University of Nebraska Press

From the desk of Ryan H. Edgington

Ryan H. Edgington is a visiting assistant professor of history at Macalester College. His book, Range Wars: The Environmental Contest for White Sands Missile Range is now available in hardcover and paperback. 

A couple months ago, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel offered a compromise on the SunZia transmission project that in part traversed the northern call-up area of White Sands Missile Range located in south-central New Mexico. A Department of Defense site about the size of Connecticut, the missile range is the largest overland military site in the Western Hemisphere and the second largest in the Western world (Woomera Test Range in southern Australia is the largest). The project is a 500-kilovolt “clean energy” transmission line that crosses private, state, and federal lands across central New Mexico and Arizona. The project is named for SunZia Transmission, which leads the project accompanied by sponsors including Salt River Project, Shell Wind Energy, Southwestern Power Group II, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and Tucson Electric Power. The Bureau of Land Management is the lead federal agency on the project. According to the Environmental Impact Statement for the project “the BLM’s purpose and need for the proposed Project is established by regulatory obligations and directives, and current energy development trends.” Those playing a role in the EIS include the missile range, Fort Bliss to its south, Holloman Air Force Base on its eastern border, and the National Park Service (which manages the White Sands National Monument), among others.

Rains have flooded parts of New Mexico this summer. But considering long-term climate change and substantial drought conditions over the past few years, such a project might seem not only reasonable, but also urgent. Yet conflict over the project arose as soon as it got off the ground. White Sands Missile Range came out against the plan. Last September, Range Commander Brigadier General Gwen Bingham said, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that allowing the line will mean the end of White Sands Missile Range…But it will mean the end of some of the programs.” The SunZia project is not the first time the missile range has wrestled with conflicts to its primary mission. Established in the summer of 1945 as White Sands Proving Ground, the missile range has long had to face both local and extra-local challenges to its existence. During World War II regional ranchers raised questions about the value of growing militarization to the regional economy. They suggested that the area was best left to producing beef for the war effort. In the thirty years after the war, local tourist boosters sought to make the Trinity Site (where the first nuclear weapon was detonated) a public monument. The missile range consumed the site as it grew after World War II. The Atomic Energy Commission and the DOD successfully fought to limit public access to the site.

Ranchers, who had used the land prior to World War II to make a living, were tied in to twenty-year grazing permit suspension and property lease agreements after World War II. Upset by what they saw as a reduction of value on their ranchlands when condemnation hearings commenced in the 1970s, the ranchers challenged the missile range’s authority in to the 1990s by bringing lawsuit after lawsuit against the government. In 1982 rancher Dave McDonald and his niece Mary crept into White Sands and occupied the family’s former homestead. Armed with guns, they posted signs to the army (which managed White Sands) to keep out. Members of New Mexico’s congressional cadre eventually escorted them off the range. Yet, not unlike Cliven Bundy’s recent protests against the BLM in Nevada, their protest reflected the discontent with federal land management among rural western producers that has emerged since the Sagebrush Rebellion of the late 1970s. Militarization added a wrinkle to rural discontent across the West.

From the desk of Eric Brach: Remembering Billy McGill

Eric Brach is a lecturer in English at California Lutheran University and worked with Billy McGill on his book, Billy "the Hill" and the Jump Hook: The Autobiography of a Forgotten Basketball Legend (November 2013).

Billy “the Hill” McGill passed away on Friday, July 11, 2014. He was 74 years old.

I met Billy McGill in the spring of 2010, just before completing my graduate education at the University of Southern California. In truth, I hadn’t heard of him or his story before then. I didn’t know that he had been the No. 1 pick in the 1962 NBA draft. I didn’t know that he’d been the first to integrate the basketball team at the University of Utah, nor that he had been such a star that the team retired his number before he’d even left the school, paving the way for athletes (and students!) of all races to find a place at that school. I didn’t know that Billy invented the jump hook, nor did I know anything of the struggles he’d had to face as a youth coming up in the pre–Civil Rights Act era.

I also didn’t know that Billy had been trying to find a way to tell his story since the New York Times published a piece on him back in the early 1980s. He had been trying to tell his tale for about as long as I had been in alive.

Of course, all of that came in time, as did so much more. Over the four years that I was lucky enough to get to know and work with Billy, I learned that he was a family man – that he loved his wife, Gwen, more than he could ever say, and that his children and grandchildren served as a source of constant joy and pride. I learned that he thought fondly of Utah, and that recollections of his days on the hardwood playing for his alma mater were among his most cherished memories. He treasured his teammates and he welcomed his fans. Generations of Ute faithful stepped forward to shake his hand, and fathers recounted to sons the tales of Billy’s exploits on the basketball court. These all offered him great pleasure.

