“Wouldn’t y’all vote for me to be president? That’s right, I can’t make it no worse! If Elizabeth can run England, I can run America. What has she got that I didn’t use to have and can’t get again, that’s what I want to know.” ““ Moms Mabley
Author: tart.
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Badass Ladies of History: Marion Wong
In 1916, 21-year-old Marion Wong wrote, directed, and produced the first film by a Chinese American and one of the first by a woman. The Curse of Quon Gwon, the story of Chinese American lovers cursed by the god of war and wealth, abandoned Hollywood stereotypes in favor of more realistic portrayals of Americans of […]
Editor’s note: We’re dusting off a few pieces from the archives this week in honor of APA Heritage Month. Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was born in Canton, China in 1904 and immigrated to the United States in 1921 to live with her father and study music. One afternoon soon after her arrival, Cheung’s father took […]
Editor’s Note: In honor of APA Heritage Month, we’re re-running a couple of our older pieces you may have missed. In the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which created military zones covering one-third of the nation. At the behest of nativist groups, opportunistic politicans, and […]
I love Myrna Loy. It started with the Thin Man films, a series of murder mysteries starring William Powell as a private detective named Nick Charles and Loy as his wife, Nora. Nick was very much the typical 1930s film male: dapper, quick-witted, drunk, and sexist. Rather than accept her husband’s conduct, Nora cut through […]
Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was born in Canton, China in 1904 and immigrated to the United States in 1921 to live with her father and study music. One afternoon soon after her arrival, Cheung’s father took her to an airfield to teach her to drive a car. Instead, she became enamored of the airplanes
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Badass Ladies of History: Jovita Idár
In the early 20th century, a teacher, a journalist, a nurse, an education reformer, and a political activist served the people of South Texas, teaching children who were shut out of public education, exposing law enforcement involvement in racial violence, organizing nurses for the Mexican Revolution, and protesting President Woodrow Wilson’s policies toward Mexico.
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Zitkala-Å a: Nom de Defiance
Forced to inhabit multiple worlds, Zitkala-Å a dedicated her life to art and activism, challenging authority and exposing corruption in a government that did not consider Native Americans worthy of raising their own children, preserving their own cultures, or accessing citizenship and legal rights.
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Miné Okubo: Citizen 13660
In the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which created military zones covering one-third of the nation. At the behest of nativist groups, opportunistic politicans, and military leaders, a series of presidential proclamations followed which defined Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants as “enemy aliens.”
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What “Loving,” And Loving, Are All About
Mildred Jeter was just 18 years old when she fell for Richard Loving, a 24-year-old bricklayer and friend of her older brothers. At the time, neither Richard, who was white, nor Mildred, who was of African American and Native American descent, realized that the state of Virginia banned interracial marriages.
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When Marian Anderson Sang Before Lincoln
Marian Anderson was a sensation, fresh from a European tour and booked for 70 solo concert dates in 1938 alone. Securing a venue for an Easter 1939 concert in Washington, DC should have been a formality.
Seventy-two years before Rosa Parks and the NAACP desegregated public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama, a 21-year-old teacher attempted to do the same in Tennessee ““ twice. You may have heard the name of Ida B. Wells Barnett, the journalist, suffragist, and founding member of the NAACP, but before she became one of the early twentieth […]
My first moments of self-awareness came in the 1980s – that I was a female-identified person, an intelligent person, a driven person, and a person who didn’t half mind being the center of attention. Those traits were not easy for a child in an evangelical southern family to navigate. Unaware of the possibilities of gender […]