Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebeccah Shore for Radio Eye, and today
Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
Speaker 1: disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
Speaker 1: join me now for the first article, which is titled
Speaker 1: The Queen of the Ghetto gave New York's immigrant community
Speaker 1: a voice. A century later, its re emerging Aziya Yazirska
Speaker 1: wrote from experience, then worked hard to make sure her
Speaker 1: work found an audience. Then a new audience found her.
Speaker 1: By Fred Nattis in the eighteen nineties, the crowded Jewish
Speaker 1: enclave on New York's Lower East Side, filled with horses,
Speaker 1: push carts, clothes lines, and Hebrew shop signs, drew fascination
Speaker 1: and derision from the American public. This emigrant community was
Speaker 1: considered exotic and creative. It was also decried as squalid
Speaker 1: and foreign. At the same time that Uptown audiences were
Speaker 1: flocking to Yiddish theaters, novelist Henry James was writing with
Speaker 1: alarm about the Hebrew conquest of New York. Growing up
Speaker 1: in this crucible of a New America, a Jewish immigrant
Speaker 1: named Azia Yazirska, through sheer force of personality, would overcome
Speaker 1: prejudice to become one of the Roaring twenties most popular authors,
Speaker 1: one whom a New York newspaper dubbed Queen of the Ghetto.
Speaker 1: Yazirska's writing gave voice to the ghetto's dwellers as she
Speaker 1: documented the struggles, particularly of immigrant women, to lead full
Speaker 1: lives in the United States. Her work helped non immigrants
Speaker 1: understand the striving of the foreign born, and though her
Speaker 1: fame has wavered, her work remains as vital today as
Speaker 1: it was one hundred years ago, capturing the immigrant experience
Speaker 1: with the vividness rarely matched in American letters. Yazirska's family
Speaker 1: arrived in New York from Poland in eighteen ninety, when Yazirska,
Speaker 1: the youngest of nine children, was about ten years old.
Speaker 1: They were among the two million to three million Jewish
Speaker 1: people who migrated to the US between eighteen eighty and
Speaker 1: the early nineteen twenties. While her parents encouraged her brothers
Speaker 1: to pursue careers, they expected their four daughters to gain
Speaker 1: a minimal education then do menial work in sweatshops before
Speaker 1: quickly marrying her father, Bernard stressed that a woman without
Speaker 1: a man was less than nothing. Yazirska disagreed, and her
Speaker 1: father came to call her blood and iron for her wilfulness.
Speaker 1: When she was still a teenager and working long hours
Speaker 1: in a laundry, she left home and took a room
Speaker 1: on East sixty third Street in the Clara DeHirsch Home
Speaker 1: for Working Girls, where staff prepared emigrant girls to be
Speaker 1: carmt workers or servants, or to train as stenographers. This
Speaker 1: was the first phase of Yazirska's effort, as some of
Speaker 1: her later fictional characters would say, to work myself up
Speaker 1: for a person. A benefactor provided her with a scholarship
Speaker 1: to Teachers College at Columbia University. After graduating in nineteen
Speaker 1: o four, she became a cooking instructor in city schools,
Speaker 1: teaching though was not her calling. She later described the
Speaker 1: work as a treadmill of deadness. Yazirska's nineteen eleven marriage
Speaker 1: to Arnold Levitas, a typographer, proved no escape. After giving
Speaker 1: birth to their daughter, Louise in nineteen twelve, Yazirska detailed
Speaker 1: her ensuing discontent with the role of stay at home
Speaker 1: mother in an unpublished essay, The Rebellion of a Supported Wife.
Speaker 1: She ended the marriage in nineteen sixteen and dedicated herself
Speaker 1: to writing short stories For several years. Yazirska collected rejection slips.
Speaker 1: She was brim with ideas, but the writing didn't come easy.
Speaker 1: As she described it, sometimes the vivisection I must commit
Speaker 1: on myself to create one little living sentence leaves me
Speaker 1: spent for days. Yazirska developed a style she termed Immigrant English,
Speaker 1: mimicking the idioms of New York's Yiddish speakers. I told
Speaker 1: her my head was on wheels from worrying. Her characters
Speaker 1: are hungry for food and for fulfillment, and feel impeded
Speaker 1: in the effort to become a person in America. Their
Speaker 1: relentless drive reflects the author's rage at women's subordinate roles,
Speaker 1: at their poverty, and at the widespread disdain they received.