Plato said that you can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation, and that may be true – there’s no doubt that everyone who shared the floor with Billy during his playing days has a story to tell. I believe that the time I spent talking with Billy and helping him craft a manuscript from the recollections of his youth offered a clear view into the life and mind of a truly unique individual – one whose legacy lives on in game film, in sporting lore, in a beloved family, and, at last, in a book as well.

Billy McGill was a fighter. He worked hard. He spoke little, preferring to let his actions speak for him. No cenotaph can ever fully capture the life of an individual, but I hope that the book he completed will continue to delight his fans for a long, long time to come.

-Eric Brach

More tributes to Billy McGill: 

 

NBA
BBC News
The Salt Lake Tribune
SB Nation

From the desk of Dawn G. Marsh

Below author Dawn G. Marsh writes about the genesis of her book, A Lenape among the Quakers (UNP, March 2014), in graduate school.

My book, A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman, emerged from the pages of a dissertation completed to fulfill the requirements for a doctoral degree in history. The path to that dissertation topic was not out of the ordinary. But the space between the dissertation and the final manuscript is as convoluted as the course of the Brandywine River, the center of Hannah Freeman’s world.

My interest in Pennsylvania’s Indian history was both pragmatic and personal. I wanted to work with Sharon Salinger because she was a highly respected colonial scholar, and she had a reputation for being a tough dissertation advisor. And as both a Pennsylvanian and a Native American scholar, I knew that the state’s history was a perfect example of an overly mythologized colonial story that silenced and subverted the history of Native Americans. There was much work to do on that score.

During the early stage of my graduate program, Dr. Salinger brought to my attention a piece published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Marshall Becker, an anthropologist, provided a brief discussion of a source he described as the “earliest known autobiography of a Native American woman.” That got my attention. I did not realize it then, but I was beginning a long journey, with Hannah at my side every step of the way. The Examination of Indian Hannah, written by Moses Marshall in 1798, is not an autobiography as such but rather a two-page deposition used to satisfy Chester County’s residence requirements in order to commit Hannah Freeman to the poorhouse. She was their first inmate and the only Native American woman. Two hundred years later, her story opened a door to a little-known past, and I walked through.

From the desk of Kate Buford: What's in a Name?

Kate Buford is the author of Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe. 

We know the legal facts by now. On Wednesday, June 18, the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, part of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, cancelled six different trademark protections associated with the Washington Redskins professional football team. Federal trademark law does not permit registration of trademarks that “may disparage” individuals or groups or “bring them into contempt or disrepute.”

Each of the trademarks in question contained the word “redskin.” The 2–1 decision said that “the recognition that this racial designation based on skin color is disparaging to Native Americans” was demonstrated “by the near complete drop-off in usage of ‘redskins’ as a reference to Native Americans beginning in the 1960s.”

A similar ruling was handed down in1999, but was later overturned on appeal. The current case was filed in 2006 by five new petitioners, targeting registration—and the protection it ensured—of the Redskins team name between 1967 and 1990.

Prior to the decision, strong momentum had been building to pressure the football team to change its name. President Obama, Democratic members of Congress, journalists, and other members of the public have urged the Redskins to change the name, largely through denunciation.

But the new lawsuit took a different tack, hitting the $1.7 billion franchise where it would hurt: merchandise—T-shirts, license plate holders, sweatshirts, beer glasses, decals, and more. Forbes estimates the brand alone to be worth $145 million. With that much money in the game, the ruling, in turn, could have a direct effect on other NFL franchises because football’s revenue-sharing system gives them all a stake. “Maybe this is the tipping point for the rest of the league,” said Gabriel Feldman, director of the sports law program at Tulane University.

Backgrounding the Outward Odyssey Series

This op-ed originally appeared on Spaceflight Insider. Colin Burgess is the editor for the Outward Odyssey Series.

During a recent interview, I was asked where ideas for new books originate. I replied that they usually come quite unexpectedly and often are derived from casual conversations or notions that people suggest. The important thing is to recognize these verbal prompts when they appear, and then act on them.

However, the entire concept of the Outward Odyssey series was not mine to begin with, and on this occasion the idea came from a more traditional source. It all started with a March 2003 query from my new-found publisher, the University of Nebraska Press, and specifically the press’s then editor in chief, Gary Dunham, a self-confessed spaceflight enthusiast who said he had enjoyed publishing my two previous books, Teacher in Space and Fallen Astronauts. Dunham was excited about the possibility of a series of books on the history of space exploration, something along the lines of a “people’s history” that did not privilege technical advances nor a manifest destiny approach to the subject. His idea was to instead  look at the social history of spaceflight and its impact on people. He felt eight volumes might be a good starting point, and asked me if I would consider taking on the role of series editor.

