LOOSE ENDS, 6.10.2025

Drafted while awaiting the birth of my granddaughter. THRILLING! Baby and parents are thriving. To paraphrase what Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote to Lucretia Mott in 1851, announcing the birth of her daughter, “I am at length the happy [grand]mother of a [grand]daughter. Rejoice with me all Womankind [and men] . . . A champion of [our] cause is born!”

Thank you for your recent remarks; my responses and addenda (in italics) below.

FREEDOM RIDERS (5.4): I had not seen the new documentary, “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” when I wrote that essay. The film is about an eleven-week protest in 1960, in Bethesda, Maryland, to end segregation at the Glen Echo amusement park and pool. Howard University student organizers were joined by white, mostly Jewish residents of the nearby Bannockburn neighborhood.

The name of the film refers to a Langston Hughes poem, pointing out that Jim Crow cannot push you to the back of circular carousel. Despite police resistance and violence from the Klan and the American Nazi Party, they succeeded. For many Black and white protesters, it was their first interracial encounter.

Among the Howard leaders was Hank Thomas. After integrating lunch counters, movie theaters and Glen Echo, on May 4, 1961, he boarded the first bus leaving DC on the Freedom Rides. (On the far right in the photo below.) He barely escaped his firebombed bus in Aniston, AL.

MOTHER’S DAY & PRONATALISM (5.11): “Really excellent, important, necessary,” responded one of you. Another asked, “Why is it a goal to ‘maintain’ the population, when it has mostly constantly increased? Should focus be on ‘rightsizing’ for healthy mixed populations per location & sustainability goals?”

This topic continues to generate attention. It seems like there are articles every day: NYTimes columnist Michal Leibowitz asked, “Why Do Millennials Dread Having Babies?” Jessica Grose warns “Don’t Let the Neonatalists Set the Agenda.” Becca Rothfeld reviewed two books: “Bad Science Pushes an Impossible ideal for Moms.” Monica Hesse compared current maternal health policy to The Handmaid’s Tale in “Is This Gilead? Nope, Just Georgia.”

The National Assembly of Vietnam, confronted by a falling birthrate, scrapped its two-child policy, in place for forty years. In 2021, China inaugurated a three-child policy.

BROWN & CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY (5.17): Some background notes:

The first woman to earn a formal law degree, from an accredited American institution, was African American Charlotte Ray, in 1872. Confronted by racism and sexism, the Howard University graduate abandoned her career. Today women are 55.3% of students in law school and 38% of the profession. Only 22% are currently partners; fewer than 1% are Black women. Many women lawyers work for the government, earning lower incomes than in private practice.

In the Court term that ended in June 2020, women had presented only 13% of the arguments. In the last decade, the average ranged from 12% to 15%. During World War II, Justice William Douglas hired the first female clerk, Lucile Lomen. The second was appointed in 1966. Justice Felix Frankfurter, who employed the first Black clerk in 1948, refused to hire Ginsburg in 1960, because she was a mother. In 1974, Justice Marshall hired the first Black female clerk, Karen Hastie Williams, who became the first Black partner at a “white-shoe” DC firm. In 1937, FDR had made her father, William Hastie, the first Black Federal District Court judge. The number of clerks increased after O’Connor’s appointment. Between 2005-2017, 85% of all clerks were white; one-third were women.

The legal precedent for segregation was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Homer Plessy, 30, was a mixed-race shoemaker, a creole de couleur who could pass for white but chose not to. HE volunteered to challenge Louisiana’s separate car rule, in cooperation with a citizens’ committee and the railroad company, which opposed segregation because it cost more to run more cars.

Plessy was arrested in the first-class car, tried by Judge Ferguson, lost and appealed. The case established the principle of “separate but equal” accommodations for white and Black citizens. The Supreme Court decided 8-1 that the Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended to . . .enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either of them.”

Only Justice John Marshall Harlan, whose Kentucky family had enslaved workers, objected. “The Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” In 2009, descendants of Plessy and Ferguson established a foundation to teach the history of civil rights

From Maine: “I'm glad you featured Kluger's book [Simple Justice]. To me, its hero was [Charles Hamilton] Houston, the Moses of the long march against segregation.”

