Monthly Archives: June 2022

A memorial has formed at Robb Elementary School, dedicated to the 19 children and two adults killed during the mass shooting. Many people in Uvalde have a shared history. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

A memorial has formed at Robb Elementary School, dedicated to the 19 children and two adults killed during the mass shooting. Many people in Uvalde have a shared history.

So many people in Uvalde, Texas have a shared history. Some of that history runs right through Robb Elementary School, a place that was part of the Mexican-American community's struggle for racial equality.

NPR's Vanessa Romo spoke with Eulalio Diaz, Jr. He was the coronor on duty when a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers at the school. Diaz also went to Robb Elementary and knew a lot of the victims' families. And NPR's Adrian Florido has the story of Robb Elementary and the fight for Mexican-American equality.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Matt Ozug, Elena Burnett, Lauren Hodges and Karen Zamora. It was edited by Sami Yenigun, Sarah Handel, Vickie Walton-James and Amy Isackson. Our executive producer is Cara Tallo.

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Robb Elementary School and Uvalde's History of Mexican-American Activism : Consider This from NPR - NPR

Name an American leader you admire. Name an American leader you admire.

Toby, 47, white, Republican

Adanma, 43, Black, independent

Daphne, 44, Black, Democrat

Name an American leader you admire. That turned out to be one of the hardest prompts for people to respond to in any of the 11 Times Opinion focus groups held this year. There was a long pause before some of our 11 participants started raising their hands, and even then, several couldnt come up with someone (or named a celebrity scientist and an Indian leader). As the focus group continued, both Democrats and Republicans struggled to point to a moment in American history they were proud of. Their frustrations with America today seemed to cloud their views of America over the sweep of time, of what the country has stood for or fought for in its best moments.

We convened this focus group of parents of high school students to discuss how they think American history and values should be taught in schools today, how issues like race and sexuality should be explored and how parts of our history including the founding fathers, slavery, the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the gay rights movement should or should not be discussed in-depth. Notably, all 11 Republicans, Democrats and independents believed that the good and the bad should be taught; one Republican said that schools should teach the pros and cons about Donald Trumps presidency, regardless of anyones feelings about him.

At a time when many parents nationwide want a greater say in whats taught in schools and when some Republican leaders are restricting access to books and discussions of gender and sexual identity, the focus group wrestled in particular with the idea of facts versus interpretation, with some wanting interpretation taught strictly at home. Others felt interpretations needed to be updated.

Mr. Healy is the deputy Opinion editor. Mr. Rivera is an editorial assistant in Opinion.

Adanma 43, Black, Georgia, independent

Lloyd 38, Black, Ohio, independent

Daphne 44, Black, Maryland, Democrat

Ashish 49, Asian, California, Republican

Toby 47, white, Texas, Republican

Howard 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

April 39, white, Minnesota, Republican

Dennis 54, Hispanic, New York, Democrat

Peter 44, Asian, Oklahoma, Republican

Jim 35, white, Louisiana, Republican

Jennifer 38, white, Wisconsin, independent

Moderator, Margie Omero

Name an American leader you admire thats a president, leader, politician, alive or dead, an American leader that you admire.

Peter, 44, Asian, Oklahoma, Republican

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Toby, 47, white, Texas, Republican

I respect and I admire George W. Bush. Probably get a lot of kickback on that, but thats OK. I admire what he did and how he didnt back down from anything.

Ashish, 49, Asian, California, Republican

Ill say Gandhi.

Howard, 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

Martin Luther King Jr.

Adanma, 43, Black, Georgia, independent

Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Im a fan.

Moderator, Margie Omero

Is this a tough question for folks? What makes it a tough question?

Toby, 47, white, Texas, Republican

In this day and age in our country, its really hard to think of someone that I admire thats in a high position or a political leader. I have to rack my brain to think of someone who has integrity.

Daphne, 44, Black, Maryland, Democrat

I couldnt think of anybody.

April, 39, white, Minnesota, Republican

I mean, depending on which news channel you tune in to, youll hear two completely different stories about somebody. So its really hard to know whats actually going on. You dont know whats true.

Moderator, Margie Omero

So let me ask another question. Is there a moment in American history that you feel proud of?