Although the project was well beyond anything I had ever attempted before then, I rather boldly and without any professional editing qualifications replied that I felt I was up to the challenge.  This not only involved finding suitable authors and having each prepare a proposal based on a suggested book outline, but bringing them all up to speed on the social mandate of the series and where each book fit within the overall scheme of the series. I also emphasized their contractual obligations and offered information on the fixed style guide they had to employ in what they wrote. My role, once each proposal was found acceptable by the editorial board, would be to guide them through the writing, editing, and publication process on behalf of the press. I became basically a go-between, constantly communicating with all of the potential authors and the publisher.

I began by looking at authors of previously published books on space exploration, but then realized we needed a whole new generation of authors for the series officially dubbed Outward Odyssey.  As a member of several online space forums I was able to submit notices asking for any potential authors to contact me with their ideas, resumés, and examples of any previously published articles or other works.

To kick-start the series I contacted long-time friend and spaceflight enthusiast Francis French; together we tossed around ideas for the first book in the series, which we thought should cover the first pioneering human spaceflights carried out by the United States and the Soviet Union. We felt it was important to explore both the achievements of American astronauts as well as those of the Soviet cosmonauts, and this recognition of all participants in the highly competitive international space race set the trend for the rest of the series, which embraces the spaceflight and space spectaculars (and tragedies) from all spacefaring nations. We set out to not only relate the stories of successive spaceflights, but to emphasize the stories and backgrounds of those who flew missions, especially focusing on what inspired them to saddle up on these incredible adventures. 

Our book, titled Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961 –1965, dominated our lives for the next couple of years and resulted in a massively oversized manuscript. In consultation with Dunham we decided that it would be an injustice to heavily crop the manuscript. Instead, it was divided evenly and became two volumes; the second book took on the title In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965–1969. As before, the main title originated from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Those first two books in the series traced the story of human space travel, from Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight in 1961 to Neil Armstrong as he was about to set foot upon the moon. In the meantime I had found another suitable author, Chris Gainor, to prepare a manuscript that detailed the centuries-long lead-up to Gagarin’s flight; launched another follow-on book that related the history of Project Apollo (called Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969–1975, with multiple chapter authors); and initiated another on the Skylab space station program. NASA journalist David Hitt had contacted me regarding the proposed Skylab book and mentioned that he was researching a book on the life of Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott. I convinced Dave to look at writing about the entire Skylab program, and he convinced Owen Garriott to join him in the project as co-author. Soon another Skylab astronaut, Joe Kerwin, asked if he could participate. Thus two NASA astronauts were involved in writing Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story along with Hitt.

From the desk of Tim Grove: American history myths

Think you know American history? You may be wrong. History myths, as told in A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History: 

1) Betsy Ross sewed the first flag.

She sits with the Founding Fathers on the Fourth of July parade float, in colonial costume, a mobcap on her head and a thirteen-star American flag draped over her knee. Most American children know her by name: Betsy Ross, the woman who sewed America’s first stars and stripes. But  historians have found no definitive documentary evidence to support the story that Betsy sewed the first flag at the request of General Washington. Yes, she was a well-known seamstress in Philadelphia at that time, and she knew various members of Congress. Yes, she sewed flags. But the crucial link to this notable first, a solid piece of historical evidence, a letter, receipt, newspaper article, is missing. If she were alive today, she would likely be surprised to hear her story. Historians credit her grandson, William Canby, with manufacturing the legend in 1870. Unfortunately Mary Pickersgill, another seamstress from Philadelphia, didn’t make the history books. She sewed the Star-Spangled Banner.

2) Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

According to the popular story, in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which successfully removed the seeds from short-fibered cotton. The machine transformed the agricultural south as cotton quickly became a profitable crop across the southern United States. Harvesting the plant remained labor intensive, and thus slave labor followed the gin. Given this story, two implications might seem obvious: first, before Mr. Whitney’s gin, people cultivating cotton around the world separated the seeds and fiber by hand, and second, prior to Whitney’s invention the British textile manufacturers relied on cotton ginned by hand. Yet these assumptions are wrong. For millennia prior to Whitney, cotton-producing cultures around the world were using something called a roller gin to remove seeds from cotton. Historical fact shows that cotton gins have been used in some form or another since the first century. Whitney invented a cotton gin.

Read more myths on Tim Grove's blog Historyplaces.

