Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is an award-winning journalist who lives and works in Boulder, Colorado. Learn more at erinblakemore.com

Latest from this author

Would-be mail thieves didn’t stand a chance against Stagecoach Mary. The hard-drinking, quick-shooting mail carrier sported two guns and men’s clothing.

Demonstrators carry signs calling for protection of homosexuals from discrimination as they march in a picket line in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, 1967. (Credit: AP Photo)

Denounced, questioned, pressured to resign and even fired, LGBT people were once rooted out of the State Department in what was known as the Lavender Scare.

American children of Japanese, German and Italian heritage

America didn’t always extend citizenship to those born within its borders.

In the late 1880s, Weldon was vilified as a harpy who was in love with Sitting Bull. Both she and the Lakota leader would meet tragic fates.

What It Was Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad

The swift, often comfortable ride on the Transcontinental Railroad opened up the American West to new settlement.

In 1850, around 400 Pomo people, including women and children, were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry and local volunteers at Clear Lake north of San Francisco. (Credit: NativeStock Pictures/UIG/REX/Shutterstock)

Up to 16,000 Native Americans were murdered in cold blood after California became a state.

The executive order acknowledged state-sponsored violence and discrimination against Native peoples as part of 'California's dark history.'

The pioneers hoped to shave 300 miles off their journey. But the route they took to California had never been tested.

Slaves revolting against French power in Haiti.

Napoleon was eager to sell—but the purchase would end up expanding slavery in the U.S.

Dr. Death

Horrifying medical experiments on twins helped Nazis justify the Holocaust.

Vatican Secret Archives

The archives’ treasures are the stuff of legend—but their existence is absolutely real.

A proclamation by King George III set the stage for Native American rights—and the eventual loss of most tribal lands.

Thomas Jefferson's Bible

The third president had a secret: his carefully edited version of the New Testament.

How the Plattsburg camps for young men tried to raise a volunteer army ahead of World War I.

John Paul Stevens

Appointed by a Republican president, the Associate Justice’s views on the death penalty and affirmative action shifted dramatically over time.

There were multiple memorials and tributes to the fallen civil rights leader.

1919 Steel Strike

Plagued by bad press and fraught with racial and ethnic tensions, the huge steel strike was doomed to fail.

Kaiser Wilhelm

Under the Treaty of Versailles, the German emperor was supposed to be tried as a war criminal. Why wasn't he?

Big Bird from Sesame Street, 1969.

Caroll Spinney—the puppeteer in the yellow suit—was in talks to go to space.

The M.S. St Louis

The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

Normal Danes sprang into action and pulled off an astounding feat.

Young Nazis Saluting During March, 1934

When Helmuth Hübener learned the truth about Nazi Germany, he spread the word—and paid the ultimate price.

Ulysses S. Grant

General Orders No. 11 gave Jewish people just 24 hours to leave their homes and lives behind.

Sophie Tucker

“My Yiddishe Momme" became an anthem for new immigrants in the 1920s. Victimized Jews later sang it in concentration camps.

History of Reparations in the United States

In the 20th century, the country issued reparations for Japanese American internment, Native land seizures, massacres and police brutality. Will slavery be next?

Anne Frank's Diary

Publishers were initially reluctant to publish the teenage author’s chronicle of life during the Holocaust. They thought readers were not ready to confront the horrors of World War II.

Crossing the Berlin Wall

Desperation drove ingenuity among East Germans determined to reach West Berlin.

The Los Alamos Historical Museum halted a Japanese exhibition on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of a controversy over its message of abolishing nuclear weapons.

Born in the ashes of World War II, the currency used by 19 European countries went into effect on January 1, 1999.

The newly built tuberculosis sanatorium in Colorado, where every patient has a separate cottage, 1928

The state was once known as 'the world’s sanatorium.'

Nisei members of the Military Intelligence Service were discriminated against by their own country—even as they worked to protect it.

