Nobel Peace Prize winner
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
Jane Addams’ Hull House
Welcome to America Comes Alive!
I hope you’ll enjoy reading a few of the stories I have gathered about America’s past.
Strength, compassion, ingenuity, and humor are just a few of the qualities you’ll read about in these entries.
Feel free to write me or post your own thoughts on the site.
Check back often… the site is updated regularly.
Wars Drive Advances
Dr. Richard Burr, embalming surgeon. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
HOW THE CIVIL WAR CHANGED FUNERAL PRACTICES
Wars are often responsible for medical and scientific advances, and the Civil War drove the need for a new science: an improved way to handle the dead. So many men died and so many were far from home, there was a growing need for a way to preserve a body for a decent burial once the body arrived home. Families wanted to see their fallen sons once more, and railroads added to the urgency by refusing to carry decaying bodies (identifiable by smell).
Today there is increasing interest in “green funerals” (for those looking for eco-friendly solutions), and about one-third of all Americans who die are cremated, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. However, the traditional funeral, along with embalming of the body that began in the Civil War, is still the most popular choice of how to handle the newly departed.
In the mid-19th century, the French developed a method of arterial embalming, and an American, a Dr. Thomas Holmes (1817-1900), who trained and worked as a coroner’s physician in New York in the 1850s, had begun experimenting with embalming methods used by the French. Read more…
Eighty Years to Right a Wrong
Panelists Jim Thorn, Dr. Lawrence Hogan, and Jim Robinson. Photo courtesy of Nick Diunte.
Baseball, Politics and the Press
A significant moment in baseball occurred in New York City on July 5, 1930, but the event was not covered by the traditional press.
For the first time ever, Yankee Stadium hosted a game featuring two teams from the Negro Leagues, but no one in 1930 could have read about the game in the New York Times.
On Monday night (July 26, 2010), the Museum of the City of New York hosted a panel to talk about the Negro Leagues and the game that was held on July 5. The panel was moderated by baseball historian Jim Thorn and featured Negro Leagues player Jim Robinson and Dr. Lawrence Hogan, a professor and author of Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball. Read more…
Little-Remembered Stories of Women and the Vote
If women’s news receives the coverage it deserves during the next week or so, then there will be stories about women and the vote. Headlines may read something like: “Ninety Years Since Women Were Given the Vote!”
The problem is “were given” is dead-on inaccurate; even the wording, “got the vote” does not begin to explain the battle that women suffragists waged in order for women to vote.
And why is this coming up in August? August 18, 1920 was the date on which the last vote needed to ratify the amendment was received; August 26th is celebrated as Women’s Suffrage Day, as that is the official day when the amendment became part of the Constitution.
But so much more happened before that.