Remembering Frank Cashen

J. Frank Cashen was, at various times, executive vice president, chief operating officer, and general manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the ’60s and ’70s and the New York Mets from 1980 to 1991. His teams won three world championships in five World Series appearances and were runners up in three other league championship playoffs. He passed away on June 30, 2014.

In early 2013, Sports Editor Rob Taylor acquired Cashen's autobiography Winning in Both Leagues: Reflections from Baseball’s Front Office (September 2014). Below Taylor talks about the forthcoming book.

Working with the late Frank Cashen to help bring his book to life has truly been an honor. When Frank and his editor Jack Batty first queried me about the project, I was thrilled to have the chance to look at it, as his story offers much to baseball fans who want to know more about the game from one of the greatest GMs of the last 50 years. While he was best known for being the architect behind the Mets’ 1986 World Championship team, his run heading up the great Orioles teams from the 1960s and 70s should not be overlooked.

Aside from his great baseball story, what impressed me most about Frank’s rich story is the diversity of his accomplishments; he was quoted as saying he was “a writer by choice, a lawyer by education, a horseman by heritage, a brewery worker by necessity, and a baseball executive by good fortune.” Being blessed with good fortune runs through Frank’s story, as does humility, a relentless work ethic, and a warmhearted knack for managing people and earning their respect. As many of his former players have attested, he was a gentleman with great passion who had a great mind for the game, and it’s those qualities that come through on the pages of his book.

“The most versatile man I know; sports, music, writing, the law, he could do it all.”—Tim McCarver 

“When it came to baseball, Cashen had the magic touch.”—Nelson Doubleday Jr., former president of Doubleday and former owner of the New York Mets

“Frank Cashen, through shrewd trades and organizational development, put together two of the most complete pitching staffs in baseball history. Through the use of both the numbers and his great appreciation of the eyes and ears of the game (the scouts), Mr. Cashen assembled iconic franchises. Orioles and Mets fans applaud.”—Ron Darling, New York Mets pitcher in the 1980s

From the desk of Sue William Silverman

"From LA, With Love"

Daniel Boone’s great-great-great-great-grandson, Pat Boone, keeps leading me into new territory. How else to explain my journey from tiny Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to massive LAX? The plane lands in eternally sunny, palm-lined Los Angeles, where I am whisked by taxi to the Beverly Hilton hotel. I’ve seen its white façade with its red-lettered name countless times on TV, watching celebrities walk the red carpet. Now I’m here to attend Boone’s eightieth birthday party celebrity roast.

Well, really I’m here because of my new memoir, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, which revolves around three previous encounters with Pat Boone. My fascination began when I was a New Jersey teenybopper drawn to his squeaky-clean 1960s pop music, music that frequently outsold that of Elvis Presley. Back then, I attended his live TV show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, broadcast from Manhattan. Afterward I got his autograph.

But my obsession went deeper. I wanted him to adopt me. He already had four daughters; would he even notice a fifth? To my young self, the overtly Christian, all-American Boone offered refuge, safety from my abusive Jewish father.

Decades passed before I saw him again, yet his presence remained. He was the safest father I could imagine. Even as I went on to be a fan of the Beatles, the Doors, and other rock ’n’ rollers, I never relinquished my crush on Boone.

Then I happened to hear that he would be giving a concert on May 6, 2004, at the Calvary Reformed Church near my house in Holland, Michigan. Of course I attended the show. More important, I barged backstage afterward. I tracked Boone down and told him about my childhood, about my father, and how it was he, Pat Boone, who offered me hope.

Months later, when he returned to Michigan to give a Christmas concert, he formally invited me backstage. By then he’d read Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, my book about growing up in an incestuous family. So when he pointed to a flower embroidered on my jacket and said, “You are like a flower growing up through concrete,” I knew to what he referred.

And now I’m at the Beverly Hilton. Boone had even invited me to attend the evening’s VIP reception, preceding the dinner, and asked me to bring him additional copies of my book so he could give them to his family and friends.

I wait at the cocktail party watching him walk the red carpet. I want to be the first person he sees when

Sue Silverman with Pat Boone

he enters the room. I am! He hugs and kisses me, remembering me immediately. He reiterates how much he likes my book, and we briefly discuss the ending, which describes a dream I had about him.

During the dinner in the International Ballroom, I sit surrounded by hundreds of people. But I can’t stop watching him, amazed that I have ended up here.

Later, after the festivities, I have the chance to say good-bye. He takes my hand. He says it’s cold. He warms it between his.

Then I watch as he walks up a ramp leading to the back of the stage. A curtain closes. He’s gone. Yet, for me, Pat Boone remains: warm, comforting, despite all the odds.

-Sue Silverman

Follow @SueSilverman on Twitter! 

