Thoreau'd not traveled by

May 31, 2024 1:06 AM

They were Black veterans of World War II and Korea who had fought for freedoms abroad that they were denied at home. They were champions for LGBTQ rights at a time when each of those initials stood for moral corruption and political subversion. They were feminist activists in the left wing, some in the U.S. Communist Party, who confronted sexism, racism, and class prejudice as inseparable wrongs and barriers to solidarity, which prepared the way for a feminism beyond the Second Wave. And there were scientists prepared to denounce their colleagues’ ingenious new biological, chemical, and military technologies as potential threats to the natural world, including humanity itself. [James R. Gaines, The Fifties]

an underground history

posted by HearHere (5 comments total)

For those who want a bit more detail before clicking the link: It's to a Google Books copy of a book called The Fifties by James R. Gaines (2022). My library (Chicago Public Library) has this description for it:

"A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines"

and this author bio:

"James R. Gaines is the former managing editor of Time magazine and the author of several books, including Evening in the Palace of Reason , a study of Johann Sebastian Bach and the early Enlightenment, and For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions . He lives in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico"

It shows up always available on Hoopla using Library Extension if you want to read it.
posted by srboisvert at 7:54 AM on May 31 [4 favorites]

The Fifties: An Underground History (YouTube, ~1 hour)

The National Arts Club presents a conversation with James R. Gaines, author of "The Fifties: An Underground History." Gaines presents an original argument that complicates the myth of the 1950s as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements.

posted by pracowity at 10:45 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]

The Fifties: An Underground History (YouTube, ~1 hour)

Author James R. Gaines argues that the Fifties were not a decade of conformity, but the celebration of the individuals who pioneered the gay rights, feminist rights, civil rights, and environmental movements. The Fifties brings to life people not motivated not by politics, who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Of the many discussed are Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s. We hear the voices of Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and MIT’s preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, whose legacy is the environmental movement. The Fifties is a work of history that seeks to transform our understanding of a seemingly staid decade and honors the pioneers of gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmentalism.

posted by pracowity at 10:52 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]

Oooooo!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 3:22 PM on May 31 [1 favorite]

Returning to note that I burned through Stone Butch Blues one time when I was visiting my sister, and felt humbled and grateful for an account of a life I never could have imagined - a butch lesbian working on union factory lines in Buffalo, NY in the seventies?! The past was LIVED by people with every bit of the interior complexity of contemporary life, and contains so much more than what documented history will ever be able to fathom.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:18 PM on June 7 [1 favorite]