From Pittsburgh: “Am a huge fan of Constance Baker Motley. Assume you’ve already heard from readers: Charlayne, not Charlene, Hunter-Gault. On my wall: “Separate But Equal” poster. Inset is Harry Briggs son being left in the dust by the school bus for white students, the opening scene.”

IMMIGRATION (5.24): Too much to say. I recommend following Joyce Vance‘s Substack, CIVIL DISCOURSE, to understand the legal issues and the underlying risks to the rule of law in our democracy. Her writing is crisp, cogent and compellng.

Reader in DC: “In the remaining time that I have left on earth, I seriously doubt that the USA/America that I hope to live in and be proud of, will recapture itself and become the better place that I would like to witness and see.”

MEMORIAL DAY (5.30): My essay mentioned the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its coverup. On June 1, Tulsa mayor Monroe Nichols announced his city would provide $104m in reparations for the families of survivors and victims. The funds will cover affordable housing, historic preservation, scholarships and identification of those buried in mass graves. The horrifying, military-style attack killed more than 300 Black residents and torched 1,100 Black homes.

“This is such interesting and surprising historical background. Illuminating and important as always.”

MARGARET CHASE SMITH & MCCARTHY (6.1): The parallels between witch hunts by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and the revengeful retributions of President Trump’s second term have gotten additional attention with the Broadway production, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Its coauthor and star, George Clooney, portrays the famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. A recent Washington Post column by Larry Tye, author of Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, credits another journalist for taking on McCarthy, at greater cost. As early as 1947, Drew Pearson, whose eight columns a week reached forty million people, called “low blow Joe” a “dunce” and uncovered his “tax troubles, short-order divorces and near-disbarment.”

Murrow broadcast two hard-hitting, thirty-minute television programs about McCarthy; Pearson wrote fifty-eight damning columns. At a dinner dance at the tony Sulgrave Club, the Senator kneed the columnist in the groin. Within a week, McCarthy had accused Pearson of Communist sympathies and urged the public to boycott the hat making company that sponsored Pearson’s radio program. Until the Army hearings, McCarthy continued to crush careers.

On the anniversary of Senator Smith’s speech, Senator John Cornyn asserted that he would win the no-holds-barred Republican primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by making the race “all about character. . . This [will be} a test of whether character still matters.” I worry few Americans could define character today.

A Maine resident noted that “Maggie” Smith directed lots of federal money to the Bath Iron Works, the state’s second largest employer, and the Brunswick Naval Air Station. A tour of her home saw a nearly new kitchen, because she never cooked.

QUILTS: “Very much enjoying the story quilt you are constructing with Pink Threads!”

Thank you! In early May, members of Women Building Peace hosted a national “quilt-in” in Washington. Women across the country have stitched messages to members of Congress into quilt squares to deliver to the Capitol.

SAFEGUARDING HISTORY

The Trump team continues to erase and silence historians, libraries, museums, research centers. It accuses historians of disparaging America’s past because parts of that chronicle were flawed and violent or featured people who are not heterosexual white men.

Following the White House in its attack on DEI and facts, the Defense Department announced plans to remove the name of assassinated gay activist and Navy veteran Harvey Milk from a US Navy vessel. In addition to the USN Milk, USN oilers have been named for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dolores Huerta, Robert Kennedy, John Lewis, Thurgood Marshall, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Earl Warren.

“I don’t want a Disney version of our history!” declared Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) twenty-hours into his overnight speech. “I don’t want a whitewashed history [or] a homogenized history. Tell me the wretched truth about America, because it speaks to our greatness.”

Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting on and subscribing to PINK THREADS. I especially appreciate those readers who can support my work with paid subscriptions.

Onward!

Betsy

At the Renwick Museum: Alicia Eggert, This Present Moment, 2019-2020, neon, custom controller, steel, 144 x 180 x 48 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Renwick General Acquisitions Fund, 2021.4, © 2019, Alicia Eggert