Dennis, 54, Hispanic, New York, Democrat

The Industrial Revolution. You have Ford. You have J.P. Morgan. You have Edison. These are the great creators that basically created the concept of the American dream. Thats like the Renaissance for America.

Peter, 44, Asian, Oklahoma, Republican

I think the period right after 9/11 was really gratifying, just because it didnt matter what political party you were from. We all came together as a country. It just the feeling of togetherness and being united instead of against each other.

Howard, 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

Unfortunately, it took a disaster and tragedy like that for us to come together. I thought wed be building momentum, going forward, to bond as a society. And the wheels fell off the track.

Adanma, 43, Black, Georgia, independent

I kind of agree, but I also disagree with the 9/11 example. I know people, my family included, who were discriminated against based on how they looked. I have a cousin who looks like she could be Middle Eastern. And she got a lot of negative things from the United States of America. And shes a United States citizen. So not everybody was united.

Moderator, Margie Omero

OK. Now let me ask the flip side. Is there a moment in American history that you feel ashamed of?

Howard, 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

Now.

Toby, 47, white, Texas, Republican

Absolutely.

Moderator, Margie Omero

April, youre nodding. Why right now?

April, 39, white, Minnesota, Republican

We just cant agree on anything. Well find anything to fight over.

Howard, 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

My grandfather fought for this country. I love the armed forces. But sometimes, Im embarrassed to be an American and would even think about leaving. Its just so sad whats going on in this country, the division and the gun violence and the lack of respect for law enforcement. The financial discrepancies of the rich getting richer, the middle class shrinking. I worry about my daughters all the time what kind of world are we going to leave them?

Raise your hand if you agree with this.I believe American history shouldbe taught in high school in a neutral waythat has both the good and the bad. And raise your hand if you agree with this. I believe American history should be taught in high school in a neutral way that has both the good and the bad. 11 people raised their hands.

Adanma, 43, Black, independent

Lloyd, 38, Black, independent

Ashish, 49, Asian, Republican

Toby, 47, white, Republican

Howard, 45, white, Democrat

April, 39, white, Republican

Dennis, 54, Hispanic, Democrat

Peter, 44, Asian, Republican

Jim, 35, white, Republican

Jennifer, 38, white, independent

Raise your hand if you agreewith this. I believe high school Americanhistory should be taught in a positiveway that highlights Americas best qualities. Raise your hand if you agree with this. I believe high school American history should be taught in a positive way that highlights Americas best qualities. 0 people raised their hands.

Adanma, 43, Black, independent

Lloyd, 38, Black, independent

Daphne, 44, Black, Democrat

Ashish, 49, Asian, Republican

Toby, 47, white, Republican

Howard, 45, white, Democrat

April, 39, white, Republican

Dennis, 54, Hispanic, Democrat

Peter, 44, Asian, Republican

Jim, 35, white, Republican

Jennifer, 38, white, independent

Ashish, 49, Asian, California, Republican

Its about awareness of the good and the bad. Right now, with Ukraine, Im proud of the fact that were actually helping. I think theres a lot of good. And theres also a lot of bad. And I think we need to keep that in perspective.

Lloyd, 38, Black, Ohio, independent

Its important to give all sides of the story. You cant just tell people what you want, because then they dont really have the full picture.

Adanma, 43, Black, Georgia, independent

You hear that history is written by the winners. But if were going to be working toward a more equal and fair nation, then we should hear from other perspectives.

Moderator, Margie Omero

Everybody said, when we contacted you, that you have a high schooler in your life. Whats the best part of having a high schooler in your life?

Peter, 44, Asian, Oklahoma, Republican

Oh, gosh. Well, my daughter is the high schooler. So shes on her second boyfriend, so thats, like, the worst part.

Howard, 45, white, Pennsylvania, Democrat

I wasnt a terrible student, but I could have been a lot better. And I watch my older daughter, whos the high school student. I watch how shes grabbed school and really just loves it and is in honors classes, and shes killing it. And the knowledge she brings home Im just in awe.

Adanma, 43, Black, Georgia, independent

I just appreciate seeing my daughter around her friends. Theyre accepting. Theyre good examples of how we should be acting.

Moderator, Patrick Healy

When you think about your kids or your family, what are the values that are important that you raise your kids with or that you think schools should focus on?

