On May 17, 1875, the first ever Kentucky Derby was held in Louisville, Kentucky. In the almost 150 years since, the race has been held annually on the first Saturday in May in the same spot. Each year, 20 three-year-old horses race 1.25 miles in hopes of having the coveted blanket of roses laid over their backs. About 150.000 people attend the Kentucky Derby in person each year, and in 2024, approximately 700,000 people viewed the derby online.
The history of the derby started with Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. Meriwether was the grandson of famed explorer William Clark and named after his expeditionary partner, Meriwether Lewis. By 1872, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. was living in Louisville. That year, he decided to travel to Europe where he attended horse races and met track owners and jockeys. He decided to open a jockey club in Louisville and bring horse racing to Kentucky. In 1874, he borrowed land from his uncles, John and Henry Churchill (for whom the track is now named Churchill Downs), to build a track. The next year, on May 17, 1875, the first Kentucky Derby was held. Jockey Oliver Lewis won the first derby on his horse Aristides. By 1895, attendance at the event had become so great, Clark built the iconic double-spired grandstand.
Over the last century, the Kentucky Derby has become not only the most famous horse race in the United States but also a famed cultural event. There are traditional foods served, including the mint julep made from Kentucky bourbon, and over-the-top fashion statements made, including the wearing of elaborate fascinators.
On May 14, 1804, The Corps of Discovery set off up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The objective of this expeditionary group was to explore the U.S.’s newly acquired land, observe the Native American villages on that land, and potentially find new customers for the country’s fur trade. This expedition, led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, is one of the most famous in U.S. history.
In truth, Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition began about one year before they actually set sail up the Missouri River. On May 2, 1803, the United States signed a treaty with France to purchase the Louisiana Territory This was a vast tract of land that included present-day Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and, most importantly to Thomas Jefferson, the port of New Orleans. The U.S. agreed to purchase this land from the French government for approximately $15 million. That would equate to about $352 million today.
Wanting to explore the country’s new expansion, President Thomas Jefferson secured funding from Congress for an expedition. He asked his secretary, Meriwether Lewis to head up the group. Lewis asked his friend William Clark to share the command with him. On May 14, 1804, Lewis and Clark along with about 40 other men making up the Corps of Discovery began sailing up the Missouri River. By August, they’ve made it to Iowa, where they hold a council with the Oto and Missouri tribes. They called this area Council Bluffs. By late October, the Corps reached present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, where they find the villages of Mandan and Hidatsa. It is there they cross paths with a Canadian fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and his wife, a young Shoshone girl named Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark know that they will need the Shoshone to help them with their passage through the Rocky Mountains, so they hire a pregnant Sacagawea and her husband to help with the translation. In addition to her political help with the tribes, Sacagawea teaches the group much about surviving in the western wilderness. It is almost a year before they complete the passage over the Rockies.
Map of the travels of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
In November 1805, the expedition finally reaches their goal: the Pacific Ocean. They end up in present-day Washington after sailing along the Columbia River, never finding the mythical Northwestern Passage that many believed would take the travelers over water directly to the Pacific. Once the Corps reached their destination, they turned and began the long trek back to St. Louis. It is September 1806 by the time the group returns to where they started. Two and a half long years later, people thought the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition were dead. However, they did return and brought with them artifacts, animals, and journals that would inspire American interest for centuries.
On May 7, 1892, a baby boy was born in Glencoe, Illinois, to Scottish immigrant and businessman Andrew MacLeish and college professor and president Martha Hillard. Martha named him Archibald, and as he grew, she encouraged in him a love for reading. This love took root in her son, who would go on to become a famous poet, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and influential statesman. Reflecting on his upbringing later, Archibald MacLeish said, “Her insistence on reading those books that had meant most to her . . . was the greatest piece of luck ever. I’ve often wondered how much it had to do with my commitment to poetry. I think I have a guess.”
Archibald MacLeish studied at Yale University where he edited Yale Literary Magazine. After graduation, he attended law school at Harvard University. While a student there, he met and married Ada Hitchcock in 1917. The two were married for 65 years. During MacLeish’s second year of law school, the U.S. entered World War I. MacLeish left to serve in France at a front-line hospital. He later transferred to a field artillery unit. MacLeish referred to WWI as “the most murderous, hypocritical, unnecessary and generally nasty of all recorded wars.” He said, “I had been under fire myself just enough to feel a lack of real purpose, only a presence of accidental mechanical purpose, and it colored the whole experience for me.” MacLeish was discharged in 1919 and returned to finish his law degree, graduating first in his class. During all this, MacLeish never stopped writing.
