George Washington Williams

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

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Speaker 3: We've both talked about our short lists of episodes before, which for both of us are really long, and for a lot of the topics on mine, I remember what it was that led me to shortlist them. That's not the case today, which I think might also be our accidental theme for the week. George Washington Williams is who we are talking about, and I think I put him on the list because he was one of the first people, if not the first, to publicly describe the atrocities that were being carried out in the Congo Free State under King Leopold of Belgium. But once I got into it, there was so much other stuff that happened in his life before that that could have been what led me to put him on the list. Various sources have described George Washington Williams with terms like restless and complicated and imperfect but also accomplished. He was one of the best known black men in the United States. When he died. W. E. B. Du Bois described him as the greatest historian of the race, but then he fell into obscurity almost immediately after his death, and almost everything we know about him is thanks to another historian, which is the late John Hope Franklin, who did this in an effort that spanned more than four decades.

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Speaker 1: George Washington Williams was born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, on October sixteenth, eighteen forty nine. His parents were Thomas and Ellen Rouse Williams, and they were both biracial. He was their second child. He had an older sister and three younger brothers.

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Speaker 3: When George was still a baby, the family moved to the riverside town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Thomas started working as a boatman. In the mid nineteenth century, boatman in a lot of areas had a reputation for just vulgarity and drunkenness, and that's the kind of crowd that Thomas fell in with. Ellen eventually left because of this, and she took the children to Newcastle, Pennsylvania. It seems like this was really a wake up call for Thomas, and eventually he stopped drinking, left Johnstown and rejoined his wife, becoming a barber and a preacher.

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Speaker 1: George also seems to have gotten into some kind of trouble as a kid, although the details are not clear. He described himself as wicked and wild, and he was sent to a quote house of refuge for wayward boys in his early teens.

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Speaker 2: This was the kind of.

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Speaker 1: Place that would have tried to rehabilitate its residents through scripture and teaching them a trade, and this was when George started to develop an interest in religion.

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Speaker 3: The US Civil War had started when George was eleven, and at the age of fourteen, after the US Army started recruiting black soldiers, he ran away to join. He was definitely not old enough to enlist, which he knew, so he went to another town, lied about his age, and used an uncle's name. It was obvious to the military surgeon who was doing the physical exams that George was not old enough to serve, but he begged to be allowed to, and ultimately he was enlisting under a false identity, though led to some trouble both for him and for future historians. Later on, it kept his widow from being able to collect a pension, and it means that a lot of the details of this part of his military service are really impossible to track down at this point.

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Speaker 1: By his account, he was wounded twice in service and was at the fall of Petersburg on April second, eighteen sixty five. After the war ended, his unit was sent to Texas to serve the remainder of their enlistments. He may have been mustered out, but it's also possible that he deserted, and after this he crossed the border to join Mexican troops fighting against Habsburg Emperor Maximilian the First. In eighteen sixty seven, Williams returned to Pennsylvania and on August twenty ninth of that year, he joined the tenth Cavalry that was one of the segregated military units, also known.

