UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
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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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208
Oct. 20, 2025
The Girl Scouts of the USA
In 1912, wealthy Savannahian Juliette Gordon Low supposedly called her cousin and exclaimed: “Come right over! I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, for all of America, and for the world.” That something would become the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that throughout its history struggled to fulfill its initial promise of inclusion for all girls while trying to maintain an apolitical stance with deference to local councils. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Amy Farrell, the Jame
213
Dec. 30, 2025
All in the Family
When All in the Family premiered in January 1971, CBS was nervous enough about the content that they added an advisory message at the beginning. Despite their fears, the show was a success, quickly garnering both awards and top Nielsen ratings. All in the Family not only changed television in the United States but also the practice of politics. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Oscar Winberg, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and the John Morton Center for North Ame
40
March 7, 2022
Yellowstone National Park
One hundred fifty years ago, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act establishing Yellowstone National Park into law, making it the first national park in the United States, and a cause for celebration in a country still recovering from the devastating Civil War. Not everyone celebrated, though, including Native Americans who had called the land home for thousands of years before white trappers and explorers first experienced the wild majesty of the landscape. To learn more about the men who
97
April 10, 2023
The Southern Strategy
In the decades following the Civil War, African Americans reliably voted for the Republican Party, which had led the efforts to outlaw slavery and enfranchise Black voters; and white southerners reliably voted for the Democratic Party. When Black voters started to vote for Democratic candidates in larger numbers, starting with the 1936 re-election of FDR, whose New Deal policies had helped poor African Americans, Republicans began to turn their sights toward white Southern voters. By the 1964 Pr
84
Jan. 9, 2023
Shirley Chisholm
Throughout her life, Shirley Chisholm fought for coalitional change. She was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress in 1968, the first Black woman to run for President of the United States in 1972, co-founder of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus, both in 1971, and co-founder of the National Congress of Black Women in 1984. Toward the end of her life, Chisholm told an interviewer: “I want history to remember me … as a Black woman wh
Recent Episodes
229
Aug. 10, 2026
Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago's Nineteenth Ward
In the fall of 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side, full of good intentions to help the poor people of the neighborhood. They were a force for good, providing education, cultural enrichment, and workforce development, while fighting for protections for women and children. But because of their backgrounds, they also missed important cultural dimensions of their immigrant neighbors and feuded with the ward’s Irish Catholic alderman. Joining me in t
228
July 27, 2026
Buddy Bradley
Buddy Bradley, born in the Jim Crow South in 1905, made his way to Harlem at age 16 where he learned to tap dance and became a chorus boy. He was sought out on Broadway as both teacher and choreographer, but never got the credit he deserved, and he moved to London in the 1930s where he had a hugely successful career as a dance director on stage and in film. Although his name isn’t well known today, his influence lives on in dance. Joining me in this episode is Maureen Footer, author of Feel the
227
July 13, 2026
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
During World War II, afraid that major league baseball would need to pause while men were overseas fighting, Philip K. Wrigley, chewing gum mogul and owner of the Chicago Cubs, spearheaded a new professional ball league, this one made up of women players. In the twelve years of All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League play, over 600 women had the chance to play professionally, earning substantial salaries and delighting fans across the Midwest. Joining me in this episode is baseball hist
226
June 29, 2026
The Declaration of Independence
The Continental Congress voted to break from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, and approved the text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, but it took weeks for the news to spread throughout the new country and even longer to reach the country they were breaking from and the countries with whom they hoped to find alliances. Along the way, people learned the news from printed broadsides, newspapers, public readings, and letters from friends. I’m joined in this episode by Dr. Emily Sneff, aut
225
June 15, 2026
The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building
The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building loom large in the American imagination, symbolizing the conflicting ideas of liberty and empire; their meanings and characters have shifted over time as the American ethos has shifted. Joining me in this episode is writer, historian, and freelance editor, Dr. Vaneesa Cook, author of Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks. Our theme song is “Frogs Legs Rag,” composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod,
224
June 1, 2026
An American History of Purses
Today the US handbag market is estimated to be nearly $12 billion, with most of the purchasing done by women, but into the early 20th Century purses hadn’t yet become the nearly-exclusive domain of women. The integration of pockets into men’s clothing, and the marketing push of toiletry items to women in the 1920s and 1930s drove this differentiated market development. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Kathleen B. Casey, Professor of History and Director of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Stu
223
May 18, 2026
The Lady Bird Special
On the morning of Tuesday, October 6, 1964, the Lady Bird Special, a 19-car train carrying First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, her supporters, members of the press, and a security detail, departed Union Station in Washington, DC, for an ambitious 1,682-mile whistle-stop campaign tour of Southern States. In four days, Lady Bird gave 47 speeches to over 200,000 people, demonstrating that despite the growing resentment of white Southern Democrats to President Johnson’s signing of the Civil Righ
222
May 4, 2026
Policing Slavery & Black Rebellion in the American South
Enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped to Virginia starting in 1619 in response to a severe labor shortage. From the beginning, enslaved laborers resisted by fleeing and through violence, and white enslavers reacted by creating a racialized system of brutal policing, granting themselves authority based on skin color and a sense of superiority. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Gautham Rao, Associate Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of White Power: Poli
221
April 20, 2026
The Frontier Myth and the People of the Western United States
In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner advanced his now-famous Frontier Theory, arguing that the American identity was forged through the process of exploring and adapting to new environments in the frontier west. Key to both Turner’s theory and the myth of the frontier that pre-dated it was the idea that brave white American men conquered a previously empty land through their grit in a relentless march west, but the land was populated long before white Americans arrived, and the people who
220
April 6, 2026
Magnus Hirschfeld, Dora Richter, and the Institute for Sexual Science in Weimar Germany
In the Weimar Republic, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science and advocated for the repeal of legislation that criminalized sexual relations between men. At the Institute, pioneering gender-affirming surgeries were performed, and it was there that Dora Richter became the first known trans woman to undergo comprehensive male-to-female gender-affirming surgeries. But when the Nazis came to power, they labeled Hirschfeld an enemy of the state and destroyed the Institute’s im
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About the Host
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.