In 1923, after working for a prestigious Boston law firm for a few years, MacLeish and his wife decided to expatriate to Paris, where MacLeish could focus on his writing. He joined the group of writers often known as “The Lost Generation,” which included such literary legends as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Of that time, MacLeish said, “what lured us to Paris and held us there was the fact of the magnificent work being done by people from all over the world and in all the arts. This was a period really like the great Quattrocento . . . it was a period of extraordinary achievement.” This was certainly true for MacLeish. He published a series of poems that would go on to become staples of literary anthologies.
In the 30s, MacLeish and his family returned to the U.S. He was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the librarian of Congress and, subsequently, assistant secretary of state. Of this time, MacLeish said, “I think that the reorganization of the Library of Congress . . . was the best thing I did.” In 1949, MacLeish became a professor of rhetoric at Harvard. MacLeish’s works garnered him plenty of attention. Some of his most enduring works are Conquistador, J.B., You, Andrew Marvell,Immortal Autumn, and America Was Promises. The hallmark of a legendary author is that their work is timeless. This certainly feels true of MacLeish’s writing. For example, in the last poem MacLeish wrote before taking the job as librarian of Congress, he explores the idea of America as the promise of the fulfillment of dreams. He writes:
Who is the voyager in these leaves?
Who is the traveler in this journey
Deciphers the revolving night: receives
The signal from the light returning?
America was promises to whom?
East were the
Dead kings and the remembered sepulchres:
West was the grass.
And all beautiful
All before us
America was always promises.
He goes onto suggest that the original promises of America haven’t always been kept. That
the Aristocracy of politic selfishness
Bought the land up: bought the towns: the sites:
The goods: the government: the people. Bled them.
Sold them. Kept the profit. Lost itself.
But he believes there is a chance. MacLeish reminds the reader of freedom-seeking uprisings in
Spain Austria Poland China Bohemia.
There are dead men in the pits in all those countries.
Their mouths are silent but they speak. They say
“The promises are theirs who take them.”
He goes on to implore his generation of Americans that if the promise of their country is not being given to them, they must take it. At the end of his life, MacLeish said of this poem: “Everything about America is based on a beginning which was all promises. We certainly have buggered them, but I guess that’s what mankind does, bugger the promises, and maybe save a few,” a message of action and hope that still seems poignant some eight decades later.
On May 4, 1970, four Kent State University students were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest. Enraged by U.S. involvement in Vietnam, thousands of students in Kent, Ohio, took to the grassy spaces of their university to voice their discontent. Today, similar protests are occurring the country over. Students at 35+ universities have been arrested for their involvement in pro-Palestinian rallies. Some politicians are calling for National Guard deployment to quell these protests. The events at Kent State 54 years ago are an example of why such a move might end in tragedy.
In the spring of 1970, Nixon sat in the Oval Office. He had run his campaign promising to withdraw U.S. troops from the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Instead, on April 30, 1970, he took to the airwaves to announce that the U.S. would be invading Cambodia in an attempt to undermine the Viet Kong. The next day, May 1, protests and anti-war rallies cropped up at universities all over the country. At Kent State University, about 500 students gathered. That night, as students gathered at the downtown bars, the anti-war sentiment turned into rioting, with students lighting trashcans on fire and breaking store windows. At this, the mayor, Leroy Satrom, became nervous about further violence and contacted Ohio Governor James Rhodes looking for help.
The next day, May 2, protestors on Kent State campus set fire to the ROTC building, which burned to the ground. At this, Rhodes, who was, at the time, seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, deployed the Ohio National Guard. He said, in a press conference on the subject: “We’ve seen here at the city of Kent, especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups and their allies in the state of Ohio . . . we’re going to use every part of the law enforcement of Ohio to drive them out of Kent.” Nixon referred to the protestors as, “these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses.” The National Guard arrived in Kent on May 3 where protestors blocking roads were met with tear gas.
On May 4, around 3,000 students gathered on Kent State campus to protest. The National Guard members there launched tear gas and then advanced on the group with bayoneted rifles. As they pushed the students away, some students began throwing rocks at the guardsmen. It was said then that a small group of guardsmen appeared to huddle and discuss something. This was later referred to by those who believed the guardsmen had conspired to fire on the protestors. The guardsmen began to retreat back the way they came, when at 12:24 p.m., 28 of them turned and fired toward the protestors. Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, both protestors, were shot and killed. William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer, who were walking by on their way to class, were also shot and killed. Nine other students were shot and injured, including Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed by his injuries. The aftermath of the shooting was memorialized in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken by John Filo, a student photographer. Faculty marshals were able to diffuse the situation and prevent further bloodshed after the initial shooting.