Speaker 1: As the narrator says in the short story How I
Speaker 1: Found America, Without the public's understanding, the immigrant would forever
Speaker 1: remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness
Speaker 1: of the unused gifts within his soul, her own gifts.
Speaker 1: She was deter herman to use. In nineteen seventeen, Yazirska
Speaker 1: was in her mid thirties, had published only a few stories,
Speaker 1: and was unable to find full time teaching work, so
Speaker 1: she followed her mother's advice to direct her complaints as
Speaker 1: at a department store to the top. On a cold
Speaker 1: day late that year, she dropped in unannounced, into the
Speaker 1: Columbia University office of John Dewey, a major force in
Speaker 1: progressive education. Dewey was a dean at Teacher's College, where
Speaker 1: Yuzirska had trained. That day, she spoke passionately to him
Speaker 1: about her dreams. The tall sage was stunned and charmed.
Speaker 1: She gave him several short stories to read, and Dewey
Speaker 1: grew infatuated. Soon he was writing her love letters and poems.
Speaker 1: In one, he prophesied that from Yazirska, a great song
Speaker 1: shall fill the world. Dewey bought her a typewriter, encouraged
Speaker 1: her to audit his graduate seminar, and to help subsidize
Speaker 1: her writing, employed her on a sociology project in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: He also forwarded an essay of hers to the New Republic,
Speaker 1: The romance between upper crust philosopher and passionate immigrant, which
Speaker 1: was to inspire many of Yazirska's later writings. Didn't last
Speaker 1: more than a year. After the break up, Dewey demanded
Speaker 1: she return his letters. She refused, and lifted some of
Speaker 1: his phrases for upper class characters in her fiction. After
Speaker 1: the new Republic ran the piece Dewey had sent them,
Speaker 1: editors began snapping up her stories. The critic Edward J.
Speaker 1: O'Brien gave Yazirskas The Fat of the Land the top
Speaker 1: ranking in his annual anthology of Best Short Stories for
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. The tale offered a fresh portrait of the
Speaker 1: immigrant Jewish mother in the character of Hannah, a woman
Speaker 1: of frayed nerves and wild emotional swings. When her children
Speaker 1: snatched food from her market basket, she shouts, murderers, what
Speaker 1: are you tearing from me? My flesh? From? Where should
Speaker 1: I steal to give you more? The children prosper, while
Speaker 1: Hannah's old country ways remain in embarrassment. As adults, they
Speaker 1: settle her in a comfortable town house with servants. Ambivalent
Speaker 1: about her new status, Hannah is caught between worlds. She
Speaker 1: feels at home neither. During a return visit to the ghetto,
Speaker 1: nor amid the new comforts of the fat of the land.
Speaker 1: When Hufton Mifflin published Yazirska's short story collection Hungry Hearts
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty, sales were sluggish. Serving as her own publicist,
Speaker 1: she knocked at the door of Hurst newspaper columnist Frank
Speaker 1: Crane and handed him a copy of the book. In
Speaker 1: his syndicated column, Crane wrote with awe about Yazyirska, insisting
Speaker 1: that her stories revealed an alien people's naked soul. That's
Speaker 1: when Hollywood came calling. In the nineteen tens and twenties,
Speaker 1: film producers, many of them Jewish, were looking for stories
Speaker 1: that highlighted the humanity of Jewish immigrants at a time
Speaker 1: when groups such as the Emigration Restriction League and supporters
Speaker 1: of eugenics were stoking fears of foreigners. Movie studios produced
Speaker 1: more than three dozen silent films set in the Jewish
Speaker 1: ghetto in the nineteen twenties, making the ghetto picture its
Speaker 1: own genre. In nineteen twenty one, the pioneering phil magnate
Speaker 1: Samuel Goldwyn offered Yazirska ten thousand dollars for film rights
Speaker 1: to Hungry Hearts and put her on salary to complete
Speaker 1: the script. She stepped off a westbound train in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles in January nineteen twenty one, wearing a simple blue suit,
Speaker 1: felt hat, and sandals. Journalists had gathered to cover her arrival,
Speaker 1: and before climbing into a limousine, she spun tales to them,
Speaker 1: suggesting that Goldwyn's contract had saved her from hard labor
Speaker 1: in Manhattan's sweatshops and laundries. She did not mention her
Speaker 1: long stints as a teacher and writer. Headlines followed sweatshops
Speaker 1: Andderella When's fortune in movies, Yet Yazirska soon wearied of
Speaker 1: the star treatment and the studio system. The script was
Speaker 1: completed in a few months, and she briefly remained in
Speaker 1: Hollywood to work on a novel, but found no inspiration.
