1970s

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• 9/4/2022
  

  "Pour Myself a Cup of Ambition": The 1970s Echo in Today's Union Revival

  by Ellen Cassedy and Lane Windham

  This Labor Day, we’re hopeful about the renewed energy and excitement for workplace organizing—especially by women workers—and cautiously optimistic that today’s workers may overcome the sorts of corporate tactics that blocked organizing in the 1970s.

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  6/1/2022
  

  Adolph Reed, Jr.: North Carolina's "Soul City" Always Showed the Failings of Black Capitalism

  A new book looks at a planned Black-led city in North Carolina as a missed opportunity for establishing political and economic power; a left critic says the project proceeded from bad premises that liberation could be achieved through capitalism. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/1/2022
  

  Rescuing Shirley Chisholm's Life from Symbolism

  by Anastasia Curwood

  Writing a biography of the Congresswoman and presidential candidate required working through the distinction between Shirley Chisholm the symbol and the much more complex reality of Shirley Chisholm the woman, to see how big trends in Black history unfolded at a human scale.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/13/2022
  

  We Got a Great Big Convoy

  by Dan Albert

  The media obscured the reality of recent protests in Ottawa and Washington by unquestioningly adopting a mythology of the North American trucker drawn from the 1970s when independent truckers had real grievances.

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• SOURCE: Rolling Stone
  2/9/2022
  

  Betty Davis, Pioneering Queen of Funk, Dies at 77

  Her brief marriage to jazz great Miles Davis and ultimate withdrawal from the music business have overshadowed Betty Davis's legacy as a songwriter and performer with lasting influence beyond her album sales. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  1/28/2022
  

  The Four Secrets to Success for "Gonzo Journalism"

  by Peter Richardson

  Hunter S. Thompson's emergence as a major media figure came from the convergence of the souring of John F. Kennedy-style liberalism and collaborations with fellows like illustrator Ralph Steadman who launched HST's interpretive and visceral style as a critique of the Nixon years. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/14/2021
  

  Government Regulation is Necessary, but it has to be Smart

  by Paul Sabin

  Two legislative initiatives championed by the Carter administration show the challenge of balancing strong environmental regulation with administrative efficiency and accountability. The balance has, of course, been difficult to strike. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  11/6/2021
  

  Stanley George on Putting Viewers in the Middle of the Nation's Bloodiest Prison Rebellion

  "It’s like the window has been cracked a little bit, so that people who might never have thought to doubt law enforcement are doubting law enforcement now, and they’re thinking about their cruelty and racism in a way they might not have thought about it five years ago."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/1/2021
  

  New "Wonder Years" Revives a 1970s Tactic for Diversifying TV. Will it Work?

  by Kate L. Flach

  The technique of "racial inversion" was intended in the 1970s to encourage white viewers to empathize with Black characters. Today, as then, the results show that TV alone can't bridge the nation's racial divisions. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  98/15/2021
  

  Edsall: Abortion Has Always Been Part of Broader Politics

  Thomas Edsall draws on the work of historians Katherine Stewart, Randall Balmer, Jefferson Cowie and Darren Dochuk, plus other scholars, to argue that the "right to life" movement grew from the movement of resistance to school integration and today is sustained by politics of masculinity. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/15/2021
  

  The 70s are Back, But Not How You Think

  by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff

  "In the coronavirus era, disco themes resonate. People long for community and wonder if leaders have our backs. Social media offers some of the trappings that defined disco — from the clothes to the allure of being seen in a new way."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/6/2021
  

  Dawn Turner Looks Back on Her ’70s Girlhood, and Those Who Got Left Behind

  "In episodic chapters that read like self-contained short stories woven together into a whole, Turner seeks to understand how three Black girls with very similar aspirations ended up with wildly divergent fates."

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/9/2021
  

  Blue Collar Is a Dark Masterpiece of Working-Class Cinema

  The 1978 film "Blue Collar" is an important but overlooked document of a moment of crisis for the American working class. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  7/23/2021
  

  Revisiting the 1976 Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping

  The ordeal of 26 children and their school bus driver in California's San Joaquin Valley highlighted the conflicts between rural California and the state's urban centers, class conflict, and the rising fear of crime in 1976. 

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• SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
  7/26/2021
  

  The People’s Bicentennial Commission and the Spirit of (19)76

  by Jason Tebbe

  As the national bicentennial approached, a group of New Left activists formed the People's Bicentennial Commission and adopted the symbols of the nation's founding to challenge the domination of the rich.

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  2/16/2021
  

  How White Liberals Destroyed the 1970s’ Soul City

  by Brentin Mock

  The new book "Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia," by Seton Hall Law School professor Thomas Healy, explores the history of how and why Floyd McKissick’s experiment came to be, and its unceremonious end. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/7//2020
  

  Getting to Freedom City (Review)

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  Historian Robin Kelley reviews Mike Davis and Jon Weiner's "Set the Night on Fire," which chronicles the growth of resistance to inequality and miltarized policing in 1960s Los Angeles.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  7/21/2020
  

  ‘In a Perfectly Just Republic,’ Bella Abzug – Born a Century Ago – Would Have Been President

  by Pamela S. Nadell

  A warrior for every social justice movement of her day, Bella Savitzky Abzug stood on the front lines protesting injustices that still roil this nation.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/1/2020
  

  The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican (Review)

  Clyde Haberman reviews David Paul Kuhn's "The Hardhat Riot" which proves heated social divisions--stoked and exploited by politicians--are nothing new. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/obituaries/vale
  

  Overlooked No More: Valerie Solanas, Radical Feminist Who Shot Andy Warhol

  Solanas was a radical feminist (though she would say she loathed most feminists), a pioneering queer theorist (at least according to some) and the author of “SCUM Manifesto,” in which she argued for the wholesale extermination of men.