History by Tom Madsen

Part Two: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton By Tom Madsen In Part One of this three-part series, we discussed the problems Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower faced during their second term in office, especially considering the successes they found in their first term. In this second part of the series,…

Part Twenty-nine in a Series By Tom Madsen “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ is no less probing and powerful … a picture show now as it was then. Almost every scene stands out as important. It is sharp, biting … and continuously still radical in its comic and drama …” -Writer Scott Holleran, 2016 Nineteen…

The Second Term Curse: The Problems of Second Term Presidencies Part One in a Series By Tom Madsen As we approach the second and final mid-term election of President Donald Trump’s two non-consecutive terms in office (Grover Cleveland was the only other president to serve two non-consecutive terms: 1885-1889 & 1893-1897), his second term has…

By Tom Madsen In 1964, writer, producer and former World War II bombardier, Gene Roddenberry came up with an idea for a new television series. A futuristic, “celestial western” (as he called it) about a starship (note: not a spaceship) named the USS Enterprise, that would traverse around the galaxies to “seek out new life…

By Tom Madsen “If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order, I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accomplished in the South.” -West Virginia Representative and former Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd What U.S. Congressman (and…

Part Three: A Century of Violence, Protests and Turmoil with Hope on the Horizon By Tom Madsen “We are here this evening for serious business…. [W]e are American citizens and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. We are here…because of our love for democracy, because of our deep-seated…

Part Two: The American Revolution, Compromises and the Growing Pain of Slavery By Tom Madsen “Slavery in an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.” Thomas Jefferson – date unknown Thomas Jefferson characterized the contradiction of the American…

By Tom Madsen “One day a big ship stopped off the shore.” “A big boat was down at the edge of a bay.” “For innumerable Africans, the appearance of a strange ocean-going ship signaled the end of their lives as free people. Whether captured by European or African slave traders, or enslaved as prisoners during…

Part Eleven in a Series By Tom Madsen “To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting. Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,…