to have been born in the United States, but it was later determined that she was an immigrant. In all, 51 original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attr
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary (born September 23, 1869, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland—died November 11, 1938, North Brother Island, Bronx, New York, U.S.) was an infamous typhoid carrier who allegedly gave rise to multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary Mary Mallon (left), known as Typhoid Mary, in quarantine on North Brother Island, New York City, early 20th century.
In 1906, after 6 people in a household of 11 where Mallon had worked in Oyster Bay, New York, became sick with typhoid, the home’s owners hired New York City Department of Health sanitary engineer George Soper, whose specialty was studying typhoid fever epidemics, to investigate the outbreak. Other investigators were brought in as well and concluded that the outbreak likely had been caused by contaminated water. Mallon continued to work as a cook, moving from household to household until 1907, when she resurfaced working in a Park Avenue home in Manhattan. The winter of that year, following an outbreak in the Manhattan household that involved a death from the disease, Soper met with Mallon. He subsequently linked all 22 cases of typhoid fever that had been recorded in New York City and the Long Island area to her.
Again Mallon fled, but authorities led by Soper finally overtook her and had her committed to an isolation centre on North Brother Island, part of the Bronx, New York. There she stayed, despite an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, until 1910, when the health department released her on condition that she never again accept employment that involved the handling of food.
Four years later Soper began looking for Mallon again when an epidemic broke out at a sanatorium in Newfoundland, New Jersey, and at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan; she had worked as a cook at both places. Mallon was at last found in a suburban home in Westchester county, New York, and was returned to North Brother Island, where she remained for the rest of her life. A paralytic stroke in 1932 led to her slow death six years later.
Mallon claimed to have been born in the United States, but it was later determined that she was an immigrant. In all, 51 original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attr
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If she were alive today and eligible to vote, I guarantee you she would be a Trumper. She was just trying to live her life and earn an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. But all these busy body bureaucrats--with nothing else to do--make up outrageous stories about her just to justify sucking off the public teet for a few more paychecks.1915 American domestic Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was placed under a quarantine on North Brother Island, New York City, that lasted until her death in 1938; a typhoid carrier, she was allegedly responsible for multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary (born September 23, 1869, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland—died November 11, 1938, North Brother Island, Bronx, New York, U.S.) was an infamous typhoid carrier who allegedly gave rise to multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Mary Mallon immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mallon worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after she began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mallon had disappeared.
Typhoid Mary Mary Mallon (left), known as Typhoid Mary, in quarantine on North Brother Island, New York City, early 20th century.
In 1906, after 6 people in a household of 11 where Mallon had worked in Oyster Bay, New York, became sick with typhoid, the home’s owners hired New York City Department of Health sanitary engineer George Soper, whose specialty was studying typhoid fever epidemics, to investigate the outbreak. Other investigators were brought in as well and concluded that the outbreak likely had been caused by contaminated water. Mallon continued to work as a cook, moving from household to household until 1907, when she resurfaced working in a Park Avenue home in Manhattan. The winter of that year, following an outbreak in the Manhattan household that involved a death from the disease, Soper met with Mallon. He subsequently linked all 22 cases of typhoid fever that had been recorded in New York City and the Long Island area to her.
Again Mallon fled, but authorities led by Soper finally overtook her and had her committed to an isolation centre on North Brother Island, part of the Bronx, New York. There she stayed, despite an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, until 1910, when the health department released her on condition that she never again accept employment that involved the handling of food.
Four years later Soper began looking for Mallon again when an epidemic broke out at a sanatorium in Newfoundland, New Jersey, and at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan; she had worked as a cook at both places. Mallon was at last found in a suburban home in Westchester county, New York, and was returned to North Brother Island, where she remained for the rest of her life. A paralytic stroke in 1932 led to her slow death six years later.
Mallon claimed to have been born in the United States, but it was later determined that she was an immigrant. In all, 51 original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attr
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1979 At 4:00 am an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.