Reason for Hope? Blackhorse et al v Pro-Football, Inc. and the Future of a Racial Slur

C. Richard King is Professor of Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author and editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Unsettling America: Indianness in the Contemporary World.

On June 18, 2014, The U.S. Trademark and Patent Office Trademark Trial Appeal Board (TTAB) voided trademarks associated with Washington, DC NFL franchise, because it found the team’s name, Redskins, to be “disparaging.” The ruling, which followed precedent established by TTAB over the past two decades that had dismissed a range of trademark applications using the name, predictably was met with adulation by opponents and outrage by supporters. In fact, the decision lit up social media, spawning #newredskinnames, which dominated trending topics for much of the day. Focusing on the celebratory tones, raging resentment, and partisan politics palpable in immediate reactions, we might easily lose the larger import of the decision, while overlooking its limitations and dangers.

It is best not to think of the ruling as an end point. It rather moves the struggle to the next phase, fostering reconfigured dialogues and debate, while opening new fronts for action and reaction. Indeed, neither the name nor the brand will cease, and even if appeals uphold the decision, the franchise will retain rights, if more limited and less profitable. The organization said as much the same in its press release: “We’ve seen this story before. And just like last time, today’s ruling will have no effect at all on the team’s ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo” (emphasis original). This is certainly not the end. Nevertheless, the finding is a hopeful sign, or better said, another positive development for those opposed to the name. It adds to growing political pressure and the increasingly audible voices of dissent. In other words, the fight will continue with increased visibility and heightened momentum.

Much of the coverage, but happily not all, has centered on the ruling by TTAB and its propriety, the impact on and reaction of the franchise, and the minutiae of intellectual property law. The media has disappeared American Indians again, often burying, if not altogether erasing, them. Many readers will not learn the identities and actions of the five Native American plaintiffs, Amanda Blackhorse, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Philip Gover, Jillian Pappan, and Courtney Tsotigh, who courageously brought the case to TTAB, nor will be given a fuller understanding of the long history of opposition to the team and its name, an opposition that dates back more than four decades and its in a larger pattern of empowerment. Indeed, as important as this ruling is, it is not the first time TTAB has taken up the question. In fact, it comes more than two decades after Suzan Harjo, Raymond D. Apodaca, Vine Deloria, Jr., Norbert S. Hill, Jr. Mateo Romero, William A. Means, and Manley A. Begay, Jr. filled suit against the NFL, seeking to nullify associated trademarks. Then, as now, TTAB ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

From the desk of Tim Grove

Tim Grove is chief of museum learning at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. He has worked at three Smithsonian museums, at Colonial Williamsburg, and on the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition.

I’ve found that people either proclaim to love history or hate it. There seems to be no middle ground. Among the people who love history were Thomas Jefferson who claimed that “a morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable,” and John F. Kennedy who said that “for the true student of history, history is an end in itself. It fulfills a deep human need for understanding.” I’ve been fascinated with the past most of my life, beginning with my early moments in Williamsburg, the restored capital of Virginia. I ended up with a career in history. I get paid to do fun projects and share what I learn with millions of others. I’ve been fortunate to work at some well-known places that explore the national experience, and I’ve been able to dig into topics that many Americans know (or think they know), such as the origins of the Star-Spangled Banner, the inner workings of the cotton gin, or the trials and tribulations of Lewis and Clark.

My new book, A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History, is an attempt to document some of these projects and show that the pursuit of the past is fun and that history is both relevant and complex—and to bust a few myths. When I finished working on the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition, which traveled across the nation, my friends encouraged me to write about my adventures. From experiencing a water battle on the Missouri River and accompanying a group of teachers from reservation schools on the explorers’ trail, to, yes, receiving a grizzly in the mail, I learned much about our cultural landscape. I kept writing as I thought of other projects that were meaningful and had molded my thoughts on history. At some point along the way, the writing became a book of eighteen chapters spanning a broad scope of place and time: from Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic to Cape Disappointment on the Pacific, and from eighteenth-century Williamsburg to the twenty-first-century Kennedy Space Center. I describe the book as part insider perspective, part scholarship, and part memoir.

What began as a selfish effort to remember turned into a passionate desire to demonstrate the historical process. I wanted to lift the veil and show how historians analyze historical evidence, ask questions, and think critically about multiple perspectives. In an age where STEM gets most of the attention, historians need to show why the study of the past is vitally relevant to an informed society. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “history, by apprising [the people] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future.”

I’ve had great fun learning to ride a high wheel bicycle, growing and picking cotton, flying over the transcontinental railroad, and undertaking many other adventures. I hope my readers will catch just a spark of my enthusiasm for the past.

-Tim Grove