Speaker 1: After rejecting contracts from Goldwyn and producer William Fox, founder
Speaker 1: of Fox Film Corporation, she returned East for the most
Speaker 1: productive period of her life. In nineteen twenty three, she
Speaker 1: published her first novel, Saloam of the Tenements, which featured
Speaker 1: a street wise Jewish girl who marries an upper class philanthropist.
Speaker 1: Famous Player's Laski, the predecessor to Paramount Pictures bought the
Speaker 1: film rights for fifteen thousand dollars, and the movie appeared
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty five. In that same year, Doubleday published
Speaker 1: Yazirska's finest novel, Bread Givers, a coming ev age tale
Speaker 1: with echoes of Louisa may Alcott's Little Women, Yazirska describes
Speaker 1: the fate of a group of four sisters, three of
Speaker 1: whom are forced into dubious marriages by their father, Moesha Smolensky. Sarah,
Speaker 1: the feistiest of the sisters, breaks away from her family
Speaker 1: as a teenager. In their frequent arguments, her father, like
Speaker 1: Yuzirska's own, calls Sarah blood and iron. After many struggles,
Speaker 1: Sarah achieves independence by becoming a school teacher. In a coda,
Speaker 1: Sarah and her husband, a school principle, take in her
Speaker 1: widower father, unruly as ever, whom Sarah has found selling
Speaker 1: chewing gum on the streets. A reviewer in The New
Speaker 1: York Times hailed the novel's raw, uncontrollable poetry, but it
Speaker 1: was the last of her books to sell well. Yazirska
Speaker 1: wrote two more novels to diminishing interest, and the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine stock market crash wiped out her Hollywood earnings.
Speaker 1: Within a few years, the one time Queen of the
Speaker 1: Ghetto applied for government relief and joined the New Deal's
Speaker 1: Federal Writers Project, where for one assignment she employed her
Speaker 1: creative talent to describe the different species of trees in
Speaker 1: Central Park. In nineteen fifty, her autobiography, Red Ribbon on
Speaker 1: a White Horse, with the foreword by the poet W.
Speaker 1: H Auden, gained critical praise but few readers. She wrote
Speaker 1: book reviews for The New York Times, but otherwise lived
Speaker 1: out her days far from the spotlight, and died in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy at a California nursing home after a stroke.
Speaker 1: Her work would soon emerge from obscurity after a chance rediscovery.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties. Alice Kessler Harris, a British
Speaker 1: born historian later a professor at Columbia University, was researching
Speaker 1: Jewish participation in New York's labor movement. Finding refferences to
Speaker 1: Yazirska in Yiddish materials, she took breaks from the library's
Speaker 1: microfilm machines to read Yaziska's out of print books. In
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, As the women's movement gained momentum,
Speaker 1: Kessler Harris shared her photocopy of the novel with publishers,
Speaker 1: painting Yazirska as an unsung hero of an earlier feminist movement.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, thanks to her efforts, Percia Books
Speaker 1: published a new edition of Bread Givers. Now a century old,
Speaker 1: the novel has sold more than four hundred thousand copies
Speaker 1: since its re issue. Many readers still identify with its
Speaker 1: portrait of a demanding immigrant father. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: the number of Chinese and Indian and Nepalese who've written
Speaker 1: to me to say how the book resonates. Kessler Harris
Speaker 1: tells Smithsonian. The father in the book is clearly an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but that exaggeration is familiar to so many people from
Speaker 1: different cultures that it's one of the things that give
Speaker 1: the book its standing power. Yazirska's blood and iron, the
Speaker 1: passion and stubbornness that informed her prose, explain her endurance
Speaker 1: and the jolt of recognition her words continued to offer readers,
Speaker 1: not bad for someone who once said of her early
Speaker 1: days that she was just one of many new Americans
Speaker 1: beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath
Speaker 1: of understanding and accompanying this article fun fact, who was
Speaker 1: Anzia Yazirska. Yazirska was a fearless and imaginative promoter of
Speaker 1: her own work, and even lobbied her publisher in Vain
Speaker 1: to have Herbert Hoover write the forward to Hungry Hearts,
Speaker 1: her nineteen twenty short story collection. When Samuel Goldwyn produced
Speaker 1: a nineteen twenty two film inspired by Hungry Hearts, director E.