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Opinion | 11 Parents on How They Want Kids to Learn About History, Racism and Gender - The New York Times

Stefani Reynolds / AFP / Getty Images

A metal coat hanger cant speak, but it can send a message. Long a symbol of the dangers faced by people seeking to end pregnancies in the years before Roe v. Wade, coat hangers stand in for a whole inventory of physical horrors, most of which never involved coat hangers, specifically. Over the past few weeks, protesters have mailed hangers to the Supreme Court in an effort to evoke that past era from the so-called back-alley butchers who botched surgical procedures and sexually harassed patients, to the terrible lengths individuals went through to give themselves an abortion at home. The message is simple and brutal: Without safe and legal abortion, the protesters believe, people will die.

In the years since Roe became the law of the land, the medical landscape of abortion has changed drastically. Today, abortion is extremely safe safer than birth. So safe, in fact, that its not always obvious what made illegal abortions unsafe. Or, for that matter, what the coat hangers were for.

And this is why those objects still have important stories to tell us, historians told me. Because while the most physically violent abortion methods of the past have become medically obsolete, the march of scientific progress hasnt eliminated the shame, fear and hopelessness experienced by people who are pregnant, dont want to be, and live in a society where there is no simple, legal access to abortion. Coat hangers dont just tell us about the dangers of bad medicine, practiced shoddily, these historians said. Instead, the hangers also speak volumes about the desperation that can lead people to those dangerous procedures in the first place.

The whole phrase back-alley butcher is an exaggeration because there were lots of good practitioners who were perfectly safe, said Leslie J. Reagan, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of When Abortion Was a Crime.

Even in the past, the dangers of illegal abortion werent about the abortion itself. No one knows how many illegal abortions were being performed annually, pre-Roe, but researchers in the early 1990s estimated it was on par with annual numbers of legal abortions at the time, so more than 1 million. People with money and connections could always get safe ones and plenty of people survived, the historians I spoke with said. Illegal abortions were primarily unsafe for the people who were blocked out of better options.

Legal abortions in hospitals, for example, happened with some regularity. These records were kept hospital by hospital, so its rare to have even city-wide data, but University of Vermont historian Felicia Kornbluh pointed me towards a 1965 paper that found hospital review boards in New York City had approved 4,703 so-called therapeutic abortions between 1951 and 1962. In those cases, the technique actually being used was something called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. Also often referred to as a surgical abortion the D&C is still used today as a treatment for both abortion and miscarriage. Doctors dilate the cervix making the opening between the vagina and uterus wider and use a sharp tool to scrape out the contents of the uterus.

Before Roe, in the 1950s and 60s, getting a legal hospital abortion was not easy. A patient could get a D&C if they were already experiencing a natural miscarriage. Otherwise, patients who requested one would have to make a case to their doctors, who would then have to bring the situation before a hospital review board. The patient would likely be examined by other doctors and might have to answer questions basically, they needed to prove the abortion was medically or psychologically necessary. But necessity wasnt the only factor at play. There are studies that show that almost all of them were done on people with private insurance, Reagan said. Patients without insurance, as well as black and brown patients regardless of insurance status, had a much harder time getting approved. In her upcoming book, A Womans Life is a Human Life, Kornbluh records that Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem approved five white womens requests for every one Black womans. The hospital was even less likely to approve Puerto Rican womens requests. And Reagan has documented instances of Black women being denied abortions even though they had rubella infections during pregnancy something that can kill a fetus, or leave it with lifelong complications, including deafness, heart defects and intellectual disabilities. (Others were lied to and told they didnt have it.)

People who were denied or who never had a hope of getting a hospital abortion were left with only illegal options. Both trained doctors and untrained practitioners offered D&Cs, but that procedure was considerably more dangerous in illegal settings. Without sterilized equipment and ready access to antibiotics and painkillers, doctors used furtive practices that optimized for speed and offered no room for follow-up care, and practitioners sometimes had no idea what they were doing. Carole Joffe, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, interviewed trained doctors who practiced illegal abortion during this time and has written about their experiences. One doctor told her that he used to explain the challenges of performing a D&C by telling his residents that it was like being blindfolded and trying to scrape the inside of a wet paper bag without cutting through the paper. Possible, but not easy. D&Cs in competent hands are safe, but in incompetent hands its very easy to perforate the uterus, Joffe said.