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Speaker 3: As the Buffalo Soldiers. The legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers is complicated. Initially, these soldiers were under the command of white officers, and they faced ongoing racism during their service. One of the reasons the Buffalo Soldiers were stationed in more remote areas of what's now Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico is that white soldiers would not accept their presence in other parts of the country. These men were also fighting for a government that generally didn't view them as equal to white people, but for a lot of them this was an opportunity for self sufficiency. In the e writes in a chance to serve with valor. This was particularly notable since a lot of them had previously been enslaved. Added to that, the service of the Buffalo soldiers in the nineteenth century is deeply intertwined with the United States wars against indigenous nations. The nineteenth century book Men of Mark Eminent, Progressive and Rising, which is a collection of biographical sketches of black men by the Reverend William J. Simmons, describes Williams as quote serving in the Comanche campaign of eighteen sixty seven with conspicuous bravery. That same account describes him as later being convinced that quote as a Christian, killing people in the time of peace was not the noblest life a man could live. On May nineteenth, eighteen sixty eight, Williams was shot, and this gunshot badly damaged the lower lobe of his left lung. There is some mystery about this injury. According to military records, this did not happen in the line of duty, but an investigation into the matter doesn't seem to have led to any kind of discipline for anybody. As a side note, one of the investigators into this was Richard Henry Pratt, who at the time was a first Lieutenant. He would later be the founder and superintendent of Carlisle Indian Industrial School. William's injury was disabling and he was in the hospital for the rest of his service. He was discharged from the army on September fourth, eighteen sixty eight, at the age of eighteen. From there, Williams moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, and started attending a Baptist church. Soon after, he got a license to preach. Then he heard about Howard University, which had been established the previous year, and decided to apply, which he did not by following any typical application process, but by writing directly to its founder and namesake, General Oliver Oates Howard. He sent this letter on March eighth, eighteen sixty nine, and the letter did make its way to the appropriate people for admissions, with a note that said answer favorably if qualified. Although Williams was apparently admitted to Howard, his qualifications were questionable. He had almost no formal education at this point. He knew how to read and write, but not very well. This letter is full of misspellings and unusual usage that go way beyond the typical nineteenth century idiosyncrasies. There's also no record of him actually attending Howard during the eighteen sixty nine to eighteen seventy academic year, and on September ninth, eighteen seventy, he was examined by the faculty for admission at a different institution, the Newton Theological Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts. At the Seminary, Williams was enrolled in a two year general course in English, which biographer John Hope Franklin describes as a uemism for the remedial course. The seminary had established this program because there was a shortage of ministers, but there was also a shortage of candidates who were academically ready to be enrolled. After finishing the general English course, Williams moved on to the three year theological program, which he finished in two years and at the top of his class. He was also one of the people who delivered an address at commencement on June tenth, eighteen seventy four. This sounds like a very long commencement ceremony. There were twelve addresses from the graduates. I don't know that I could sit through twelve addresses. Williams's address was on early Christian missions in Africa. June of eighteen seventy four was a very busy month for George Washington Williams. About a week before his graduation, he had gone to Chicago to marry Sarah A.

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Speaker 2: Sterrett.

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Speaker 3: They would go on to have one child together in eighteen seventy five, who was also named George. The day after graduate, he was ordained at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was one of the most influential Black churches in the Northeast. Williams had started working there as acting pastor in August of eighteen seventy three because the previous pastor, Leonard Grimes, had died. His position was made permanent on June twenty fourth. Some of Williams's earliest work as a historian started while he was pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church. The congregation had outgrown its building and services were seriously overcrowded, so he researched and wrote a history of the church. With proceeds from the sale of the book going to raise money for improvements on the building. George Washington Williams did not remain pastor there for very long, though, and we will talk about his next career move. After a sponsor break. While working as pastor twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, George Washington Williams started to see the need for a national newspaper for black readers, as he wrote in a letter to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, quote, the time has come when the Negro must do something. He went on to describe the United States as in a plastic time in which black Americans would be making history. A national journal headquartered in Washington could act as their teacher, their friend, and their mirror, educating them about social problems, forming the foundations of enlightened citizenship, and reflecting the virtue, genius, and industry of the people. Longfellow supported this effort, as did people like Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison.

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Speaker 1: Garrison also cautioned Williams about the financial risks of trying to start a newspaper. A lot of periodicals for black readers had already been established, but had run only a few issues because they ran out of money. Hoping to reach a national audience was an even more ambitious goal, and Garrison's concerns were well founded. The newspaper, called The Commoner ultimately ran for only eight issues from September fourth to December eighteenth, eighteen seventy five. Williams had gotten a lot of high profile support, but he had not gotten a lot of actual subscribers.

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Speaker 3: Williams then worked for the Post Office for a bit before being called to preach at Union Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, starting there in February of eighteen seventy six. An article about him that ran in the Cincinnati Daily Express several months later overstated his background in a number of ways, including saying that he had graduated from Harvard rather than saying that he had been enrolled at Howard. It is not really clear where this information came from or whether these were simply errors, but Williams really does not seemed to have tried to correct them. Then he started studying law with Judge Alfonso Taft, former US Attorney General, and he was called to the bar in Ohio in eighteen seventy seven. He also became involved in politics, through the Taft family, joining the Republican Party and making an unsuccessful run for a seat in the Ohio General Assembly. By November of eighteen seventy eight, Williams was writing a regular column for the Cincinnati Commercial Appeal under the pen name Aristites, making him the first black person known to have had a column in a white newspaper. He did an assortment of other jobs. He took on various other projects, including buying a gym and hiring a manager and a pe instructor for a Columbus Ohio YMCA to benefit the black community there. There so much has already happened, and we're not even halfway through.