Speaker 1: Mason Hopper filmed it authentically write where the stories are
Speaker 1: set in New York's Lower eath east Side. Next, when
Speaker 1: America found itself ready to roll, Route sixty six, stretching
Speaker 1: from Chicago to Los Angeles, was the Road of endless possibilities.
Speaker 1: The country's mother road. Started out as a way to
Speaker 1: get from point A to point B, but quickly became
Speaker 1: the host of a culture and a symbol of freedom.
Speaker 1: By Elana Shrr, A road trip today can feel like
Speaker 1: an industrial affair. You travel eighty miles per hour on
Speaker 1: six lane highways, where brightly let exits deposit you at
Speaker 1: twenty four hour fuel stops and Chaine motels. Yet not
Speaker 1: that long ago route sixty six, a two lane highway
Speaker 1: was the height of modernity. See America's Wonderland crowed nineteen
Speaker 1: forties billboards advertising the road, which then represented the fast
Speaker 1: lane to the future, connecting Chicago to California and a
Speaker 1: shining example of early interstate travel. When cars were new
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, railroads offered the most reliable
Speaker 1: long distance transportation. Thoroughfares called highways were often unpaved paths
Speaker 1: along what had once been hunting trails or wagon ruts.
Speaker 1: Many had poor signage and were prone to washouts, and
Speaker 1: featured terrifying corners that might be fine for a horse
Speaker 1: but wreaked havoc on new fangled motor cars. In nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: the federal government stepped in passing the Federal Aid Road
Speaker 1: Act and offered states money to develop major highways. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, Congress mandated that federal funds be
Speaker 1: used to connect those roads into an organized interstate system.
Speaker 1: The government push was welcomed by an Oklahoma businessman named
Speaker 1: Cyrus Avery, a prominent member of the American Association of
Speaker 1: State Highway Officials. Avery successfully argued that Americans would be
Speaker 1: best served by improving the tangled yarn of roads running
Speaker 1: through the Midwest to the coast and building connections between them.
Speaker 1: On November eleventh, nineteen twenty six, Route sixty six became
Speaker 1: an official federal highway, but the road was far from complete.
Speaker 1: Only around eight hundred miles of the commissioned two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred forty eight miles between Chicago and Santa Monica
Speaker 1: were asphalt. The rest were paved with dirt, gravel, bricks,
Speaker 1: or even wooden boards. To hasten completion, Avery organized envoys
Speaker 1: from the eight states traversed by Route sixty six to
Speaker 1: promote the new highway with advertisements, maps, and even a
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight foot race from Los Angeles to New
Speaker 1: York City, the latter chosen in hopes of attracting East
Speaker 1: Coast visitors. The Bunyan Derby, as it came to be known,
Speaker 1: took eighty four days and reportedly left one hundred forty
Speaker 1: four of its one hundred ninety nine entrants hobbled. Only
Speaker 1: fifty five runners finished, and the winner, Andy Payne, a
Speaker 1: member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, used his twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars grand prize. Around five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to day to pay off his family's farm, and fittingly
Speaker 1: by a car. Meanwhile, road crews were working their way
Speaker 1: across what Avery promoted as the main street of America,
Speaker 1: and the entire stretch was finally paved by nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: By that time, the depression had sent dust bowl refugees
Speaker 1: westward along Route sixty six as they fled the empty
Speaker 1: fields of the Midwest for the golden promise of farm
Speaker 1: work in California. In his nineteen thirty nine novel The
Speaker 1: Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called the Highway the mother Road,
Speaker 1: evoking the refuge that Oakey's sought, and the routs roll
Speaker 1: in the berth of West coast cities. When the United
Speaker 1: States entered World War II, Route sixty six became an
Speaker 1: artery from military transports heading from forts to courts. After
Speaker 1: the conflict, the highway cruised into its glory days, brimming
Speaker 1: with families and big plymouths eager to tour their newly
Speaker 1: triumphant country. Road trippers gawked at the brick and glass
Speaker 1: of Big City Chicago, towering cigarros in Arizona, or the
Speaker 1: crashing waves of the Pacific America was beautiful, people had
Speaker 1: money and vacation time. Route sixty six was the place
Speaker 1: to spend it. So many travelers hit the road, in
Speaker 1: fact that by mid nineteen fifties, Route sixty six couldn't
Speaker 1: support all the traffic. Bit by bit, the road was
Speaker 1: widened or bypassed in favor of new multi lane highways,
Speaker 1: until the old route was officially demoted from its status
Speaker 1: as a federal highway in nineteen eighty five. Its stretches
Speaker 1: reverted to state controlled byways and county roads. Mom and
Speaker 1: pop establishments began to fade away as the modern world
Speaker 1: rushed past on new interstates. Sections of the original route
Speaker 1: were swallowed up by sand or built over as cities expanded.