To avoid trying to perform the tricky D&C under clandestine circumstances, illegal abortionists sometimes opted instead to simply induce enough of a miscarriage that their patient could go to a hospital and get one without a problem. They did this often by inserting a foreign object like a hollow tube catheter through the cervix. In some cases, they might use a type of catheter with a balloon on one end. Filled with saline, it would put pressure on the cervix, like a fetuss head would towards the end of pregnancy, causing it to fully dilate. Just sticking any catheter in could prompt a miscarriage as the body tried to expel the object. These methods didnt work all the time, though. They could cause hemorrhages and embolisms. And catheters had to be left in for a while, along with gauze packed into the patients vagina to staunch the blood. This could cause infection and with patients trying to hide from authorities, they often didnt seek treatment until near death.

People who couldnt find or afford an illegal abortion often tried to give one to themselves. Its impossible to say how many of these happened every year, but there are records showing thousands of people coming into emergency rooms with septic infections of the uterus and reproductive organs in the 1960s, Reagan said. This is where the coat hangers come in, Joffe said, as one of many objects people would try to insert through their own cervical openings. The goal was not necessarily to complete an abortion at home but rather to induce enough bleeding and symptoms of miscarriage that the person could go to a hospital, say they were having a miscarriage naturally, and get a hospital D&C. But perforation, hemorrhage, and infection were all risks.

Even less reliable, and more dangerous, were an array of suppositories, tinctures, herbs and home remedies that plenty of people tried. One doctor told Joffe about treating a patient who had gotten a catheter into her cervix and poured turpentine through it, literally cooking the inside of her uterus, which had to be removed. Others told stories about potassium permanganate tablets, sold over the counter, which people would put in their vaginas to induce bleeding and get their hospital D&C. But the tablets could easily eat through the vaginal lining, causing hemorrhage and destroying the cervix.

Its very unlikely that anyone will go back to performing back-alley D&Cs or catheter abortions, Reagan and Joffe said. Even if Roe is overturned, doctors and other people who want to defy it are much more likely to offer patients abortion pills. While abortion via pill can be a physically painful and psychologically intense experience for some people, the existence of these pills drastically changes the calculus when it comes to the risks of illegal abortion. Theyre much easier to get and conceal, much safer to use, and if a patient is worried about side effects they can seek treatment knowing no one will be able to tell the difference between the effects of a pill and a natural miscarriage.

But both Reagan and Joffe said the existence of abortion pills wont eliminate risk if abortion becomes illegal. Just as there were some people who could get abortions more easily than others before Roe, there will be those who can do so after, as well. Meanwhile, some of the most vulnerable people poor people, people living in very rural areas, people who cant take time off to drive to another state in search of pills will still end up with only desperate options left. Reagan was particularly worried that websites selling fake abortion pills will deceive people who have no idea they arent getting the real thing. And both she and Joffe worried about how illegality and increased stigma could drive more people towards dangerous at-home methods, with social media becoming the new back alley. Even with abortion still legal, there are occasional instances of people usually young trying to abort on their own, Reagan said.

The methodology of abortion has improved, Reagan and Joffee told me. But as long as desperation for an abortion exists and easy access does not some people will still be in danger.

Read this article:

What The History Of Back-Alley Abortions Can Teach Us About A Future Without Roe - FiveThirtyEight

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Kelly Houston Jones

U of A alumna Kelly Houston-Jones, now an assistant professor of history at Arkansas Tech University, will deliver the main address during the Washington County Historical Society's annual Statehood Day observances at 2 p.m., Sunday, June 12, on the lawn of Headquarters House Museum at 118 E. Dickson St. in Fayetteville.

Houston-Jonesis the author of a groundbreakingbook, Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas, published by the University of Georgia Press and the first academic update on the topic since the 1960s.

A native of Conway County, Houston-Jones obtained her doctorate in history at the U of A. She earned a bachelor's degree in history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rockand her master's degree at the University of North Texas.

The Washington County Historical Society is one of the only county historical groups in Arkansas continuing to observe Statehood Day with an annual address. The speech will be given off the front porch of the Headquarters House Museum with lawn chairs provided for those attending.