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Speaker 1: He was a busy man. Williams ran for office again in eighteen seventy nine, this time winning a seat in the Ohio Io House of Representatives, making him the first black member of the Ohio state Legislature. He only served for one term. At one point he campaigned for a bill that would have closed a cemetery in a black neighborhood, and that led to outrage from the community. In eighteen eighty one, he was appointed as Judge Advocate in the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for veterans of the US military who served in the Civil War with the rank of colonel. Andy also had his interest pulled in another direction. He wanted to write a history of black people in the United States. At this point, the field of history was shifting in the United States and Europe, moving from general histories that usually had very broad themes, often written to be patriotic or celebratory, to more detailed work that was grounded in the careful examination of primary sources, not in repeating what other historians had our already said. Nineteenth century German historian Leopold von Ranke, viewed as one of the founders of modern source based history, described this evolution this way quote, I see the time approaching when we shall base modern history no longer on the reports even of contemporary historians, except insofar as they were in the possession of personal and immediate knowledge of facts, and still less on work yet more remote from the source, but rather on the narratives of eyewitnesses and on genuine and original documents. Colleges and universities in the United States were just starting to adopt this kind of focus when Williams started to work on this book, So Most historians in the US were not formally trained in these kinds of methods, but Williams was teaching himself to do it without any formal training in history at all. He not only taught himself to look for, collect and document primary sources, but he also made use of sources that were way ahead of his time. This included newspaper reports, church records, and oral histories, which many other historians weren't really incorporating until much later.

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Speaker 3: William's use of primary sources was not just happenstance. He understood that because of his race, his work would face closer scrutiny than that of a white historian, so it had to be meticulously documented and substantiated. Beyond that, most information about black people in the United States was being kept by other black people, which is why he was turning to things like newspapers and church records and oral histories. He traveled all over the United States to do this work, and it became his almost exclusive focus.

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Speaker 1: George Washington Williams's History of the Negro Race in America from sixteen nineteen to eighteen eighty Negroes as slaves, as soldiers, and as citizens, together with a Preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the Human Family and Historical Sketch of Africa, and an Account of the Negro Government of Sierra Leone and Liberia. All one title was first published over two volumes, totally roughly one thousand pages, in eighteen eighty two. This was not the first ever work about black history to be published in the US, but it was the first that was intended to be comprehensive and to encompass the nation's entire history.

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Speaker 3: For the most part, Williamson's work was well reviewed, although it did face some criticisms. Its first chapter was not actually rooted in US history, but in theology. It was building a counter argument to the use of scripture to dehumanize black people and defend the institution of slavery. Since Williams's formal education was in seminary, parts of the book, especially this chapter, were written in a style that was more dramatic and oratorial than was really expected from a historical work. He could also be really critical when it came to correcting errors that had appeared in other people's work, including other black historians work. It wasn't enough to sort of say sources said this happened in this year, but it really happened in this year. Like then there would need to be commentary about the quality of the intellect of the person who made that mistake.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But even though there were people who found fault with Williams's style or tone, this was still a scholarship by a black person that white journalists and scholars found worthy of this kind of analysis and criticism, rather than just dismissing or ignoring it, And that was notable on its own. After this book was published, Williams hired a booking agent and started lecturing widely. In eighteen eighty three, he moved to Boston and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. There seems to have been some fudging of his credentials here. He said he had passed the bar in Ohio in eighteen seventy nine, when really it had been late later than that and had required more than one attempt. By this point, he had been estranged from his wife, Sarah. By eighteen eighty four, they were no longer living together. She claimed that he was negligent as both a father and a spouse, and it does seem like he had been focused on research for his book to the exclusion of everything else. There's no documentation of a legal separation or divorce, and later on she was considered his legal next of kin, but they really were not living as a couple. That summer, Williams went to Europe with a letter of introduction from the State Department. He traveled to Switzerland, Germany, France.

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Speaker 2: And the UK.