Peter Norman, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos, as they play the national anthem of the United States at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. (Credit: Rich Clarkson/Rich Clarkson & Associates/Getty Images)

When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest at the 1968 Summer Games, Australian runner Peter Norman stood by them. It lost him his career.

While some had been driven from the camp, thousands of emaciated prisoners had been left behind to die.

Apartheid in South Africa

For decades, the country's Black majority was controlled by racist laws enshrining white supremacy.

The iconic music festival faced massive resistance from local residents who feared an invasion of long-haired druggies in August of 1969.

Law enforcement knew who killed Harry and Harriette Moore on Christmas in 1951. So why wasn’t justice served?

When Cleveland's Cuyahoga River burned, the nation noticed.

Freidkorps

Right-wing paramilitary groups killed political foes with no repercussions in Weimar Germany.

President Nixon delivering his first State of the Union speech in 1970 where he addressed concerns about the environment.

Richard Nixon derided environmentalists in private, but became the main driver behind legislation protecting the country’s air, water and animals.

During Operation Peter Pan, over 14,000 children became exiles with the help of the United States.

A teacher and his at a Black Panther liberation school. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

The Panthers’ popular breakfast programs put pressure on political leaders to feed children before school.

Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove night club during the fire of Nov. 28, 1942 in the Back Bay section of Boston. (Credit: AP Photo)

Nearly 500 patrons perished in the 1942 inferno at Boston’s Cocoanut Grove.

Defense Production Act 1950

The Cold War-era law went into effect during a time when President Truman felt the nation was unprepared.

Over a 75-year period, up to 200,000 indigent children went from city to farm.

Cuban President Raul Castro, 2017. Raul Castro, pictured in this 2017 photo, announced that he will leave office in April 2018. (Credit: Prensa Latina Xinhua/ Eyevine/Redux)

In 2019, the island nation long ruled by dictator Fidel Castro and his family, got a new leader: Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The Brady Bunch Almost Never Got Made

1960s television executives weren’t ready to put a blended family on air.

English author Jane Austen. (Credit: Stock Montage/Stock Montage/Getty Images)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that marriage isn’t always in the cards.

Eugenics and unethical clinical trials are part of the pill’s legacy.

The Civil War hero brought his scorched-earth policy to the Plains—and wiped out Native Americans’ food supply.

Hawaii Under Martial Law

More than a third of the island's residents were of Japanese descent, and military officials doubted their loyalty.

Chen Jinyu, then 80 years old in this 2005 photograph, was raped everyday at 16 years old while living as a comfort woman for the Japanese military.

Between 1932 and 1945, Japan forced women from Korea, China and other occupied countries to become military sex slaves.

1937 Flint Sit-down strike

Over 136,000 GM workers participated in the strike in Flint, Michigan that became known as 'the strike heard round the world.'

Vogue Editor Francoise Langlade (left) and Oscar de la Renta (right) in cat masks speaking with Anne McDonnell, wife of Henry Ford, in a butterfly mask.

The writer's epic 1966 party helped relaunch Katharine Graham’s social life.

Three Mile Island

Panic set in after the partial nuclear meltdown as the public tried to decide which story to trust—and whether to evacuate.

Newly uncovered court records reveal what happened after the Civil Rights icons were arrested in Montgomery, Alabama.

The casket letters were scandalous. But were they really written by Mary Stuart?

Richard Hornberger was famous for his wisecracking characters, but his real accomplishments were as a surgeon.

Selling Apples during the Great Depression

A historic surplus and a bright idea led to relief for thousands of unemployed men during the height of the Depression.

Prisoner exchanges were critical to a ceasefire in the Korean War—but a peace treaty was never signed.

The star of the Thanksgiving table was revered by the Maya.

Japanese troops occupying Korea in the early 1900s. (Credit: Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Between 1910 and 1945, Japan worked to wipe out Korean culture, language and history.

Singer Frank Sinatra posing for a mug shot after being arrested and charged with "carrying on with a married woman" in 1938 in Bergen County, New Jersey. A scan of this mugshot was included in Sinatra's FBI file.

