Recent Articles

Seeing the ”Wonder Machine” for the First Time… (Delineator Magazine, 1937)

This is one of the most enjoyable early television articles: an eye-witness account of one the first T.V. broadcasts from the R.C.A. Building in New York City during the November of 1936. The viewing was set up strictly for members of the American press corps and the excitement of this one journalist clearly could not be contained:

In the semi-darkness we sat in tense silence waiting to see the premiere demonstration of television… Television! What would it be like?

The War Begins (NY Times, 1861)

The ball has opened. War is inaugurated. The batteries of Sullivan’s Island, Morris Island and other points were opened on Fort Sumpter at 4 ‘oclock this morning… The answer to General Beauregard’s demand by Major Anderson was that he would surrender when his supplies were exhausted, that is, if he was not reinforced.


Here are the dispatches from Charleston that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on April 13, 1861.

The Growing Popularity of Abortions (Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

The present war has fanned the abortion racket from a flame to a blaze. Now it’s a nation-wide problem… Apparently every type of woman and girl, from every occupational group and every social level, was represented among women arrested or question in New York [on the matter of abortion].

The Emergence of a New World Power (The New Republic, 1922)

Having studied the global power structure that came into place following the carnage of the First World War, British philosopher Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) was surprised to find that the most dominate nation left standing was not one of the European polities that had fought the war from start to finish – but rather the United States: a nation that had participated in only the last nineteen months of the war.

How One Southerner Overcame His Racist Attitudes (Coronet Magazine, 1948)

The attached is an historic article that explains the lesson that so many white Americans had to learn in order that America become one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. There can be no doubt that many ragged, dog-eared copies of this middle class magazine must have been passed from seat to seat in the backs of many buses; perhaps one of the readers was a nineteen year-old divinity student named Martin Luther King, Jr.?


Before the Atom Bomb came along, Joseph Stalin hatched a scheme to invade the U.S. and create two Americas, one black, one white – click here to read more…

The Rise of Oral Roberts (Coronet Magazine, 1955)

The editors at Coronet recognized that Oral Roberts was not your average minister, who was simply contented to preside over thirty full pews every week; they labeled him a businessman-preacher and subtly pointed out that the man’s detractors were many and his flashy attire unseemly for a member of clergy:


God doesn’t run a breadline…I make no apology for buying the best we can afford. The old idea that religious people should be poor is nonsense.

‘A Negro Poet” (NY Times, 1897)

Here is the NY Times review of Lyrics of Lowly Life (1897) by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906), who was a distinguished African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If Helen had the face that launched a thousand ships, then Dunbar had the poetry to launch at least twenty thousand schools – for it seems that is about how many there are named for him.

Martha Graham’s Art (New Masses, 1944)

A review of Martha Graham’s sell-out Broadway performance from January, 1944:

Martha Graham’s art has always been characterized by constatnt experimentation with new forms and new contents.

Nazis Take Paris (PM Tabloid, 1940)

Paris belongs to Adolf Hitler. Abandoned by the French and declared an open city to prevent its destruction, the capital of France was turned over whole to the Nazi invaders early this morning.


Click here to read about the 1944 liberation of Paris.

Scroll to Top