Hashtag History

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the case of Sylvester Davis and Andrea Perez, a couple from Los Angeles, California, who were denied a marriage license in 1948 on account of the fact that Davis was African American and Perez was Mexican American (though, at the time, this categorized her as white). They sued and eventually won on the grounds that the state’s ban on interracial marriage directly violated the protections provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.Perez v. Sharp laid the groundwork both for Loving v. Virginia, the federal case that legalized interracial marriage, but it also laid the groundwork for Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing Mary Edmonia Lewis. Lewis was a sculptor who went on to become the first African American and Native American to achieve international recognition.This will come as no surprise that Lewis, as both a woman AND as a Black woman, faced obstacle after obstacle in achieving such success. One such incident was when she was put on trial for and eventually kicked out of college on charges that she had poisoned her white roommates. After this, she moved to Boston where many white artists appreciated and funded her artwork while talking behind her back about how she was essentially just a token of the abolitionist movement. She eventually left the United States, moving to Rome, Italy, where she joined a vibrant community of expatriate artists. Here, she became a well-known sculptor who – unlike so many others in her profession – refused the help of assistants so that no one could ever claim that her work was not her own. Since her passing in 1907, she has gained more recognition with some of her pieces on display at the Smithsonian. But Lewis still does not receive the full recognition and acknowledgment she should, and so I’m so excited to introduce you all to her today.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the Red Summer and the 1919 Race Riots. These were a series of violent riots that took place during the summer of 1919 – some of the most notable being in Chicago, Washington DC, and Omaha – as a result of particularly high racial tensions in the United States at the time. These riots, lasting over a series of months, became known as the Red Summer because of how much blood was shed in such a short period of time.We are of course going to discuss what all of those factors were (The Great Migration, the return of Black World War I veterans being treated like shit after serving the country, segregation, and so on and so forth). The factors that were most poignant in the Summer of 1919 were multiple likely-false allegations of sexual assault by Black men against white women. In Chicago in particular, the moment that ignited the fire that summer took place on July 27th when a seventeen-year-old Black boy was swimming in Lake Michigan. He floated across the invisible line (one that didn’t exist outside of fake social constructs) that divided the white side of the beach from the Black side of the beach. When he did this, a white man threw a rock at him, eventually causing him to drown. Do I need to tell you that the white man wasn’t arrested for the boy’s murder?As a result, a week-long riot broke out in Chicago, leading to the deaths of 38 people, more than five hundred people injured, and more than 1,000 Black residents losing their homes. And that’s just in Chicago—that isn’t even touching on the other riots that took place that summer in Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and more.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the political ideology of America First. This is the concept that America needs to prioritize America—our domestic interests above those of other nations. And, in theory, that sounds like a good idea, right? Putting American families and the American economy first, not engaging in foreign conflicts are participating in international treaties that don’t directly benefit the US. But this philosophy also comes with a lot of criticism too: It weakens international alliances. When we need help, who is coming to save us when we have burned all our bridges? Through tariffs and trade wars, depending solely on domestic goods becomes more expensive for the American people. And then, of course, there are the historical parallels to times in the past when the US – so focused on the US – made the decision to allow fascism to thrive abroad. And, when we exclude ourselves so much from foreign nations, what reason would they have to intervene in our affairs when we are being taken over by fascism? In a quote from Sarah Churchwell, author of the book Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “the American Dream” - she said, “What may seem at first glance merely a patriotic or nationalistic slogan – one that implies economic protectionism – in fact has a much longer and darker history in American political discourse than many people realize." And that is the history we will be getting into this week.While we will of course explore the philosophy of America First this week, our primary focus will be on that long and dark history behind the phrase. Its early roots in McKinley in the late-1800s and his tariff policy, in Wilson’s reelection campaign in 1916 about keeping America out of World War I, in 1940 with the Founding of the America First Committee (which boasted prominent members like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford), and then, of course, in 2016 and again in 2024 with the Trump Administrations’ focus on border security, foreign relations, tariffs, and burning our alliances with foreign nations.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, an American pathologist who was once highlighted on the cover of Time Magazine as THE “Cancer Fighter." He served as director of the Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research, the first director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and did groundbreaking research for the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research.But that’s not why we’re talking about ol’ Corny today. No, we are talking about him because, in 1932, he was exposed by a letter he had written the year prior while working in clinical research in Puerto Rico. In this letter, he wrote that he considered Puerto Ricans to be “beyond doubt the laziest, most degenerate, and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere.” But, oh, wait. It gets so much worse. He continues in this letter to say, “What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more.” But wait…there’s more…that we will get to later in the episode.Despite this horrendously racist and alarming language/admission, Rhoads of course went on to receive several awards, such as the Legion of Merit, several honorary doctorates, and a Memorial Award in his honor through the American Association for Cancer Research (though this one was renamed in 2002 after his awful 1931 letter recirculated). We should also mention that his research was instrumental in helping the US Army develop chemical weapons during World War II.