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Speaker 3: Word later reached the State Department that he had borrowed money from various people on this trip, including government officials, and had not repaid it somehow, though this did not stop President Chester A. Arthur from appointing Williams to be Minister to Haiti on March second, eighteen eighty five, and it did not get in the way of the Senate confirming that appointment. Williams never assumed his post, though he was sworn in at about ten in the morning on March fourth, and inauguration ceremonies for President Grover Cleveland started about one thirty that afternoon. The Secretary of State had not issued William's credentials by the time Thomas Francis Bayard was appointed to that role on March sixth. Then Cleveland made his own appointment for Minister to Haiti. That was John Edward Wes Thompson, and he began his service on June thirtieth, so much about this is weird. Williams was appointed to replace John Mercer Langston, who had resigned. Langston had served under a series of Republican presidents, and newly elected Grover Cleveland was a Democrat, so Langston's resignation was basically expected in light of this changing presidential administration. Arthur was not expected to appoint somebody to replace this, you know, former minister just two days before the inauguration. It's also not clear why the State Department didn't raise any objections, considering that Williams had borrowed money on the strength of their letter of introduction. Plus, Williams had a lot of critics, including among other black people. There were several black newspapers that published editorials describing him as arrogant and unqualified for this role, and having abandoned a wife and a child and at least one church congregation. Williams doesn't seem to have known he was being considered for this appointment until it happened, but having it taken away like this was also deeply upsetting. In addition to any political aspirations, he may have had. He was dealing with ongoing respiratory issues, possibly connected to being shot through the lung, and he was hoping that Haiti's warm climate would help his health. He filed suit against the government to try to get the appointment restored and to collect his pay for it. He finally lost that suit on January third, eighteen eighty two. In the midst of all this, on May seventeenth, eighteen eighty seven, he was awarded an honorary law degree by the State University of Louisville, Kentucky. He also published another work of history that year. That was a history of the Negro troops in the War of the Rebellion eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five. He had used the same methodology for this work as he had for his earlier work on black history. After this book was published, W. E. B. Du Bois, who was nineteen years old, wrote about him in the Fifth Herald, saying quote, at last we have a historian, not merely a Negro historian, but a man who, judged by his merits alone, has written a splendid narrative. In eighteen eighty eight, Williams also became a published novelist with The Autocracy of Love coming out serially in a newspaper called The World. I think this might have actually stopped before he got to the end of the story, but a significant amount did come out. Around this time, Williams also started focusing his attention on Africa, which we will get to after a sponsor break. Before we talk about George Washington Williams work involving the Congo Free State, we need to lay out some context. Over the course of the nineteenth century, multiple European powers aggressively took control of territory in Africa and in other parts of the world too, but Africa is our focus here. This came to be known as the Scramble for Africa. In eighteen eighty five, nations assembled at the West African Conference, also known as the Congo Conference, to formalize these claims and to agree on borders for some of this territory. This conference took place in Berlin over a series of sessions from November of eighteen eighty four to February eighteen eighty five. Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Norway, and the United States participated. There were no delegations to represent the peoples and nations and kingdoms of Africa at this conference. And at this conference, King Leopold the Second was recognized as sovereign.

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Speaker 1: Of the Congo Free State. This made the Congo Free State his personal territory, not a Belgian colony. Leopold had established the Association Internacionale du Congo in eighteen seventy eight, following Henry Morton Stanley's expedition through the region. About two years prior. Stanley had returned to the region and convinced more than four hundred African chiefs to give the Association and gen Nacionale Ducongo sovereignty over their territory, sovereignty that then passed to Leepold. The United States was the first nation to recognize Leopold's claim to the Congo, something that George Washington Williams had encouraged. If you know anything about the truly horrific conditions in the Congo Free State under King Leopold the second, Williams's encouragement of this recognition probably sounds shocking, but Leopold had framed himself as a philanthropist, somebody who was working for the best interest of the people of the Congo. He talked about all the good that a railroad and free trade would bring to the region, and he claimed that his involvement would help end slavery within Africa. Williams was also a devout Christian and he believed in the idea of Christianizing and quote civilizing Africa. To be clear, Christian religious practices in this region go back at least to the fifteenth century, so well before this, but this would be a massive expansion of Christian missionary efforts. So when Leopold was talking about things like schools and hospitals and missions, Williams believed him. Williams even interviewed Leopold directly and advocated for a program that would bring black Americans to the Congo to teach and work. When Williams started talking to Leopold about visiting the Congo so that he could see the king's success in person, Leopold, of course did not want him to go, and Leopold eventually told him explicitly not to go. So William's arranged transport on his own, accepting a commission from S. S. McClure on behalf of the Associated Literary Press. He had been traveling back and forth between Europe and the United States, including a research trip to Europe and attendance at the Centenary Conference of Protestant Missions in eighteen eighty eight and the Anti Slavery Conference in Brussels in eighteen eighty nine. He departed for the Congo Free State from liver on January thirtieth, eighteen ninety.