The actual date of Arkansas statehood is June 15, but WCHS observes the date on the Sunday before the actual date each year.

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Statehood Day to Feature Alumna's History Lecture on June 12 - University of Arkansas Newswire

An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973, Alito asserts in the draft opinion.

The logic that Alito uses in the draft opinion leans heavily on history history that he gets egregiously wrong. Alito explicitly dismisses the distinction between ending a pregnancy before or after quickening, a distinction that my research has found was critical to the way American women and American physicians traditionally thought about pregnancy. In early America as in early modern England, abortion before quickening was legal under common law and widely accepted in practice.

Early European settlers of the Americas, enslaved Africans and Native Americans all had knowledge concerning menstrual regulation that women shared among themselves, with daughters, sisters and neighbors. European Americans could also look for guidance for treating suppression of the menses in a published health manual. Sitting on a shelf in their own homes might be a copy of the popular William Buchans Domestic Medicine, first published in 1774 and republished many times into the mid-nineteenth century, The Married Ladys Companion, or The Female Medical Repository, which all included similar advice for restoring menstruation through blood-letting, bathing or solutions composed of quinine, black hellebore, or juniper. The latter was the simplest for Americans to obtain since juniper bushes grew wild. Some indigenous women used the roots of black cohosh and enslaved Africans used snakeroot, cotton root and okra. By the mid-18th century, traveling salesmen in New England sold drugs explicitly to induce miscarriage. When these methods worked, the menses were restored.

Alitos draft opinion sidesteps this well-established history. Instead, he insults 21st-century Americans by citing the words of a 13th-century judge who endorsed human slavery and a 17th-century jurist who sentenced witches to execution and defended marital rape.

The first laws in the United States governing abortion, passed by states in the 1820s and 1830s, banned the furnishing of drugs poison intended to induce a miscarriage of a woman, then quick with child. The first such law in Connecticut aimed to punish men who seduced women then, instead of marrying them when pregnancy developed, coerced them into using abortifacients. These first laws were essentially poison control measures intended to protect women from both abusive men and the sometimes-deadly herbs and medicines marketed to bring on their menses.

These first laws also referred only to inducing miscarriage after quickening. It is essential to recognize that these laws did not criminalize drugs used before quickening. The nations earliest laws assumed the existing common law right of women to regulate their menses and to abort early pregnancies.

In his draft opinion, Alito chooses to ignore these early statutes, which preserved the quickening distinction and the many judicial opinions stating that cases could not be brought for abortion when the woman wasnt quick with child. He had this information at his disposal; those cases are easily found in the amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court by two major professional associations of historians in the United States, representing the views of more than 10,000 scholars and teachers. Yet in his draft opinion, Alito relies instead upon just one legal writer, whose work most scholars reject because it distorts the evidence, and he conveniently dismisses the significance of quickening in a footnote.

Instead, Alito begins his version of the history of abortion laws with the 1860s and 1870s, when states began to adopt laws that eliminated the legal significance of quickening and criminalized the ending of pregnancy at any stage. This second wave of laws was pushed by a small group of self-interested white, male physicians who were anxious about their status as both doctors and as elite American men.

The physicians anti-abortion movement was driven by a small group of highly educated white men who formed the American Medical Association in the 19th century. At the time, physicians did not enjoy the status and authority associated with the profession today. Rather, many mid-19th-century Americans, especially middle-class mothers, criticized these doctors for their treatment methods, which they saw as violent and excessive. These doctors also resented their many competitors, including midwives, homeopaths and other popular irregular practitioners. The leaders of the anti-abortion movement used the abortion issue to target these competing medical professionals. In winning these new statutes, the orthodox doctors forged a new alliance with the state that elevated them over all of the other practitioners as well as women themselves. Importantly, the new laws included an exception allowing doctors to perform abortions for medical reasons (therapeutic abortions) in other words, they kept abortion legal when they performed the procedure. Alito skips over this loophole.

As important for motivating this movement of medical men was their hostility to womens activism and the evident tendency of married, middle-class white women to limit the size of their families. Anti-abortion activists denounced the married white women who visited the offices of abortion providers, accusing them of favoring fashion and politics over motherhood. The true wife, wrote Dr. Horatio Storer, the medical leader of the anti-abortion movement, did not seek undue power in public life . . . [or] privileges not her own. This same Harvard doctor and his AMA colleagues also vigorously resisted the entry of women into the medical profession.