In the years that followed, the details of the shooting were litigated at length. Three students were convicted for their parts in the burning of the ROTC building. A federal court found that the guardsmen were not at fault for the shooting, though that decision was overturned in an appeals court, and a settlement awarded about 650,000 to the victims and their families. Nixon created a Commission on Campus Unrest to investigate the situation. Their report recognized that some student protestors committed criminal acts, however; “The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable . . . The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time, that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.”
In an editorial in the Washington Post, Brian VanDeMark, author of Kent State: An American Tragedy, writes of today’s university protests: “University officials, not state authorities and armed troops, possess the knowledge and insight best suited to dealing with these constitutionally protected expressions of dissent. The goal of university and college administrators should be to guarantee the safety of all students while fostering civil engagement over passionately held views. This is the lesson of Kent State University.”
On May 1, 1707, the Act of Union went into effect, solidifying the union of England and Scotland and creating Great Britain. In voting for this treaty, the parliament of Scotland voted to dismantle their own organization, deciding that the two nations would furthermore be ruled by only one governing body. What would prompt Scotland to voluntarily give up its independence?
King James II
In truth, the process of unification between England and Scotland began in 1603, almost one hundred years before the Act of Union came into effect. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died with no heirs. The next in line for the English throne was her cousin, James Stuart, who was the King of Scotland. He took upon himself the mantle of both crowns, uniting the two nations under one monarchy, though both countries maintained their own parliament.
The Stuart line ruled until the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. During this revolt, King James II was deposed and exiled. King James II, a staunch Catholic was seen as showing favoritism to his Catholic subjects. In addition, he believed that as God’s chosen ruler, his word superseded that of Parliament. In fact, James II dissolved parliament in 1687, planning to replace it with one that might be more disposed to blindly obey. The revolutionaries put James’s daughter, Mary, a protestant, on the throne, and parliament declared any Catholics from the Stuart line would be skipped in the order of succession. It was also written, as Mary and her sister Anne did not have any children, that in the event that the Stuart line end with them, succession would move to the Hanovers, another protestant line. There were those who weren’t happy with the results of the Glorious Revolution and desired to see the Stuart line restored to the throne. These people were referred to as Jacobites.
Queen Mary II
By 1701, Scotland was struggling financially. Though they shared a monarch, the Scots were excluded from trade with England’s colonies, which they sorely needed. On their part, England was terrified of a Jacobite rebellion. Scotland fed their fears by passing the 1703 Act of Security, which declared that Scotland was not required to support the Hanover succession. In the same session, the Scottish Parliament passed the Act anent Peace and War, which said that following Queen Anne’s death, Scotland would resume control of its own foreign affairs, refusing to continue to fight in England’s wars without receiving any of the resulting financial benefits. In response, English Parliament passed the Alien Act of 1705, making Scottish citizens unable to trade with England. This pushed the Scottish Parliament to acquiesce to a union with England. The Union was passed in January 1707 and went into effect on May 1, 1707.
On April 25, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9438. The order directed the Secretary of Commerce to seize control of one of the nation’s most prosperous retail businesses: Montgomery Ward. This controversial step was a prime example of the federal government’s use of the Smith-Connally Act during World War II.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ subsequent entry to the war, President Roosevelt called for a “no-strike pledge” to ensure manufacturing efforts essential to the war effort would continue running. Despite the pledge, instances of strikes increased as the war demanded more production, which meant longer hours and price increases for working-class Americans. In 1943, the United Mines Workers of America went on strike, posing an immediate threat to war production. Roosevelt responded by issuing an executive order allowing the government to seize production themselves. Roosevelt also signed legislation making it illegal to interrupt essential war production through strikes. Moving one step further, two Congress members, Senator Connally and Representative Smith passed a bill (the Smith-Connally Act) giving the president power to seize production of any company that was seen as important to the war effort in any way. This was not a popular bill, even with the president. Roosevelt vetoed it when it came across his desk, arguing that the bill would increase tensions between management and workers. The veto was overturned by Congress.