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Speaker 3: On July eighteenth, eighteen ninety, in Stanley Falls, Williams wrote an open letter to his Serene Majesty Leopold, the second King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo, by Colonel the Honorable George W. Williams of the United States of America. This letter was based on his observations and investigations.

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Speaker 2: Over the prior few weeks.

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Speaker 3: This was both an open letter and a work of investigative journalism, and it was the first published work to really call attention to what was happening in the Congo Free State.

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Speaker 1: This letter began quote, good and great friend, I have the honor to submit for your Majesty's consideration, some reflections respecting the independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal government you have established upon the African continent. It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year of visiting your state in Africa, and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed, and disheartened. It is now my painful duty to make known to Your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Williams described Henry Morton Stanley's use of deception and very stage crafty slide of hand tricks quote too silly and disgusting to mention to deceive indigenous chiefs into signing away their land. He also said he had found no hospitals for Europeans and only three shacks for treating sick Africans. There were no Belgian chaplains to console the sick or bury the dead, and Europeans who died along the road were going unburied. He went on to write, quote, I was anxious to see what extent the natives had adopted the fostering care of Your Majesty's benevolent enterprise question mark. And I was doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead of the natives of the Congo adopting the fostering care of your Majesty's government, they everywhere complained that their land has been taken from them by force, that the government is cruel and arbitrary, and declared that they neither love nor respect the government and its flag. Your Majesty's government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. It is natural that they everywhere shrink from the fostering care your Majesty's government so eagerly proffers them. After describing ongoing corruption, negligence, and death, he lay out a series of charges. To briefly summarize most of them. They were that Leopold's government did not have the moral or financial strength to govern the territory that the government had established nearly fifty staffed by mercenary slave soldiers under the command of soldiers from Zanzibar who were expected to sustain themselves, and nearby garrisons of white soldiers through raiding and piracy. That the government had violated its contracts with soldiers, mechanics, and workers. That its courts were quote abortive, unjust, partial, and delinquent, and the government was cruel to prisoners. That women were being brought into the colony for immoral purposes, including by falsely accusing native women of crimes and sentencing them to seven years of servitude. That the Congo Free State was taxing other nations trading companies while exempting its own goods from export duties. And that the government was waging unjust and cruel wars against the natives and was engaged in the slave trade. He had this to say about Henry Morton Stanley, who got a brief mention in in our recent episodes on Natalie Clifford Barney, that, in addition to his grossly misrepresenting the character of the country, quote, Henry M. Stanley's name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned. They remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures by which they were mulkeded of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a profound sensation among them, when he led five hundred Zanzibar soldiers with three hundred camp followers on his way to relieve a mean pasha. They thought it meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken, and die, and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory. We have a two parter on a Means that came out in September of twenty seventeen. Williams ended with a series of appeals to the powers that had entrusted Leopold with this territory at the Berlin Conference, to the terms of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, to the Belgian people and government, to the world's anti slavery societies, and to God, to quote hasten the close of the tragedy, your Majesty's unlimited monarchy is enacting in the Congo. Williams also attached a report on the proposed Congo Railway, and he wrote a letter to the President of the United States on the state of the Congo and his encounters with Leopold. After leaving the Congo Free State, George Washington Williams toured through other parts of Africa, arriving in Cairo in January of eighteen ninety one. He departed for England that May, and aboard the ship met Alice Fryar, who was returning from India, where she had been working as a governess. By the time the ship arrived in England, the two of them were engaged. Williams was trying to get people to pay attention to what was happening in the Congo Free State, but he had also been sick for a lot of his time in Africa. It's likely that he contracted tuberculosis, which did not have an effective cure at this point and would have been particularly dangerous for somebody with serious lung damage like he had. He may have also developed pleurisy. Alison, her mother, eventually took him to Blackpool, England, hoping that the sea air would help him recover. He died there on August second, eighteen ninety one, at the age of