‘In Hoc Anno Domini”
(WSJ, 1949)
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Christ is Big Box Office
(The Literary Digest, 1927)
This is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, The King of Kings
Cecil B. DeMille’s reward for The King of Kings will be in heaven…
Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
‘Religion In The Ranks”
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)
During the course of the Second World War, over 12,000 Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, and Jewish rabbis left the safety of home to join the Chaplain Corps – yet this short article explains that in August of 1941 there were only 994 Protestants, 318 Catholics and 18 Rabbis enrolled in the Chaplaincy. Five months later, with the Pearl Harbor attack, these numbers would begin their climb. The article was written to mark the introduction of the prefabricated chapels that the military would be adding to each of the camps that would soon be dotting the American landscape.
The Amish
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)
Here is a wonderful photo-essay that depicts the lives of one of the most pious communities in the United States: the Mennonites of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania:
The Biblical statement that God wished to ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ [Titus 2:14] is followed literally by the Amish. They do everything possible to ensure their goodness and to make themselves different from ordinary men.
‘A Path Toward Personal Peace”
(Pageant Magazine, 1957)
During the last decade of the Nineteenth Century a new Protestant faith was conceived in Kansas City, Missouri, that sought to reveal Christ’s love and it was called Unity:
Unity would be the last group in the world to seek or expect recognition for its trailblazing, pioneering religious techniques. Yet, many, many decades before the phrases ‘the power of positive thinking’ and ‘abundant living’ were heard in the land, Unity taught that God never meant this life to be a trial and a vale of tears, but, on the contrary,that it ‘is God’s will for man to be strong and vigorous and rich and successful and happy.
The Conversion of an Atheist
(Coronet Magazine, 1955)
Throughout the course of her life Lillian Roth (1910 – 1980) had lived the high life as well as the low, and during one of the darker moments she sat pining in the depths of her anguish crying out to God – even though she didn’t believe He existed – a well-wisher approached her with a unique line of reasoning that was so pure in its simplicity it immediately lead her to realize that God does indeed exist.
The $tory Of A Nun
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)
The sixth American to be granted the status of sainthood by the Catholic Church was a remarkable woman by the name Katharine Mary Drexel (1858 – 1955). Born into aristocratic circles in Philadelphia, she entered a convent at the age of 31. She is remembered for toiling unceasingly among America’s down-trodden while liberally dispersing her family fortune in the process:
In a period of some 60 years, she gave away $12 million. In doing so, she built 45 elementary schools, 12 high schools a university and countless country schools; she supported orphanages, hospitals and homes for the aged; she increased her congregation from its original 11 teaching nuns to over 500 at the time of her death in 1955.
Greta Garbo in the Dream Factory
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)
A juicy nine page article about the meteoric rise of Greta Garbo (B. Greta Lovisa Gustafsson: 1905 – 1990) in European films, her arrival in California, the contracts signed, and an account of her earliest Hollywood films.
She Had that Thing
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)
The magnetic power that Greta Garbo still generates to attract the avid interest of beatniks, the avant garde, the hootenanny, the jet set and her own contemporaries is not easy to explain…
American Units Get Active
(PM Tabloid, 1943)
Click here to read about the Rangers in North Africa.
Allied Efforts in North Africa
(PM Tabloid, 1943)
By the time this article appeared at the New York City newsstands, the British had chased Rommel’s Afrika Korps out of Egypt, the Americans had suffered their first defeat at the Kasserine Pass and was in the process of walloping the Tenth Panzer at El Guettar. The anonymous general who penned this article took all that into consideration but believed there was much more fight left in the Germans than there actually was.
The U.S. 34th Division fought in Tunisia, click here to read about them.
A Clinic On The Move
(Pic Magazine, 1941)
Call it what you will – socialized medicine, the public largess or the community chest, it makes no difference, but let it be known that in the late Thirties the elders who presided over Shelby County, Tennessee, recognized that some measure of TLC was required in their dominion, and so they bought a big bus and stuffed it full of 12 nurses and a physician. The leading African-American doctors in the area were also instrumental in the creation of this behemoth – which was created to contain syphilis in Shelby County.
The Forgotten Midshipman
(Literary Digest, 1897)
This column emerged from the mists of time, telling us a story that had long been forgotten. Reading this column, we are able to piece together that there once lived an African-American fellow named R.C. Bundy, who let it be know that he wished to attend the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. It gets fuzzy from here as to whether he had sponsors backing him or if he never even took the entrance exam – the shouts from the press were so loud and cruel on this topic from the start. We found no other information of the young man. The first African-American to graduate Annapolis did so decades later, in 1949.
Miscegenation
(Time Magazine, 1923)
The Crackers of old hated miscegenation (i.e.race-mixing). Sadly, they seemed to have removed the concept of love from the equation – and happily this article reminds us that not everyone felt the same way in 1923. The attached column concerns U.S. Senator Arthur Capper (1865 – 1951) and all the hot water he got into when he sponsored a bill that would have, among other things, criminalized race-mixing.
America’s Black Muslims
(The Hibbert Journal, 1965)
An article about Elijah Muhammad and the realization of his dreams.