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UNSUNG HISTORY

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

 

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Recent Episodes

Nov. 4, 2024

The History of the Electoral College

At the end of August 1787, after three long months of debate and deliberation, the Constitutional Convention had neared the end of its work. They were poised at that time to write into the Constitution that the President of t...

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Oct. 28, 2024

Baseball & the Chinese Educational Mission of the 1870s

In the 1870s, 120 Chinese boys came to New England as part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The boys studied at prep schools and colleges, and while they continued their lessons in Chinese language and culture, they also l...

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Oct. 21, 2024

Ryan White & the CARE Act of 1990

Shortly after he was born in 1971, Ryan White was diagnosed with severe hemophilia. Ryan was able to reduce his hospitalizations from the disease through the use of in-home injections of Factor VIII concentrate, something he ...

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Oct. 14, 2024

The Sanders Family of Philadelphia

When she was just fifteen years old, in 1830, Sarah Martha Sanders was sold to Richard Walpole Cogdell of Charleston, South Carolina. Within a year she was pregnant with his child, and just after she turned 17, Sarah Martha g...

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Oct. 7, 2024

Education & Reconstruction in the Washington DC Region

At the dedication for a school for African American students in Manassas, Virginia, in 1894, Frederick Douglass said: “no greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earne...

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Sept. 30, 2024

A History of Postpartum Depression in the United States

In his bestselling childcare manual American pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock advised new moms:“If you begin to feel at all depressed, go to a movie, or to the beauty parlor, or to get yourself a new hat or dress.” Although pu...

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Sept. 23, 2024

Segregation Scholarships

Between 1921 and 1948, every Southern and border state, except Delaware, set up scholarship programs to send Black students out of state for graduate study rather than admit them to historically white public colleges or build...

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Sept. 16, 2024

Doug Williams, Vince Evans & the History of Black Quarterbacks in the…

In 1946, the National Football League began the process of reintegration after a “gentleman’s agreement” had stopped teams from hiring Black players for over a decade. Even as the NFL began to re-integrate, though, racist ste...

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Sept. 9, 2024

Jewish Patriots in the American Revolution

In the Continental Army, one company of patriots in Charleston, South Carolina, was a majority Jewish, and at least fifteen Jewish soldiers in the Army achieved the rank of officer during the American Revolution, something un...

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Sept. 2, 2024

Abigail Adams

Abigail Smith Adams, wife to the second U.S. president and mother of the sixth U.S. president, may be best known for exhorting her husband to “remember the ladies” as he worked with his colleagues to form a new government, bu...

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About the Host

Kelly Therese Pollock Profile Photo

Kelly Therese Pollock

Producer & Host

Kelly has always been the kind of person who asks questions — lots of questions — to anyone who will listen and answer. With a BA in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (where she wrote a thesis on feminist witches), Kelly has turned her questioning to politics and history where she digs deep into stories that aren’t getting enough attention.

By day Kelly is an administrator at the University of Chicago, where she has worked since 2004.

Kelly lives on the southside of Chicago with her husband, two kids, and two cats. When she’s not podcasting or working you can find Kelly with knitting needles in her hands. If she could knit and podcast at the same time she would.