Three Mile Island accident, accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station that was the most serious in the history of the American nuclear power industry. The Three Mile Island power station was named after the island on which it was situated in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa. At 4:00 am on March 28, an automatically operated valve in the Unit 2 reactor mistakenly closed, shutting off the water supply to the main feedwater system (the system that transfers heat from the water actually circulating in the reactor core). This caused the reactor core to shut down automatically, but a series of equipment and instrument malfunctions, human errors in operating procedures, and mistaken decisions in the ensuing hours led to a serious loss of water coolant from the reactor core and a partial core meltdown. As a result, the core was partially exposed, and the zirconium cladding of its fuel reacted with the surrounding superheated steam to form a large accumulation of hydrogen gas, some of which escaped from the core into the containment vessel of the reactor building. Very little of this and other radioactive gases actually escaped into the atmosphere, and they did not constitute a threat to the health of the surrounding population. In the following days adequate coolant water circulation in the core was restored.
Three Mile Island accident, accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station that was the most serious in the history of the American nuclear power industry. The Three Mile Island power station was named after the island on which it was situated in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa. At 4:00 am on March 28, an automatically operated valve in the Unit 2 reactor mistakenly closed, shutting off the water supply to the main feedwater system (the system that transfers heat from the water actually circulating in the reactor core). This caused the reactor core to shut down automatically, but a series of equipment and instrument malfunctions, human errors in operating procedures, and mistaken decisions in the ensuing hours led to a serious loss of water coolant from the reactor core and a partial core meltdown. As a result, the core was partially exposed, and the zirconium cladding of its fuel reacted with the surrounding superheated steam to form a large accumulation of hydrogen gas, some of which escaped from the core into the containment vessel of the reactor building. Very little of this and other radioactive gases actually escaped into the atmosphere, and they did not constitute a threat to the health of the surrounding population. In the following days adequate coolant water circulation in the core was restored.
donbosco
Inconceivable Member
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"Körner’s Folly is the architectural wonder and home of artist and designer Jule Gilmer Körner. Built in 1880 in Kernersville, North Carolina, the house originally served to display his interior design portfolio. Visitors can now explore the 22 room house museum and its unique original furnishings and artwork, cast-plaster details, carved woodwork, and elaborate hand laid tile."
Körner’s Folly was opened to the public on March 28, 1880. I've long wanted to visit but never have.
kornersfolly.org
Körner’s Folly was opened to the public on March 28, 1880. I've long wanted to visit but never have.
Home - Körner's Folly
“Don’t want to land on no Three Mile Island.1979 At 4:00 am an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.
Three Mile Island accident, accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station that was the most serious in the history of the American nuclear power industry. The Three Mile Island power station was named after the island on which it was situated in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa. At 4:00 am on March 28, an automatically operated valve in the Unit 2 reactor mistakenly closed, shutting off the water supply to the main feedwater system (the system that transfers heat from the water actually circulating in the reactor core). This caused the reactor core to shut down automatically, but a series of equipment and instrument malfunctions, human errors in operating procedures, and mistaken decisions in the ensuing hours led to a serious loss of water coolant from the reactor core and a partial core meltdown. As a result, the core was partially exposed, and the zirconium cladding of its fuel reacted with the surrounding superheated steam to form a large accumulation of hydrogen gas, some of which escaped from the core into the containment vessel of the reactor building. Very little of this and other radioactive gases actually escaped into the atmosphere, and they did not constitute a threat to the health of the surrounding population. In the following days adequate coolant water circulation in the core was restored.
Don’t want to see my skin aglow.” -
Jimmy Buffett
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The TVA nuclear plant accident at the Brown's Ferry plant in Alabama in 1975 happened when some electricians were checking for leaks in a conduit with a candle. When they flame would flicker, they would know there was a leak that needed to fixed. However, at one leak, there was a vacuum and the leak sucked the flame from the candle into the conduit where it ignited the insulation surrounding the wiring. The regular and emergency control wiring were in the same conduit and control over Unit 1 was lost due to the burning insulation. CO2 was used to extinguish the fire in the conduit. But as soon as the CO2 concentration dropped the residual heat in the conduit would restart the fire. The local fire chief pleaded with the plant manager, a Navy nuclear veteran, to let him spray water on the conduit to take away the heat so the fire would not restart. The plant manager dismissed the suggestion as absurd because "everyone knows" you never spray water on an electrical fire. By "everyone" what the plant manager meant was Navy veterans who operated in salt water and knew to never spray salt water on an electrical fire. The local fire chief however was not proposing to spray salt water on the fire, but fresh water, which was all he had and is not a conductor. The Navy veteran plant manager would not listen and a disaster far worse than what actually happened was narrowly averted. The Navy veteran plant manager who refused to let the local fire chief put out the fire early on was punished by TVA by being promoted to the manager of TVA's entire nuclear division. When I interviewed with TVA, I was taken on a tour of the TVA nuclear training center at the Sequoia Nuclear Facility in Soddy-Daisy, TN. A mock-up of all the TVA nuclear plant control rooms were in this training center. After we had been walked through on the training rooms during the visit, we were asked if anyone had any questions. I raised my hand and asked, "In the Brown's Ferry control room, there was a glass box on the wall that contains a candle and a sign that read, 'In case of emergency, break glass.' What does that mean?" The director of the training center leaned over to his assistant and said in a falsetto voice, "Get his name."
