U.S. Mid-term Elections of 1946

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Lead:  Although the Democrats, led by Harry S. Truman, lost both Houses of Congress during the mid-term elections of 1946, Truman skillfully used the Republican majority to his benefit – and won the 1948 presidential election.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt four months into his fourth term on April 12, 1945, barely-known Vice-president Harry S. Truman of Missouri became President. He stepped into the shoes of one many assumed was a giant. During Roosevelt’s presidency, Republicans had been unable to gain control of Congress.

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The Great Eastern

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Lead: In November, 1857, Isambard Kingdom Brunel tried to launch his magnificent creation. Great Eastern, the heaviest object anyone had ever attempted to move, got stuck.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Brunel was one of the most successful engineers of his day. He constructed what was at that time, the world’s longest tunnel, several unusual railroad bridges, and finally, Great Eastern. Conceived as the first luxury liner, the ship was designed to carry 4,000 passengers in complete comfort, haul enough coal for a non-stop round-trip from England to Australia, and earn her inventors’ money back in a couple of years. No such luck. No profit was ever made with Great Eastern.

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The Great Awakening

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Lead: Out of the intellectual ferment of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment emerged a rush of devout pietism. The Great Awakening helped transform American religious life.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The wars of religion that convulsed Europe following the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Revival in the 1500s and 1600s provoked a growing revulsion among Europe’s intellectual elite against intolerance and sectarian violence. This, combined with the spreading awareness of the previous century’s scientific discoveries and progress, shaped a new way of thinking about the world. Less religious in its orientation with more emphasis on the accomplishments of man, the Enlightenment, through its major spokesmen, Frenchmen Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and their many followers in western Europe and North America, stressed the importance of individual achievement, rational thought, happiness in this world not salvation in the next, and liberty.

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Jamestown Journey: Bacon’s Rebellion

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Lead: In the summer of 1676, the colony of Virginia, already locked in an Indian war, broke into the conflict later called Bacon’s Rebellion.

Intro.: Dan Roberts and A Moment in Time with Jamestown - Journey of Democracy, tracing the global advance of democratic ideals since the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

Content: Climactic historical incidents can sometimes act as a snapshot – of an era, a period, a personality. Few snapshots depict late 17th Century colonial Virginia as does Bacon’s Rebellion.

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Crispus Attucks

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: On March 5, 1770, in Boston, Massachusetts, British soldiers led by Captain Preston fired into an unruly crowd of protesters. One of the first to fall was Crispus Attucks.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: All during the winter and spring of 1770, tension in Boston had been building between citizens and British soldiers sent there to prevent unrest and awe the population. Many American workers were resentful of the soldiers because they would take civilian jobs at cheaper rates when they were off duty. This plus the general indignation in the City over the presence of the troops set up one of the first bloody confrontations of the Revolutionary period.

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America’s First Century: Transatlantic Cod Bridge

PermalinkToday's AMIT, ,
Lead: In the decades before Columbus returned from his accidental discovery of the Caribbean in 1492, Basque fishermen, from the northern part of Spain, may have beat him to the New World.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Writing in his elegant and fascinating Cod: The Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky presents strong evidence that Christopher may have been a Johnny-come-lately.

Along the southwestern slopes of the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France Spain lies Basque Country. None of multitude of ethnic groups that make up Spanish society have been more resistant to assimilation than the Basques. Spanish kings and Spanish dictators have tried to homogenize Basque culture and language but have largely failed. They are a hearty people and jealous, sometimes violently jealous, of their independence.

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Loving vs. Virginia III

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Lead: In one of the most important decisions of his term as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren struck down racially based anti-miscegenation laws.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts

Content: After being convicted of the violation of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (1924) Mildred and Richard Loving were banished from the Commonwealth. They contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to help them seek redress. ACLU lawyers Bernard S. Cohen and later Philip Hirschkop enthusiastically accepted the case to further the ACLU’s crusade against anti-miscegenation laws nationwide. Loving v. Virginia would be the signature case in that crusade.

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Loving vs. Virginia II

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Lead: In 1924, because of deep-seated white racism and growing out of the now-discredited concept of eugenics, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act. It lasted 43 years.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts

Content: During the Civil War, in an effort to pin the label of race mixing on Republicans, Democrats published in New York a fake pamphlet advocating miscegenation, the sexual intermixing of white and black races. Unfortunately, before the pamphlet was demonstrated to be a hoax in 1864, the vile word miscegenation entered American social and political discourse. Beginning in the 1880s, particularly in the former Confederate states, laws were passed to attempt to blunt the effects of Constitutional amendments thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, and maintain African American second-class citizenship. One such law was Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (1924). It was for violation of this prohibition against interracial marriage or interracial sexual intercourse that Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Loving were arrested, convicted and banished from the Commonwealth in 1959.

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