In 1944, trouble started with Montgomery Ward, a retail company second only to Sears Roebuck in mail-order sales. The company’s CEO, Sewell L. Avery, who was no great fan of the president, refused to comply with agreements made with the United Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. Avery was reprimanded and ordered to comply by the National War Labor Board, as Montgomery Ward supplied parts used in military aircraft and agricultural machinery. Avery refused, claiming that Montgomery Ward’s business was mostly not war related, though the company had certainly taken advantage of grants of priority status from the War Production Board, giving them access to materials that were difficult to source during wartime. Finally, in April 1944, Roosevelt issued an executive order to seize Montgomery Ward’s Chicago facilities. Sewell refused to stand down and had to be carried from the building by members of the National Guard, resulting in an iconic photo (be sure to look it up; it doesn’t disappoint). The move was not popular. A Gallup poll showed that 60% of Americans thought the seizure was a mistake and an instance of government overreach. The government yielded control two weeks later.
In December that year, Montgomery Ward was seized by the federal government for a second time for the same reason. In a statement given by Roosevelt about the seizure, he said, “The Government of the United States cannot and will not tolerate any interference with war production in this critical hour . . . Strikes in wartime cannot be condoned, whether they are strikes by workers against their employers or strikes by employers against their Government.” The government held control of the company until the war ended the next year.
On April 22, 1889, the sun sat high in the Oklahoma sky. At exactly noon, a cannon blast rang through the air, followed by the thundering sound of thousands of horses, wagons, and boots moving across the land. These some 50,000 men and women were propelled by that most valued currency: land. Those who moved fastest claimed for themselves and their families 160-acre parcels of land prime for ranching, farming, and settling. Overnight, this land grab transformed the Oklahoma countryside.
In the early 19th century, the land that would become Oklahoma was designated as a home for Native Americans who had been forced from their homes by the United States government. Over the years, the tribe lands filled the area, save one 2-million-acre area smack in the middle of the area. Many Americans, colloquially known as “boomers,” desperately wanted the land so they could make their fortune. Capitulating to the pressure of the boomer movement, in March 1889, President Benjamin Harrison agreed to sign a bill allowing the settlement of these 2 million acres in the land then known as Indian Territory. The rules were as follows: on April 22, 1889, at 12:00 p.m., the land would officially open for settlement. Those wanting the land could not enter the territory any earlier than that. Men or women who found a suitable tract of land could claim a “quarter section,” or a half-mile by half-mile area. According to the Homestead Act of 1862, so long as those settlers stayed on the land for five years and made marked improvements to it, they could receive the title.
In the following weeks, tens of thousands of people gathered around the border of this territory. It is estimated that about 50,000 people gathered for the chance to claim their piece of Oklahoma. As one might imagine, there were plenty of people who snuck into the territory, hiding until the time they could jump out and claim the best plots for themselves. These people were called “sooners.” At noon on the designated day, the boomers and sooners rushed onto the land, putting up stakes and tents before returning to the land offices to formalize their claims. Overnight, cities of thousands were formed. This was the Oklahoma Land Rush.
The ’89 rush was the beginning of the end for the Indian Territory. The U.S. wrested control of the remaining tribal land in Oklahoma, allowing similar land rushes to take place there. All of these lands together became the 46th state, Oklahoma, the “Sooner State.”
On April 19, 1993, a stand-off between a Christian group called the Branch Davidians and federal agents ended in an extremely deadly and tragic disaster. The federal government’s tactics during the stand-off have been heavily criticized since and have inspired further violence and militia building.
The Branch Davidians were an off-shoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. They had a had a settlement just east of Waco, Texas called Mt. Carmel. There, approximately 100 adults and 50 children lived under the cult leadership of David Koresh, who believed himself to be a messiah. As such, Koresh claimed that God had commanded him to assemble an army and prepare for the end of times. The group began to stockpile weapons and ammunition. In May 1992, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), started an investigation into Koresh, who they believed was illegally manufacturing machineguns, bombs, and grenades. ATF agents prepared to enter the compound to serve warrants on February 28, 1993.
Unfortunately, the Branch Davidians had been warned of the raid. As ATF agents approached the compound, they were met with gunfire. The two groups battled for about two hours. Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed in the process. After a ceasefire was called, approximately 900 federal agents arrived and surrounded the compound. They remained there for 49 days.
Mt. Carmel Compound
As those 49 days played out on televisions all over the country, two separate FBI teams seemed to be working at odds with one another. FBI negotiators attempted to approach Koresh peacefully, offering food and drink, even a national radio address in exchange for the surrender of children from the compound. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team was not willing to be so patient. According to a New Yorker article written on the subject, “The two FBI factions were working at cross-purposes: a negotiator would make headway with the Davidians only to learn that the tactical team had just run over one of Koresh’s beloved vintage cars with a tank.” Frustrated with the lack of progress, the FBI sought the approval of US Attorney General Janet Reno to raid the compound. She gave it.