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the 2000 Presidential Election Recount, also known as Bush v. Gore, since this case did go all the way up to the Supreme Court who was ultimately responsible for making the landmark decision about who would become the president of the United States that fateful year. Why did this election go all the way up to the Supreme Court? Well, that would be because the results of the 2000 presidential election in the State of Florida showed that Republican nominee George W. Bush had beat Democrat nominee Al Gore by a mere 537 votes (537 votes across the whole state!!!), automatically triggering a recount due to how close those results were. Al Gore requested a manual recount due to several irregularities across counties in Florida about which ballots were considered valid and which were not. He only requested this of some counties though, causing the Supreme Court to take the case and decide that the manual recounts should be halted because – by their logic – targeting specific counties disenfranchised voters. Gore was forced to concede Florida to Bush and, with that, Bush – who did not win the popular vote – received the required electoral votes and became the 43rd President of the United States. This was not decided, however, until December 12th of that year. The results of the presidential election were not known until thirty-five days after Election Day!There is so much more than all of that to talk about. Like the fact that – oh, I don’t know – the Governor of Florida at the time was Bush’s brother. Or the fact that the Supreme Court explicitly said in their final decision that this case was not to be applied to any future cases and should not be used as precedent. Which, like, isn’t that the point of the US Supreme Court? To set precedent?Join us to learn all about all of that and so much more!Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

We are back for Season Eighteen and, as tradition dictates, it is a Leah Takeover Episode!This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing Howard Hughes and Project Azorian. I think a lot of people know who Hughes was -- or, at least, recognize the name -- and know that he was an American aviator, film producer, oil tycoon, and millionaire (yes, one man CAN be all of those things at once, apparently).This week, we'll be doing a synopsis of who he was (because he lived a pretty crazy and interesting life), but then we will hone in on a very specific part of his story: Project Azorian, a US CIA covert operation that took place in 1974, in which Hughes’ name, legacy, and eccentricity was used as a cover to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean. Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History for our Season Seventeen Finale, we are joined author and historian John Garrison Marks as he tells us all about his latest book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy with Slavery and the Fight for American Legacy. We had a great conversation about Americans’ struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery and how we navigate those complexities as we move forward.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. On March 30, 1981, President of the United States Ronald Reagan was shot outside of the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, as he was leaving a speaking engagement. He was shot by a man named John Hinckley, Jr., a twenty-five year old man who had fallen in love with actress Jodie Foster after seeing her in the movie, Taxi Driver (which she starred in when she was twelve-years-old), and believed that if he successfully killed the President, that she would be impressed.Reagan was actually seriously injured during this attempt. When he was thrown into his limousine by his servicemen, they originally thought he had just broken a rib or something and that’s why he was experiencing chest pain. But they discovered after he reached the hospital – where he collapsed – that Hinckley had successfully hit him with a bullet that had come within an inch of his heart. He miraculously recovered and was released a few weeks later.As for his would-be assassin, he was found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity and was sent to a psychiatric hospital…that he was actually released from in 2021…so yes, he is out and about…so that’s great.I don’t want to spend this whole episode talking about just Reagan and Hinckley though because, one of the major pieces of this story that so many people neglect to tell, is that several of Reagan’s staffers and local policemen were also wounded during the assassination attempt including White House press secretary James Brady who was hit in the head and, as a result, suffered from brain damage for the rest of his life. It’s actually because of Brady and his wife that we have the Brady Law (or, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993) which established federal background checks on firearms and a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the second part of the Watergate Scandal. In last week's episode, we left off with the White House Plumbers that Nixon had recruited to serve as his secret task force to stop any potential leaks—not actual plumbing leaks, but leaks like the 7,000 pages of Pentagon Papers that exposed just how much the US Government had been lying to the American people about our involvement in the Vietnam War. Where we left off with last week’s episode was Nixon getting increasingly paranoid about being exposed, about perhaps not getting re-elected to the presidency, and about damaging his reputation. And so he became hell-bent and willing to go to extreme lengths to ensure that did not happen.In this week’s episode, we are officially going to be discussing Watergate: the details of the actual operation to wiretap the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, the investigative journalism that exposed this all, the cover up, the federal investigations, the Supreme Court’s involvement, and then, of course, talks of impeachment and Nixon’s official resignation…the only president in American history to ever resign….because you can do that.Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch!You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!You can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!THANKS FOR LISTENING!- Rachel and LeahEditor: Alex PerezCopyright: The Hashtag History Podcast