forty one, and was buried in Blackpool's Layton Cemetery. At the time of his death, George Washington Williams was one of the best known Black Americans. For example, in eighteen ninety the Indianapolis Friedman had polled its readership about the ten greatest Black people ever to live, and he was one of them, along with Frederick Douglas and Toussaint lu Vertire. While he did have critics, especially when it came to his personal life and his time in politics, newspaper coverage of his death praised him for his brilliance, but almost immediately Williams fell into almost total obscurity. That nineteenth century account that we read from earlier on was, I think while he was still living, was not afterward. The same pattern of racism that had led to black people's histories being kept mainly in the records of things like black newspapers and churches and their own oral histories meant that his work quickly fell out of view of white journalists and historians. So when other people started writing about the atrocities in the Congo almost a decade later, they didn't reference him. Not Joseph Conrad, who had followed the same route as Williams a month later, whose Heart of Darkness was published serially in eighteen ninety nine, and not Roger Casement, who's nineteen oh four report commissioned by the British government helped lead to the end of Leopold's sovereignty over the Congo Free State. In the words of John Hope Franklin quote, when the world at long last became concerned with Leopold's atrocities in the Congo, not one of them referred to William's pioneer efforts. As we said at the top of the show, it is thanks to John Hope Franklin that we know what we do about George Washington Williams. In nineteen forty six he had gotten a contract to write a book on black history. That book would be From Slavery to Freedom, A History of African Americans, and it was first published in nineteen forty seven, and it's probably his best known work. Franklin was reading the shelves at what is now North Carolina Central University when he found Williams's two volume History of the Negro Race in America, and at that point Franklin had never heard of Williams. Franklin's efforts to piece together the details of William's life took four decades and banned three continents. His biography of Williams simply titled George Washington Williams, a biography, was first published in nineteen eighty five, and it's been reprinted several times since then. It is also thanks to him that William's gravesite in Blackpool is now marked. He arranged for a marker to be placed there in nineteen seventy five. John Hope Franklin died in two thousand and nine. During his career, he wrote numerous works, many of them about the US Civil War. He worked with Thurgood Marshall on the legal case of Lyman T. Johnson, challenging segregation at the University of Kentucky, and he acted as an expert witness, and he helped Marshall prepare arguments in Brown versus Board of Education. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 3: Belgium took control of the Congo Free State in nineteen oh eight, and the region became independent from Belgium in nineteen sixty. Today it's the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but there are still ongoing human rights violations there, with multiple governments and international organizations describing the situation as dire. Among other things, there is ongoing conflict between the Congolese government and at least fifteen different significant armed groups. This is especially in the eastern provinces, and there are massive issues with child labor. In the mining industry, Congo is extremely wealthy in terms of natural resources like diamonds and cobalt, as well as a mineral called cultan, which is refined into tantalum and used to make electrical components. It's in huge demand for the manufacture of cell phones and other electronic devices. Also as an odd coda, George Washington Williams was a character in the twenty sixteen Legend of Tarzan. It's pretty odd, and we're going to talk about that on Friday. Yeah, we sure are. Before listener mail, we have a trip to announce.

00:37:02
Speaker 1: We sure do.

00:37:04
Speaker 2: We're gonna go to Iceland.

00:37:06
Speaker 3: Yay. We are both very excited about going to Iceland. Unlike our previous trips, this is somewhere we have each been before. Well, I have been to the places of our previous trips.

00:37:17
Speaker 1: It was just so long ago. I don't remember right, right, but we have both been to Iceland fairly recently. I went last year.

00:37:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went to Iceland in twenty sixteen. And you went to Iceland last year and we were both very excited about the idea of returning to Iceland. I don't know about you, but we're going to some places I've been before, some places I've not been before. Same, so very excited about that. This trip is happening November two through eighth, which means if the solar system and the weather cooperate, we could see the Northern Lights, which is very exciting for me. They were actually out when I was there in the very off season, but we were in a place that was too cloudy and we did not even know it was happening until the next day when we heard about it in a place that had not been cloudy. Some of the things we're gonna do we are going to see some things in Reykivic. We have a couple of nights in Reykievic, so we are going to see some of the local sites there. We are going to do some of the places on the Golden Circle, including Thingvalier National Park, a lot of waterfalls. There's one day when we have like a more excitement less excitement option, more excitement option, snowmobiling, Yeah, less excitement option, geothermal bakery. I will say, having watched videos of the snowmobiling, it's pretty tame.