The FBI documented Old Blue Eyes’ every move for 40 years.

Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto being marched to a collecting point for deportation.

The Treblinka uprising put a stop to the Holocaust’s second deadliest camp.

Funeral of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat assassinated in 1938 by 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan. The assassination triggered the violent attack on German Jews called 'Kristallnacht', the Night of Broken Glass. (Credit: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo)

Ernst vom Rath’s murder triggered a two-day pogrom against German Jews.

The desperate parents of Kindertransport refugees paid a terrible price for their lives.

Kristallnacht

Mobs attacked 7,500 Jewish-owned stores and businesses and killed 96 people.

Kristallnacht

The 1938 pogrom sparked harsh criticism, but not much action.

Romualdo Pacheco, the fist Latino Congressman

Romualdo Pacheco was adroit at politics (and bear hunting), but in 1877 he faced a rocky road to the House of Representatives.

The Stonewall Riots

Fifty years later, Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill admits the police department enforced discriminatory laws.

In marriage and divorce, the strong-willed princess helped modernize royal love.

The French emperor escaped his island prison in plain sight.

Governor Of The Bahamas

The royal family's distaste for divorce goes back to Henry VIII.

Demonstrators marching under the Chicago "L" (elevated railroad) during a protest calling for the firing of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis by Mayor Daley over the delays in integrating Chicago schools during the 1960s. (Credit: Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)

'Freedom Day' didn’t succeed, but it made de facto school segregation the talk of Chicago.

In this June 23, 1963, file photo, Black and white demonstrators, under arrest, walk off the beach at Biloxi, Miss., after staging a wade-in to try to desegregate the Gulf Coast beach

In the 1950s, the beach wasn’t open to everyone.

American orator, editor, author, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, at his desk in the late 1870s. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

They cried. They reminisced. The master told Douglass he would have run away, too.

Nettie Hunt explaining to her daughter Nickie the meaning of the high court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Deceptively simple doll tests helped convince the Supreme Court to strike down school segregation.

The Fight for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

It took 15 years of persistent lobbying for MLK Day to be declared a national holiday.

Anne Frank

The new material reveals a different side of the murdered teenage author.

Johan van Hulst

Johan van Hulst saved hundreds of lives—but was haunted by his inability to do more.

Carl Lutz

Carl Lutz managed to save half of Budapest's Jewish population by exploiting the Nazi's respect for paperwork.

Pope Pius XII

The controversial pope stayed silent on the fate of Jews during the Holocaust.

Susan B Anthony, front row and second from the left, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two seats over, with executive committee members from the International Council of Women.

It was at this small gathering where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others let the discontent of their lives boil over—and decided to do something about it.

Crowning the Queen on the program 'Queen for a Day,' which was aired that day over radio and TV.

The midcentury TV show  traded big prizes for women’s sob stories—and predicted the reality shows of today.

A family sitting around their television, 1945. (Credit: Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images)

Television brought film into people’s homes—but flattened Hollywood.

Two flapper women and their dates having a smoke

'Petting parties' added some steam to Jazz Age soirees.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin inside the Apollo 11 prior to the lunar landing on July 20, 1969. (Credit: NASA)

NASA worried the Christian ceremony might draw unwanted scrutiny.

With millions of Americans unable to find employment, working wives became scapegoats.

Jim Jones

Chilling audiotapes tell the story of the Jonestown massacre.

Ladies’ Home Journal Sit-In

The protestors helped themselves to the editor's cigars and would not budge from his office.

Passage of the ERA seemed like a sure thing. So why did it fail to become law?

Carry Nation had a bad history with alcohol—and she went to extremes to try and get it banned.

Halloween Candy Corn

While the fears may be overblown, Halloween crimes involving poison have occurred.

Government Cheese

In the early 1980s, the U.S. government distributed some 300 million pounds of pungent-smelling processed cheese that had been produced with federal funds.