superrific
Legend of ZZL
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Man I like GSH so much better as a poet than a soul singer.
donbosco
Inconceivable Member
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- 2,708
Double-Posting This one here and in UNC Basketball History.
#OTD (March 30) in 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot. Vice President George H.W. Bush immediately headed back to Washington D.C. from Texas by plane. In the meantime, Secretary of State Alexander Haig met with the Press and announced that, “I, Al Haig, am in control at the White House.” Thankfully he was badly mistaken, showing a lack of knowledge of the Constitution, and was never ‘in control.’ Though the 25th Amendment to the Constitution has recently been much discussed, on that day it was not invoked.
UNC was set to play Indiana that evening for the National Championship but until Reagan emerged from surgery in stable condition the game was in doubt. White House Press Secretary James Brady was graveky injured, never to fully recover. When the doctors signaled that the president would survive and was not even badly wounded, the game was played. The starters for Carolina were Al Wood, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Jimmy Black, and Mike Pepper. Matt Doherty, Jimmy Braddock, Chris Brust, Pete Budko, and Eric Kenny also played. Wood was the leading scorer with 18, Perkins grabbed 8 rebounds, and Black dished out 6 assists. Isaiah Thomas had 23 points and 5 assists for Indiana.
The Hoosiers won 63-50.
At that point in his 19 year long head coaching career Dean Smith had yet to win a National Championship. His coaching opponent that night, Bobby Knight had captured a title five years previously, winning in 1976. I have never been a fan of Bobby Knight. I can respect that his players graduated. Something apparently motivated him away from corruption as well. Just the same, the sentiments that he so frankly expressed over the years and the acts that worldview drove him to commit have always been, in the main, repulsive to me.
So many of his performances over the years were juvenile and mean-spirited. After the conclusion of his coaching career at Texas Tech in 2008 he continued to speak his mind in public venues and in 2016 and 2020 was a vocal backer of Donald Trump. At one point he was the winningest head coach in the college game and passed Coach Smith to reach that milestone. He begat the equally foul-mouthed coach in Durham, Mike Krzyzewski, who currently tallies the most wins on the court.
My apologies if my views on this offend you. I won’t be swayed so do not try. I have heard many suggest that Coach Smith and Knight were friends but I have long searched for evidence and have only found them to be acquaintances. More recently I have heard of more evidence that they were indeed friends. If true then that is yet another tribute to Coach Smith’s Christian character. Both men acknowledged one-another’s coaching prowess.
I felt this way about Knight before 1981 by the way, and his behavior in the subsequent 43 years up to his passing on 11/1/23 have only worked to heighten my disgust. If you know me you’ve either heard this or are not surprised. I’ve always kind of wished that contest had been postponed but it was played and UNC lost. I have poured over the sources in search of how the respective locker rooms dealt with that period of uncertainty after the shooting over both Reagan’s survival and, of course, whether the game would be played that evening. I have yet to find any satisfying account - I will keep looking.
I know Coach Smith was a man of faith and right mindset and suspect that any locker room discussion would have reflected that as it also did on the court. An attempted murder of a global leader had happened and as the day progressed that person’s life hung in the balance. Reagan emerged from surgery at 6:20 and despite an earlier dire prognosis he was declared ‘out of danger.’ The game proceeded as scheduled. It was quite a day — and night.