The doctors also drummed up alarm over changing national demographics. The white, native-born Yankee class, Storer and his colleagues argued, would soon be out-populated by immigrants thanks to the abortion practices of middle-class white women. Aliens, Chinese, and most especially Catholics, Storer warned, would settle the West if the women of his own class failed to produce larger families.

Yet Alito again dismisses the historical record, saying that the hostility to immigrants and women expressed by Storer were merely the words of one prominent opponent. But Storers statements and actions were the underlying force that drove the passage of the laws that criminalized abortions; state and local medical societies used his essays, data, memorials and letters to convince state legislatures and governors of the necessity of making abortion at all stages of pregnancy a crime. Storers anti-immigrant and racist views an early version of replacement theory were a prime driver of the anti-abortion movement that Alito claims as the true American tradition.

Its important to understand that even though Storers views became law, that didnt mean they were widely embraced. Although quickening no longer mattered according to the new laws, my research revealed that the general public still believed it did. In my book on the history of abortion, I quote Dr. Joseph Taber Johnson, a prominent physician who taught obstetrics in Washington, D.C, who wrote in 1895 that, Many otherwise good and exemplary women thought that prior to quickening it is no more harm to cause the evacuation of the contents of their wombs than it is that of their bladders or their bowels. Although medical men like Johnson didnt approve of their patients abortion practices, the medical profession was deeply involved in providing abortions in this period, either performing the procedure themselves or giving their patients referrals to someone else who did.

That fact, true over the entire century of criminalized abortion, reveals that the official pronouncements denouncing abortion made by medical leaders obscured genuine and significant differences in thought and practice within the medical profession. The claims to moral superiority made by medical leaders and their societies masked a reality in which abortion in early pregnancy was not only commonplace but widely regarded as morally acceptable.

Over time, since criminalizing abortion did not stop it, police and prosecutors developed a system for enforcing the laws that centered on interrogating women who had abortions, capturing them, along with the provider and any assistants, during raids of abortion offices and forcing them to testify in public courtrooms. Coercive gynecological examinations were sometimes part of the police gathering of evidence to prosecute abortion providers. Although we only know of a handful of cases where women who had abortions were prosecuted or jailed (there could be hundreds or thousands more that left no record), women were thoroughly shamed and punished through these humiliating and invasive methods of investigation. In the 1900s, boyfriends involved in abortions that resulted in the death of their sweetheart were jailed for months and prosecuted.

The end result was that criminalizing abortion pushed it underground where regulating safety was virtually impossible and many women could not find anyone to help them or could not afford it. Many aborted their pregnancies themselves, using herbs, Clorox, or turpentine or turned to instruments, like crochet hooks, orange sticks, pencils, or a chicken feather, which they poked into the cervix to induce a miscarriage. A small number of white women continued to be able to obtain rare, legal therapeutic abortions in hospitals, as did those who had the good fortune to be part of a medical family. But most women, across race, class and religion, had to go to underground providers, some of whom were excellent and safe while others were inept. Thousands went to hospital emergency rooms every year bleeding, injured and sometimes feverish and infected. Some of them died, approximately four times as many Black and Latina women as white women. Chicagos Cook County Hospital had an entire ward dedicated to septic abortion cases. That ward closed after 1973.

The United States has already experienced a century of criminalized abortion: The results of those 19th-century laws cited by Alito produced a public health disaster that killed Black, brown and low-income women in disproportionate numbers, raised maternal mortality and injured millions of women. If abortion is criminalized once again in the 21st century, history tells us what we can expect whether or not the Supreme Court chooses to take that history into consideration.

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Opinion | What Alito Gets Wrong About the History of Abortion in America - POLITICO

The ASUW Shell House was built on the shores of Lake Washington in 1918 by the United States Navy as a seaplane hangar during World War I. Between 1919 and 1949, it was the home of UW Rowing and, now, UW is trying to raise money to renovate the building for the modern era.

