Pageant Magazine – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

War Memorials Don’t Have to be Ugly
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

Robert Moses (1888 – 1981) was an American urban planner who worked as the New York City Parks Commissioner between 1934 and 1960. During the Second World War his phone was ringing off the hook:

“All over the country plans are being hatched for war memorials. Demands upon public officials for space in parks and public places are daily becoming more insistent. [But] if truth be told, most gestures of patriotism are pathetic, third-rate, inadequate [and] ugly…”

The Lincoln Blood Line Ends
(Pageant Magazine, 1963)

Here is an account of the painful life of Robert Todd Lincoln (1843 – 1926), the only son of President Abraham Lincoln:

“He witnessed the death of his father, the untimely deaths of his three brothers, the mental deterioration of his mother and the passing of his own 17-year-old son, who was the last hope for carrying on the Lincoln name.”

Click here to read about General Grant’s son.

Black Racism
(Pageant Magazine, 1969)

During the closing months of the tempestuous Sixties, American baseball legend Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972) wrote about his fears in regards to the racist hatreds that existed within the hearts of a handful of the most vociferous Black radicals.

California Farm Labor
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

With the bad old days that spanned that period between October, 1929 through August, 1945 seen only in the rear view mirror, many Americans began to enjoy the high life that came with the booming post-war economy – a buying spree that wouldn’t slow until the mid Seventies. In the midst of so much plenty American magazines began to run articles about some of the folks who weren’t partaking in all the fun, and this article is a fine example – it is about the 2,000,000 white people who toiled in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Thirteen years later they would be outsourced by a labor pool willing to work for even less money.

… They get no unemployment insurance. They get no social security benefits. The law does not, in the main, protect them.

Click here to read about the horrendous living conditions of 1940s migrant workers…

Click here to read about the tremendous hardships that fell upon the fertile San Joaquin Valley in 1937…

Modern Political Advertising
(Pageant Magazine, 1970)

The Selling of the President is about the role of television in the Republican efforts to elect Richard Nixon president in the 1968 election. Written over forty years ago by Joe McGinnis (1942 – 2014), the book was an instant classic as it addressed the matter of packaging a candidate for a political contest in the same manner products are promoted for the marketplace:

McGinnis concludes that ‘On television, it matters less that [the candidate] does not have ideas. His personality is what the viewers want to share…’

Cold War Politics and People of Color
(Pageant Magazine, 1959)

This well-illustrated article appeared in a middle class American magazine in 1959 and it reported on the rising international sentiments that signaled to the dominate Western powers that the old diplomacy of the wealthier white nations had to change. It will help to explain why the United States re-fashioned their immigration laws in 1965.

The Department of State hated it when Radio Moscow would depict Americans as simply a bunch of lynch-happy bigots…

The Dying Soldier
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

In this article, Reverend Daniel A. Poling (1884 – 1968), editor of the Christian Herald (Protestant) recalled his visit to the bedside of a dying American soldier in the war-ravaged France of 1944. The young man, a believer in Christ, expressed his undigested views of what lay before him in the afterlife. The author shared his understanding on the topic and found that they weren’t at all dissimilar.

Happy Days Are Here Again!
(Pageant Magazine, 1959)

In 1959 an eyewitness to American Prohibition recalled the unbridled glee that spread throughout the land when the Noble Experiment called it quits (December 5, 1933):

The legal celebrations that were held on the first night of repeal were mostly in keeping with the wet organizations’ desire to show that this was an historic moment far more important for the freedom of choice it restored to the public. In New Orleans cannons were shot off, whistles blown and city-wide parades held to greet repeal. Boston bars, permitted by lenient local authorities to stock up with legal booze into the night, were so packed by ten o’clock that a latecomer was lucky to get inside the doors, much less get a drink. The next day there were long lines of 100 and more people in front of liquor stores from early morning until closing…

The Jokes of Abraham Lincoln
(Pageant Magazine, 1954)

Lincoln could use humor as an explosive weapon as well as employing it as a constructive force… For Abraham Lincoln never told a story except with a purpose. He himself pointed this out often. His anecdotes were the precision tools of a highly skilled and intelligent wit… ‘I laugh because I must not cry: That’s all, that’s all.’

Click here to read another article about Lincoln’s use of humor and story-telling.

Click here to read the back-story concerning the Star-Spangled Banner…

Deepest Regrets
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

A young wife gets swept up in the whirlwind of blind compliance that was the condition of her marriage. Her husband forces her onto the abortionist’s gurney and she awakens an hour later with profound sorrow:

I had degraded myself and betrayed my baby…