Speaker 1: Yet the allure of the roots, gorgeous scenery, and twentieth
Speaker 1: century Americana continues to attract travelers from around the world.
Speaker 1: It's still possible to cover several hundred miles on the
Speaker 1: old road, especially in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, and
Speaker 1: even grab a cup of coffee and a slice of
Speaker 1: pie at a picturesque cafe in Luther, Oklahoma. The third
Speaker 1: generation of the Threat family as working to preserve one
Speaker 1: historic stop. Alan Threat Senior opened the Threat Filling Station
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen to serve black travelers during the treacherous
Speaker 1: days of Jim Crow. As the only black owned business
Speaker 1: between two sundown towns where black travelers were unwelcome, The
Speaker 1: Threat became a haven for black motorists and a site
Speaker 1: of community for locals, hosting barbecues and bagga on a
Speaker 1: full size baseball diamond. Much farther west in the blowing
Speaker 1: sands of the Mojave Desert, Albert o'cura purchased the old
Speaker 1: railway town of Amboy, population zero, in two thousand and
Speaker 1: five and began the painstaking work of restoring its vintage
Speaker 1: gas pumps at mid Century Motels. After Okura's death in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, his son Kyle continued his dream of restoration.
Speaker 1: We can't give up, because if not us, Kyle o'cura says,
Speaker 1: then who On a map, Route sixty six might look
Speaker 1: like a mere, choppy diagonal line running from Chicago to
Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Pier. Yet it has helped tell the
Speaker 1: American story. The road is a living thing, and at
Speaker 1: every stop you'll find its caretakers Accompanying the article did
Speaker 1: you know what is the musical Highway? One of Root
Speaker 1: sixty six's strangest attractions came as recently as twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: when the New Mexico Department of Transportation installed a series
Speaker 1: of custom designed rumble strips outside to Harris, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: When a traveler drove over the strips at precisely forty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour, the vibrations played America the Beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was a feat of imagination and engineering, and short lived.
Speaker 1: By twenty twenty two, because of new asphalt, the song
Speaker 1: was no longer playable in full. And also with this article,
Speaker 1: road shows in these classic movies brash, gritty, sometimes outrageous.
Speaker 1: Root sixty six plays a starring role by Brandon Tensley
Speaker 1: The Grapes of Wrath In this nineteen forty film adapted
Speaker 1: from John Steinbeck's novel, The Jode Family leaves Oklahoma amid
Speaker 1: the Great Depression and heads along Route sixty six towards
Speaker 1: the promise of California. The New York Times lauded the
Speaker 1: dust Bowl migration tale as to deserving of a place
Speaker 1: on a small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema's master works.
Speaker 1: Easy rider. Two men score big in a Los Angeles
Speaker 1: cocaine deal, then ride toward Marty Grass in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Directed by Dennis Hopper, the nineteen sixty nine film cast
Speaker 1: Root sixty six as a symbol of freedom and helped
Speaker 1: push Hollywood onto a new road of its own, ushering
Speaker 1: in an era when directors with distinct voices and visions
Speaker 1: began to run the show. Two Lane Blacktop, starring the
Speaker 1: singer songwriter James Taylor and Beach Boys co founder Dennis Wilson.
