Guyasuta Gangsters
Independence Day fell on a Friday in 1930. That day Pittsburgh newspapers reported that a new greyhound racing track would open in the evening with a slate of nine greyhound races planned. The Guyasuta...
View ArticleProtestors deface Silver Spring “monument”
There are 53 public art installations in Silver Spring, Maryland. Only two depict historical figures. One is a mural showing President Harry Truman during a visit to the suburban community. The other...
View ArticleSilver Spring Civil Rights Museum
Crivella’s Wayside Inn. Tucked away in the 1000-block of East West Highway near downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, this former restaurant was the scene of non-violent civil rights protests between 1962...
View ArticleField trips
In 2019 I began teaching a seminar on ethnography and community engagement for historic preservation in Goucher College’s graduate historic preservation program. Goucher’s summer residency program has...
View ArticleZapped! Pittsburgh microwave sites
Last Fall I was driving around taking pictures of mobster graves and sites associated with organized crime history in Pittsburgh when I spotted an old microwave tower on a hilltop. It was breaking the...
View ArticleThe Atlanta Bug
Introduction Sometime in the late 1920s or even as late as 1930, numbers gambling arrived in Atlanta. Who brought the street lottery to the city or how appear to have been forgotten or erased. It could...
View ArticleDecatur’s Genocide Cannon
In 1906, the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated a cannon to DeKalb County, Georgia. According to the story attached to the cannon, it had been used in an 1836 campaign against Native...
View ArticleSilver Spring video shorts: The Tastee Diner
In August I got an email from an AmeriCorps Project Change leader asking me to contribute to an upcoming training tour of Silver Spring, Maryland, for new volunteers. The project director and I spoke...
View ArticleSilver Spring video shorts: Crivella’s Wayside Inn
This is the second of three posts featuring short video segments produced over the summer for AmeriCorps. The first in this series featured nostalgia and Silver Spring’s Tastee Diner. This clip visits...
View ArticleSilver Spring video shorts: Acorn Park
This is the third of three posts featuring short video segments produced over the summer for AmeriCorps. The first two covered Silver Spring’s Tastee Diner and Crivella’s Wayside Inn. This clip...
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