Knight’s Hoosiers won. That Carolina team, minus senior starters Al Wood and Mike Pepper, added a young Wilmingtonian the next year and emerged victorious over Georgetown giving Coach Smith his first National Championship.
#OTD (March 30) in 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot. Vice President George H.W. Bush immediately headed back to Washington D.C. from Texas by plane. In the meantime, Secretary of State Alexander Haig met with the Press and announced that, “I, Al Haig, am in control at the White House.” Thankfully he was badly mistaken, showing a lack of knowledge of the Constitution, and was never ‘in control.’ Though the 25th Amendment to the Constitution has recently been much discussed, on that day it was not invoked.
UNC was set to play Indiana that evening for the National Championship but until Reagan emerged from surgery in stable condition the game was in doubt. White House Press Secretary James Brady was graveky injured, never to fully recover. When the doctors signaled that the president would survive and was not even badly wounded, the game was played. The starters for Carolina were Al Wood, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Jimmy Black, and Mike Pepper. Matt Doherty, Jimmy Braddock, Chris Brust, Pete Budko, and Eric Kenny also played. Wood was the leading scorer with 18, Perkins grabbed 8 rebounds, and Black dished out 6 assists. Isaiah Thomas had 23 points and 5 assists for Indiana.
The Hoosiers won 63-50.
At that point in his 19 year long head coaching career Dean Smith had yet to win a National Championship. His coaching opponent that night, Bobby Knight had captured a title five years previously, winning in 1976. I have never been a fan of Bobby Knight. I can respect that his players graduated. Something apparently motivated him away from corruption as well. Just the same, the sentiments that he so frankly expressed over the years and the acts that worldview drove him to commit have always been, in the main, repulsive to me.
So many of his performances over the years were juvenile and mean-spirited. After the conclusion of his coaching career at Texas Tech in 2008 he continued to speak his mind in public venues and in 2016 and 2020 was a vocal backer of Donald Trump. At one point he was the winningest head coach in the college game and passed Coach Smith to reach that milestone. He begat the equally foul-mouthed coach in Durham, Mike Krzyzewski, who currently tallies the most wins on the court.
My apologies if my views on this offend you. I won’t be swayed so do not try. I have heard many suggest that Coach Smith and Knight were friends but I have long searched for evidence and have only found them to be acquaintances. More recently I have heard of more evidence that they were indeed friends. If true then that is yet another tribute to Coach Smith’s Christian character. Both men acknowledged one-another’s coaching prowess.
I felt this way about Knight before 1981 by the way, and his behavior in the subsequent 43 years up to his passing on 11/1/23 have only worked to heighten my disgust. If you know me you’ve either heard this or are not surprised. I’ve always kind of wished that contest had been postponed but it was played and UNC lost. I have poured over the sources in search of how the respective locker rooms dealt with that period of uncertainty after the shooting over both Reagan’s survival and, of course, whether the game would be played that evening. I have yet to find any satisfying account - I will keep looking.
I know Coach Smith was a man of faith and right mindset and suspect that any locker room discussion would have reflected that as it also did on the court. An attempted murder of a global leader had happened and as the day progressed that person’s life hung in the balance. Reagan emerged from surgery at 6:20 and despite an earlier dire prognosis he was declared ‘out of danger.’ The game proceeded as scheduled. It was quite a day — and night.
Knight’s Hoosiers won. That Carolina team, minus senior starters Al Wood and Mike Pepper, added a young Wilmingtonian the next year and emerged victorious over Georgetown giving Coach Smith his first National Championship.
- Messages
- 18,309
1979 At 4:00 am an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.
Three Mile Island accident, accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station that was the most serious in the history of the American nuclear power industry. The Three Mile Island power station was named after the island on which it was situated in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa. At 4:00 am on March 28, an automatically operated valve in the Unit 2 reactor mistakenly closed, shutting off the water supply to the main feedwater system (the system that transfers heat from the water actually circulating in the reactor core). This caused the reactor core to shut down automatically, but a series of equipment and instrument malfunctions, human errors in operating procedures, and mistaken decisions in the ensuing hours led to a serious loss of water coolant from the reactor core and a partial core meltdown. As a result, the core was partially exposed, and the zirconium cladding of its fuel reacted with the surrounding superheated steam to form a large accumulation of hydrogen gas, some of which escaped from the core into the containment vessel of the reactor building. Very little of this and other radioactive gases actually escaped into the atmosphere, and they did not constitute a threat to the health of the surrounding population. In the following days adequate coolant water circulation in the core was restored.
Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island
A once-shuttered nuclear plant could soon return to the grid.
Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island
A once-shuttered nuclear plant could soon return to the grid.
[Unit 2, which suffered the partial meltdown, will not be reactivated]
“… But the site, in Pennsylvania, is also home to another reactor—Unit 1, which consistently and safely generated electricity for decades until it was shut down in 2019. The site’s owner announced last week that it has plans to reopen the plant and signed a deal with Microsoft. The company will purchase the plant’s entire electric generating capacity over the next 20 years.
… Eventually, though, the plant faced economic struggles. Even though it was operating at relatively high efficiency and with low costs, it was driven out of business by record low prices for natural gas and the introduction of relatively cheap, subsidized renewable energy to the grid, says Patrick White, research director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. …”
- Messages
- 18,309
I recall Dan Rather immediately calling out the Haig statement …Double-Posting This one here and in UNC Basketball History.
#OTD (March 30) in 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot. Vice President George H.W. Bush immediately headed back to Washington D.C. from Texas by plane. In the meantime, Secretary of State Alexander Haig met with the Press and announced that, “I, Al Haig, am in control at the White House.” Thankfully he was badly mistaken, showing a lack of knowledge of the Constitution, and was never ‘in control.’ Though the 25th Amendment to the Constitution has recently been much discussed, on that day it was not invoked.
UNC was set to play Indiana that evening for the National Championship but until Reagan emerged from surgery in stable condition the game was in doubt. White House Press Secretary James Brady was graveky injured, never to fully recover. When the doctors signaled that the president would survive and was not even badly wounded, the game was played. The starters for Carolina were Al Wood, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Jimmy Black, and Mike Pepper. Matt Doherty, Jimmy Braddock, Chris Brust, Pete Budko, and Eric Kenny also played. Wood was the leading scorer with 18, Perkins grabbed 8 rebounds, and Black dished out 6 assists. Isaiah Thomas had 23 points and 5 assists for Indiana.
The Hoosiers won 63-50.
At that point in his 19 year long head coaching career Dean Smith had yet to win a National Championship. His coaching opponent that night, Bobby Knight had captured a title five years previously, winning in 1976. I have never been a fan of Bobby Knight. I can respect that his players graduated. Something apparently motivated him away from corruption as well. Just the same, the sentiments that he so frankly expressed over the years and the acts that worldview drove him to commit have always been, in the main, repulsive to me.
So many of his performances over the years were juvenile and mean-spirited. After the conclusion of his coaching career at Texas Tech in 2008 he continued to speak his mind in public venues and in 2016 and 2020 was a vocal backer of Donald Trump. At one point he was the winningest head coach in the college game and passed Coach Smith to reach that milestone. He begat the equally foul-mouthed coach in Durham, Mike Krzyzewski, who currently tallies the most wins on the court.
My apologies if my views on this offend you. I won’t be swayed so do not try. I have heard many suggest that Coach Smith and Knight were friends but I have long searched for evidence and have only found them to be acquaintances. More recently I have heard of more evidence that they were indeed friends. If true then that is yet another tribute to Coach Smith’s Christian character. Both men acknowledged one-another’s coaching prowess.
I felt this way about Knight before 1981 by the way, and his behavior in the subsequent 43 years up to his passing on 11/1/23 have only worked to heighten my disgust. If you know me you’ve either heard this or are not surprised. I’ve always kind of wished that contest had been postponed but it was played and UNC lost. I have poured over the sources in search of how the respective locker rooms dealt with that period of uncertainty after the shooting over both Reagan’s survival and, of course, whether the game would be played that evening. I have yet to find any satisfying account - I will keep looking.
I know Coach Smith was a man of faith and right mindset and suspect that any locker room discussion would have reflected that as it also did on the court. An attempted murder of a global leader had happened and as the day progressed that person’s life hung in the balance. Reagan emerged from surgery at 6:20 and despite an earlier dire prognosis he was declared ‘out of danger.’ The game proceeded as scheduled. It was quite a day — and night.