Speaker 1: Monte Hellman's nineteen seventy one cult film tracks a group
Speaker 1: of young street racers tearing through the Southwest. The movie
Speaker 1: evokes a bittersweet moment not long before Root sixty six's
Speaker 1: two lanes were outnumbered by interstate highways. Rain Man. In
Speaker 1: Barry Levinson's nineteen eighty eight dramedy, brothers Charlie Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: and Raymond Dustin Hoffmann travel from Cincinnati to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to claim an inheritance. They follow stretches of Route sixty six,
Speaker 1: visiting landmarks like the Big Eight Motel in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: The journey to the west and into the past helps
Speaker 1: bridge the brother's estrangement, and finally cars. In John Lassiter's
Speaker 1: two thousand six animated film Lightning mc queen, a talking
Speaker 1: race car is headed to an important race, but winds
Speaker 1: up stranded in the fictional town of Radiator Springs. Once
Speaker 1: a major stop on Route sixty six, he learns of
Speaker 1: the highway's bygone greatness. Cars didn't drive on it to
Speaker 1: make great time when resident recalls, they drove on it
Speaker 1: to have a great time. And finally, the Smithsonian's renovated
Speaker 1: carousel will return to the National Mall for another round.
Speaker 1: The clos Essex Marriago Round is gleaming again. But it's
Speaker 1: more than an amusement. It's a ride through history. By
Speaker 1: Lonnie G. Bunch. The third to take in a museum
Speaker 1: exhibition with all its art and historical significance, is to
Speaker 1: appreciate the meticulous planning that goes into it. Designers create
Speaker 1: galleries around relevant objects. Curators spend years digging through centuries
Speaker 1: old archives. Art handlers agonize over mounting a painting just right.
Speaker 1: Yet one historic item on the National Mall landed at
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian with far less deliberation. Secretary s Dilon Ripley
Speaker 1: first brought a carousel to Washington in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: calling it a living extension of the museums, although people
Speaker 1: worried it was more silly than substantive. The New York
Speaker 1: Times even reported concerns that the institution was becoming an
Speaker 1: ivy colored Disneyland. Despite the doubts, the Smithsonian has managed
Speaker 1: to maintain Ripley's vision, curating an artifact with the richer
Speaker 1: story than many of our grandest buildings. Carousels were not
Speaker 1: always meant for entertainment. They were originally designed as training
Speaker 1: mechanisms for jousting without tiring a horse. By the late
Speaker 1: eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, the carousel as we
Speaker 1: know it arrived in Europe and then America. The figures
Speaker 1: at this time were mostly made of wood, and other
Speaker 1: animals besides the horse were added to the carousel repertoire.
Speaker 1: World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression
Speaker 1: reduced the available wood for carousel animals, and they began
Speaker 1: to be built of aluminum. The ornately decorated animals went
Speaker 1: out of style, making way for faster roller coasters and
Speaker 1: other forms of entertainment. In nineteen forty seven, a different
Speaker 1: gleaming carousel was installed at gwyn Oak Amusement Park outside Baltimore,
Speaker 1: about fifty miles north of Washington, d c. Open in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four, Gwen Oak was built along streetcar lines
Speaker 1: as an invitation to neighbors from all economic strata. Yet
Speaker 1: Black residents, despite constituting about a quarter of Baltimore's population
Speaker 1: by nineteen fifty, were not welcome. Starting in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: an eight year effort to integrate gwen Oak mirrored the
Speaker 1: civil rights push farther south. It began with years of
Speaker 1: picketing the park's All Nations Day, which excluded countries with
Speaker 1: primarily black populations, but over time the gwen Oak protesters
Speaker 1: became bolder, joining the national landscape of students braving hostile
Speaker 1: crowds to attend school in Little Rock, Arkansas, bus riders
Speaker 1: taking to the sidewalk in Montgomery, Alabama, and teenagers sitting
Speaker 1: unbowed at a Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter. On August
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, the same day Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior shared his dream with crowds on the National Mall,
Speaker 1: Sharon Langley became the first African American child to ride
Speaker 1: the carousel at Gwyn Oak after hurricane damage shuttered the
Speaker 1: park in nineteen seventy three. The carousel went into storage.
Speaker 1: A few years later, as Ripley's original carousel began to
Speaker 1: show its age, the Smithsonian began looking for a suitably
Speaker 1: grand replacement. Gwen Oak's hand carved beauty, an emblem of
Speaker 1: the struggle for civil rights, fit the bill. For four decades,
Speaker 1: riders of all ages, especially our youngest learners at the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, have laughed as the Washington Monument
Speaker 1: appeared and disappeared from view. This April, after a detailed renovation,
Speaker 1: the carousel will return to its rightful spot on the
Speaker 1: mall as an unexpected witness to history. This concludes readings
Speaker 1: from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has
Speaker 1: been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a
Speaker 1: great day.