The Shell House is most famous for being the home of The Boys in the Boat, UWs 1936 mens rowing team, who won their event at the Berlin Olympics that year, as retold in an award-winning book by Daniel Brown. It also housed George Pococks workshop, where many of the racing shells the rowers used were built. Recently, the site has garnered attention through actor and director George Clooneys upcoming adaptation of the book into a film.

When The Boys in the Boat was released in 2013, UW Recreation who has managed the Shell House since 1950 realized that it should be more than just a warehouse.

It should have some history, interpretation, and more people should be coming through the doors, Nicole Klein, who leads fundraising efforts for the renovation project, said.

The campaign to renovate the Shell House began in 2017, as the public grew interested in seeing the place where the Olympic winners had trained, according to Klein.

Klein said about $8.5 million has been raised for the Shell House so far. Microsoft president Brad Smith and his wife, Kathy Surace-Smith, donated $5 million toward the renovations, and Microsoft Philanthropies donated $2 million.

[O]ur job is always to build community artists, teachers, historians, engineers, public servants people from all walks of life coming together and rowing in the right direction, Jane Broom, senior director of Microsoft Philanthropies and UW alum, wrote in an email. And as a metaphor, this building represents all of that. We have an opportunity here to preserve that legacy and ensure that these stories exist for generations to come, at this place where we can all gather and remember that community is the most important thing that we build.

To move forward with construction, the Shell House needs $15.5 million in funding, as well as an additional $3 million for operations and maintenance. Klein hopes to reach the construction goal by this summer.

One key facet of the Shell Houses history is its relationship with Indigenous peoples. Before the Shell house was built, the area now known as the Montlake Cut was called stxugi, or Carry a Canoe.

Owen Oliver is a member of the informal ASUW Shell House advisory board that has been tasked with sharing ideas from many stakeholders and interest areas, member of the Quinault tribe, and a former UW student.

We call it Carry the Canoe because that was a way we could portage our canoes from Lake Washington to Lake Union, Oliver said. We would carry our canoes and put them on the other side.

However, when the Montlake Cut, which connects Lake Washington with Lake Union, was dug in 1917, it destroyed stxugi by lowering Lake Washingtons water level by about nine feet, according to Oliver.

When Western civilization came over here, they were very focused on trade and how to build a progressive city that stressed economics, without regard of Indigenous people, Oliver said. So by [creating the Montlake Cut], it destroyed many salmon stocks without care of the environment or the people around it.

To acknowledge the Indigenous history of the place the Shell House sits on, UW Recreation has made steps toward bringing in Indigenous voices. Oliver describes how the advisory board includes Indigenous voices such as Olivers aunt and himself. The building is also used to house Indigenous classes, including a canoe carving class.

The Shell House is also one of the spots that canoe families use to launch their canoes and begin their canoe journey during Paddle to Seattle, an event started by Olivers grandfather, Emmett Oliver, where tribes carve canoes and race and journey on Puget Sounds waters.

Its just another spot in Seattle that is welcoming to these Indigenous traditions, Oliver said. Theres not a lot of spots like that. Theres a lot of bureaucracy, permitting, and zoning. Sometimes you cant have those there, but I would feel [the Shell House is] a safe spot where new families can always reach out and launch.

Oliver hopes that the Shell House renovation project will continue bringing in Indigenous voices. He wants the Shell House to highlight more than just The Boys in the Boat and aviation history.

Make it accessible for Native students to come in, Oliver said. Make it cheaper to rent, if you want to rent out that space for students. Make it a shining spot on campus that is a rental space, but also an active learning space.

Denzil Suite, vice president of student life, believes that the Shell House can be an essential part of student life where students host events and build community. Suite thinks the Shell House will be one of the most sought-after places on campus, especially by students.

Universities exist for the betterment of society, Suite said. We tackle some of the most vexing problems, and we do this by keeping one foot planted firmly in the past, but the rest of our bodies oriented to the future. This way we can ensure solutions are both grounded and lasting. I think the ASUW Shell House embodies that [ideal] beautifully.

Once students recognize that the Shell House is available for them to visit and enjoy, Suite believes they will be willing to take the trek down to the waterfront.

Reach writer Aisha Misbah at news@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @aishatheewriter

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ASUW Shell House history and renovations: Why should we care? - Dailyuw