Knight’s Hoosiers won. That Carolina team, minus senior starters Al Wood and Mike Pepper, added a young Wilmingtonian the next year and emerged victorious over Georgetown giving Coach Smith his first National Championship.
nashcounty
Distinguished Member
- Messages
- 251
Vincent van Gogh was born March 30, 1853
I’m googling and trying to find a political cartoon from 1981 following Reagan’s near assassination.
The cartoon shows Al Haig running in front of the White House leaping over a bush.
donbosco
Inconceivable Member
- Messages
- 2,708
Y'all remember Saunders Hall? On April 2, 1891 the namesake for that campus building (Geography and Religion) died. He is buried at Calvary Church Cemetery in Tarboro, NC.
His tombstone reads: "William Lawrence Saunders SOLDIER-EDITOR-HISTORIAN-STATESMAN PATRIOT Col. 46 Regiment N. C. Troops Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage For 20 years he exerted more Power in North Carolina than any other man 'I decline to answer'"
That final part of his epitaph is related to his response before a congressional investigation into KKK activity in North Carolina. Saunders was the Klan's leader in the state.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Col William Lawrence Saunders (1835-1891) – Find...
The following is the actual text from the Find-a-Grave Website: "Statesman; Editor; Historian Colonel William Lawrence Saunders served as Secretary of the State of North Carolina during the Reconstruction era (1879-1891). During his tenure, he was arrested in his office in Raleigh and brought before the US Senate for questioning regarding his alleged connection to Ku Klux Klan activities in North Carolina. Saunders was the first person ever to invoke his Fifth Ammendment right to refuse to answer questions that could incriminate him during a US Senate investigation. "I decline to answer" is carved on his tombstone as are the words "For 20 years he exerted more power in North Carolina than any other man" also "Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage" which is generally understood to be a reference to his years of leadership with the Ku Klux Klan rather than his tenure as NC Secretary of State. Saunders was also on the UNC board of trustees and a co-founder of the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper. He graduated from The University of North Carolina in 1854; in 1922 the building that houses Religious Studies and the Geography department - Saunders Hall- was named after him. Although minority students have staged protests in recent years asking that the name be changed - the University of North Carolina is refusing on the grounds that history cannot be changed; only studied with an eye towards better understanding in the future.
*** The UNC-Chapel Hill building named for Saunders has been changed to Carolina Hall, c. 2015. William L. Saunders (1835-1891) and Carolina Hall · Names Across the Landscape · Carolina Story: Virtual Museum of University History "
His tombstone reads: "William Lawrence Saunders SOLDIER-EDITOR-HISTORIAN-STATESMAN PATRIOT Col. 46 Regiment N. C. Troops Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage For 20 years he exerted more Power in North Carolina than any other man 'I decline to answer'"
That final part of his epitaph is related to his response before a congressional investigation into KKK activity in North Carolina. Saunders was the Klan's leader in the state.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Col William Lawrence Saunders (1835-1891) – Find...
The following is the actual text from the Find-a-Grave Website: "Statesman; Editor; Historian Colonel William Lawrence Saunders served as Secretary of the State of North Carolina during the Reconstruction era (1879-1891). During his tenure, he was arrested in his office in Raleigh and brought before the US Senate for questioning regarding his alleged connection to Ku Klux Klan activities in North Carolina. Saunders was the first person ever to invoke his Fifth Ammendment right to refuse to answer questions that could incriminate him during a US Senate investigation. "I decline to answer" is carved on his tombstone as are the words "For 20 years he exerted more power in North Carolina than any other man" also "Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage" which is generally understood to be a reference to his years of leadership with the Ku Klux Klan rather than his tenure as NC Secretary of State. Saunders was also on the UNC board of trustees and a co-founder of the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper. He graduated from The University of North Carolina in 1854; in 1922 the building that houses Religious Studies and the Geography department - Saunders Hall- was named after him. Although minority students have staged protests in recent years asking that the name be changed - the University of North Carolina is refusing on the grounds that history cannot be changed; only studied with an eye towards better understanding in the future.
*** The UNC-Chapel Hill building named for Saunders has been changed to Carolina Hall, c. 2015. William L. Saunders (1835-1891) and Carolina Hall · Names Across the Landscape · Carolina Story: Virtual Museum of University History "
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