On April 19, the FBI used explosives to make holes in the side of the compound. They then pumped in about 400 canisters of tear gas, hoping the action would make the Branch Davidians flee the building. Instead, the federal officers watched as the building burst into flames at several points. Because of the gas, the firefighters could not enter immediately. The delay allowed the flames to engulf the entire building. Seventy people, including about 24 children perished in the compound. Many were killed when the building collapsed on them, but several others, including Koresh, were shot by others or themselves.
The federal government was heavily criticized for their handling of the situation. It was suggested that the ATF rushed their confrontation to complete the raid before a congressional budget meeting, in hopes of touting a successful mission. FBI groups fought about ideal negotiation tactics. A report from Alan A. Stone, M.D., a Professor of Psychiatry and Law at Harvard University, suggested that the FBI acted without fully considering the effect the tear gas would have on the children and infants inside and that the FBI should have made better use of their behavioral science resources. The Waco Siege, as it came to be known, as seen around the country as a complete bungle on the part of the federal agencies involved. It encouraged fringe groups to hoard even more weapons and create local militias. It was the inspiration for the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history: the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City exactly two years after the Waco Siege.
On April 15, 1817, what is now called the American School for the Deaf opened its doors in Hartford, Connecticut. Inspired by his young, deaf neighbor, theologian Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet teamed up with French sign language instructor Laurent Clerc to open a residential school where deaf children would have the opportunity to be educated. The opening of the American School for the Deaf instigated the creation of a deaf culture in America that thrives to this day.
Laurent Clerc
In 1814, Thomas Gallaudet met his nine-year-old neighbor, Alice Cogswell, who was deaf. He watched her struggle to communicate with her family and as a theology school graduate, saw Alice as part of a community that had not yet been proselytized to due to a lack of language skills. Alice’s father, Dr. Mason Cogswell, sponsored Gallaudet’s trip abroad, urging him to learn more about the teaching methods of the Braidwood Academy, a school for the deaf, in England. Gallaudet was not satisfied by Braidwood’s method of teaching, which focused on speaking and lip reading. While in London, Gallaudet chanced upon a group of teachers from the National Institute of the Deaf in Paris. Intrigued by their sign language, he followed them back to their school to learn with them. At the end of his own instruction, Gallaudet persuaded the distinguished instructor, Laurent Clerc to return to Connecticut and aid Gallaudet in opening the first school for the deaf in America. Alice was their first student.
Alice Cogswell
At their school in Hartford, Gallaudet and Clerc joined deaf students from around the country together. Clerc’s French sign language mixed with the signs used by students from around the U.S. evolved to form American Sign Language. Of it, Thomas Gallaudet said, “The heart claims as its particular and appropriate language that of the eye and countenance, of the attitudes, movements, and gestures of the body.” With a shared language, as it often does, developed a culture. Gallaudet and Clerc traveled the country, training teachers and advising additional schools for the deaf.
In 1857, Thomas Gallaudet’s wife, Sofia Gallaudet, and their son, Edward Gallaudet, moved to Washington D.C. to run the School for the Deaf in Washington D.C. This school eventually became Gallaudet University, the premiere school for the education of deaf individuals in the U.S, and is the legacy of Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc.
On April 14, 1828, the American Dictionary of the English Language was published. It was the first dictionary of the American English language. Compiled by Noah Webster, it contained 70,000 words, including many of the spelling changes between British English and American English that we see today. In addition to creating for Americans a distinct version of English, Webster is also well-known for championing the idea that “grammar should be formed on language, and not language on grammar.”
Noah Webster was a law student at Yale University when he took a leave of absence to fight in the American Revolution. Upon his graduation, Webster chose to take a job as a teacher in Goshen, New York. While teaching, Webster was unimpressed by the spellers and readers available to his students. He felt that the texts they used, written and published in England, ignored some distinctive aspects of American life. His quest to champion an American English began with his writing and publishing a series of books to be used by educators: a spelling book, a grammar book, and a reader.
Webster began working on the dictionary in 1807. He said, “It is not only important, but, in a degree necessary, that the people of this country, should have an American Dictionary of the English language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist. Language is an expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” He is responsible for many of the common spelling differences in words between British English and American English, including the removal of “u” in words like “color” and the switching of “e” and “r” in words like “center” or “meter.” The American Dictionary of the English Language was far from a bestseller in the 19th century. Webster was berated for the inclusion of some colloquial words; however, Webster believed that public use was an important factor in an ever-changing language.
After Webster’s death, the rights to his dictionary were sold to George and Charles Merriam, who created the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. This dictionary is one of the most reliable and recognizable collections of American English today.