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Speaker 2: It's very it's not fast.

00:38:50
Speaker 1: You're like single files, so the speed is controlled and everybody's in the same tracks. Yeah, So if you're not a thrill seeker, but that sounds cool, it still might be within your parameter of acceptability, right, And if you would rather not geothermal bakery, which also sounds very cool to me, uh huh. And at the end of the trip, a trip to the Blue Lagoon, which as a geothermal mineral pool where I went the last time I was in Iceland, had a great time. See, I did not do any of those when I was in Iceland because I'm not like a spawn water baby, right, So we'll see what happens this time.

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Speaker 2: And if you're not into those things that Blue Lagoon.

00:39:31
Speaker 3: Blue Lagoon also has a collection of like restaurants and cafes and stuff, so there are some other things to do if that's not what you're really up for. So again, this is Iceland, November two through eighth, twenty twenty four. We know that Tuesday, November fifth is election day in the United States, so make your absentee voting plans ahead of time. If you you are a US voter and want to come on this trip with US Defined Destinations dot com slash Iceland twenty twenty four, You can also just go to Defineddestinations dot com and click on where it says Iceland. If you have questions about, like specific arrangements about the trip, whether it would be fun for you, whether you know if you just want more details about things, Defined Destinations is who to contact about that? Because while Holly and I go on this trip and we pick the general destination and make feedback on the itinerary, we're not the ones making the actual day to day arrangements. So actual day to day arrangements questions Defined Destinations as who can answer that? And now we will move on to an equally fun listener mail, which is actually a Facebook comment that I copied and pasted into the email so I wouldn't lose it. This is from Sarah, who says, Hey, I'm the owner of that eighteen eighties dress with the codes in the pocket. We talked about this in our unearthed. Sarah continues, I thought i'd weigh in on the speculation about it being for a woman who was eight months pregnant. The photos you see everywhere are the ones I took after buttoning on on the only dress form I have, so it's not the right hourglass shape for the era. Even still, the bodice has a maximum waste measurement of twenty four inches. I can barely get it buttoned on the form. When you account for a chemise, pantaloons, corset and corset cover going under the bodice, a woman would need a waistline not much above twenty three inches to wear this. I would really love this to be a maternity dress, but I just can't see it working even with the right structural undergarments for a woman carrying low. The skirt construction has some give, but the bodice has been led out as much as possible to get that twenty four inch waste. There is no extra fabric there to allow more room to expand that being said, I don't really rule out the DC Bennetts as a source of the dress and code sheets. The theory I keep coming back to is reuse of the papers. Soft paper that has served its purpose in the code office might be the kind of thing you'd bring home to a house with a newborn in an age before baby wipes people were using paper for hygiene by then, and these sheets are much softer than pages from a farmer's almanac. I also wonder if part of the reason so few telegraph code sheets survive is that they enjoyed a second life as toilet paper. My dress would then be kind of the equivalent of leaving a tissue in your pocket and forgetting it was there. The pocket wouldn't be something you'd access in public, but the wearer would know it was there. Seems like a good spot for an emergency baby wipe or toilet tissue. To me, Holly has made the worst face. I'm sorry that we talked about baby poops, Holleen. I'm gonna need therapy after this. Thank you so much, Sarah for this comment. I felt very silly after reading it because I was like I could have literally asked, like I could have said, hey, you have this dress, what do you think about this speculation? And first, I don't know. Asking for help is hard and sometimes I forget that's.

00:43:32
Speaker 2: A thing that can even be done.

00:43:34
Speaker 3: So thank you so much Sarah for finding this post on our Facebook.

00:43:37
Speaker 2: And leaving this comment. I loved it so much, And.

00:43:41
Speaker 3: If you would like to write to us, about this or any other podcasts. We're at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

00:43:48
Speaker 2: We're also on some social.

00:43:50
Speaker 3: Media, including that Facebook, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.