St. Patrick (née Maewyn Succat) was a 5th century Brit, abducted as a teenager as a forced laborer and trafficked as a swineherd to Ireland, where he got religion. He later escaped, went to France, and became a priest (at either Lérins Abbey or Auxerre) before returning to proselytize in Ireland. A millennium later, North America’s early Irish immigrants and their descendants began to celebrate the day of his death as a joyous holiday, which seems a wee bit ghoulish.
The party ramped up after the Potato Famine increased Irish immigration to the US in the mid 19th century. St. Patrick’s Day became a celebration of parades, corned beef and cabbage, fiddle music, soda bread, and green beer rather than the solemn saint’s day it had been in the Auld Sod, but that’s America for you. US tourists in Ireland expected a big bash on March 17th, and the host country was glad to oblige, in celebration of greenback dollars. The holiday has now gone global. Faith and begorrah!
A National Georgraphic video.
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How did we get artificial flavors? Danielle Bainbridge explains, for The Origins of Everthing, from PBS Digital Studios.
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In the 17th century, plague doctors.wore beak-like masks and covered themselves from head to toe, their idea of hazmat suits. This TED-Ed animation explains. Research by Stephanie Honchell Smith, narrated by George Zaidan.
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After losing the Civil War, apologists for the Confederacy explained that the South didn’t secede frpm the United States over slavery, but to protect “States’ Rights.” Sure — the right to own other human beings. A TED-Ed video by Karen L. Cox.
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Coachmaker and blacksmith Charles Richard (“C.R.”) Patterson of Greenfield, Ohio founded C.R. Patterson & Son coachworks in 1893, producing buggies, buckboards, phaetons, surreys and other horse-drawn carriages, about 500 each year. After the death of his son Samuel, his eldest son Frederick Douglas Patterson moved home to help Patterson senior with the business. C.R. died in 1910, and Frederick Patterson added automoblie repair to the company’s services.
The first C.R. Patterson and Sons automobile was assembled in 1915, a two-door coupe, the first motorcar produced by a Black-owned company. Of the 100 or so autos produced by Patterson, none are still in exsistence. The firm couldn’t compete with the Ford assembly line, so the company switched to producing trucks and buses. There was brisk demand for the latter, especially schoolbuses, and Patterson manufactured 500 buses a month, producing as many as 7,000 between 1921 and 1931. One-third of the school buses in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania were thought to be Pattersons. Although the Depression closed the business in 1939, some Patterson buses were still on the roads as late as the 1950s.
C.R. Patterson and Frederick Patterson were inducted into Detroit’s Automotive Hall of Fame in 2021.
More:
“How America’s first — and only — Black automakers defied the odds,”Kevin Williams, Washington Post
“The Only African American Automobile Company,” National Museum of African American History & Culture
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Today is officially Washington’s Birthday (observed) according to the federal government. This date is also known as Presidents’ Day in some states, combining observance of all your favorite chief execs (Millard Fillmore?) into one holiday.
Birthday boy and first president George Washington enslaved 319 human beings in Virginia during his lifetime, but the state’s current governor, Glenn Youngkin, won’t let that be taught in the Old Dominion’s schools. Virginia’s kids will need a field trip to Mount Vernon to learn about it. President Washington also signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, requiring authorities in free states and territories to allow slave-catchers to seize escaped refugees and transport them back into bondage.
Happy Black History Month.
More:
“George Washington, Slave Catcher,” Erica Armstrong Dunbar, New York Times
Related:
“More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.” Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco and Leo Dominguez, Washington Post
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Image (“George Washington Observes Black History Month”) by Mike Licht. Download a free copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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He’s been called “the greatest philanthropist you’ve never heard of”: Julius Rosenwald (1862 – 1932). A co-owner of Sears, Roebuck, he provided funding for over 5,000 African American elementary schools, and grants to hundreds. By 1928, one-third of the South’s rural black school children and teachers were served by Rosenwald Schools. There’s a film by Aviva Kempner.
More:
“The enlightening legacy of the Rosenwald schools,” Karen Heller, Washington Post
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James A. LaFontaine owned and operated the Maryland Athletic Club, better known as Jimmy’s Place, on the border of Bladensburg, Maryland and the District of Columbia, from the 1920s to the 1940s. It was said to be the biggest illegal gambling casino between Saratoga and Palm Beach. Jimmy’s was purely about gambling, and allowed no booze, women, or guns. It was bare-bones, a big barn of a place, though the kitchen served a pretty good beef stew.
In 1931, “Gentleman Jimmy” was kidnapped near his DC home by members of Philadelphia’s Hoff gang. It ended calmly, and seemed very genteel, but Jimmy Fontaine lost control of his casino to the mob afterwards, while remaining as the frontman.
Mr. LaFontaine died in 1949 at age 81, and is buried in Capitol Hill’s Congressional Cemetery.
More:
“Washington’s Godfather: ‘Gentleman Gambler’ Jimmy Lafontaine,” Callum Cleary, Boundary Stones
“Mr. Jim Made a Million From a Casino Brooking No Booze, Women, or Guns,” Charles Price, Sports Illustrated
“Gamblers Once Thrived in the City, Leonard Hughes, Washington Post
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