Sunday
May 16, 1999
Home on the Range
Poem: "Home on the Range," folksong.
It's the birthday in 1804, Billerica, Massachusetts of the teacher and publisher, ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY, who opened her own school and began teaching when she was just 16. Two years later she opened another in Boston, and made her name by bringing the whole notion of early childhood education to America. In 1860 she began opening kindergartens, and wrote and edited a magazine called the Kindergarten Messenger.
It was on this day in 1868 that PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON escaped impeachment by a single vote. Johnson took office when Lincoln was killed in April, 1865. After the Civil War, he battled with Republicans over reconstruction policy, and the whole thing came to a head when Johnson fired his Secretary of War, the Republican Edwin Stanton, allegedly breaking a law which required the president to get Congressional approval for such a dismissal. The House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him, the first time in the nation's history. The Senate tried Johnson in the spring of 1868 and on May 16 acquitted him by a single vote.
It's the birthday in the Bronx, 1912, of writer and broadcaster STUDS TERKEL, known for his many books of oral historyinterviews with everyday people about their experiences, such as Hard Times; The Good War (which won a Pulitzer); and probably his best-known book, the 1974 Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. He got his start doing radio interviews in the 1930s on WGN in Chicago, and moved to WFMT in the 1940s. Right now he's a scholar-in-residence at the Chicago Historical Society.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®