History Commons^™

The Revival Of Buddhism, Chandrabhan P. Yadav

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Book Review: Douglas Ober, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India (Stanford University Press 2023).

Fifty Years Of Lucy, The Marvellous Ancestor, Chandrabhan P. Yadav, Surbhi Vatsa

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Excerpt:

"The Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University is celebrating this year as a ‘Year of Human Origins’ because 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of ‘Lucy’. The discussions on human origins and Lucy provokes one to seriously think about human life and where we come from.... The momentousness of the discovery of Lucy, a cardinal juncture that pegged firmly our existence in the scientific idea of evolution, cannot and must not be undermined."

William & Mary Stakes Claim As Oldest University In America, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

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No abstract provided.

Who Can Claim To Be The United States' First University?, Thomas J. Mcsweeney, Katharine Ello, Elsbeth O'Brien

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No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Mcdonald's [(R)], Laura A. Heymann

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No abstract provided.

The Cia And The Jfk Assassination, Pt. 2, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In the 1970s several Congressional investigations discovered there had been a disturbing pattern of misconduct by the CIA in regard to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the JFK assassination. The Agency had engaged in a cover-up by suppressing information it should have disclosed to the Commission, and in still other ways it had impeded the Commission’s investigation.

CIA documents subsequently released under the Freedom of Information Act or the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act expand our awareness of the Agency’s misconduct.

The Cia And The Jfk Assassination, Pt. 1, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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At the time President Kennedy was gunned down, the CIA could not possibly have been unfamiliar with the alleged assassin, ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Unless it was comatose, Oswald must have been a person of interest to the Agency long before the assassination. In 1957–58, Oswald had been stationed as a radar operator at the Atsugi Naval Air Base in Japan, where there was a major CIA station and from which the Agency’s U2 spy planes flew high-altitude missions over the Soviet Union; in 1959, the CIA knew, Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union, announced he had secrets to …

Jfk: Covered And Smothered, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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"If we could run the Zapruder film in reverse, patch up the president’s gruesome head wound, send the bullets flying back to the chambers whence they came, return the assassins to their sinister underworld and back up the Lincoln convertible so that Jack and Jackie are once again waving to the crowds in the Texas sunshine, then we could also walk backwards through the last 30 years, becoming younger and more hopeful, forgetting tragedies one after the other, arriving finally at a point of innocent stasis where we can stand forever watching the American sunrise with immortal delight. But we …

A Mystery In The Georgia Woods: The Woolfolk Murders, John Trussel, Donald E. Wilkes

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When you take a walk in the woods to hunt or just to enjoy the outdoor beauty, you never know what might have happened there in the past. A large tract of woodlands in Bibb County is a good example. When I visited there recently, the woods were calm and quiet and the mature oak trees stood in silent witness to the violence that occurred here many years ago. But on August 6, 1887 nine persons were slain at this location in the woods, just off highway 74 in Bibb County. The house where the murders occurred is long gone, …

Book Review: The Echo From Dealey Plaza: The True Story Of The First African American On The White House Secret Service Detail And His Quest For Justice After The Assassination Of Jfk (2008) And The Road To Dallas: The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy (2008), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE ECHO FROM DEALEY PLAZA: THE TRUE STORY OF THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN ON THE WHITE HOUSE SECRET SERVICE DETAIL AND HIS QUEST FOR JUSTICE AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK, by Abraham Bolden (NY: Harmony Books, 2008) and THE ROAD TO DALLAS: THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY, by David Kaiser (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008).

Book Review: Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy (2007), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY by Vincent Bugliosi (NY: W.W. Norton, 2007)

Jfk Blown Away -- Hooray! Kennedy's Dallas Visit Roiled Hate Groups, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Exactly 43 years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, 46-year old President John F. Kennedy was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, TX.

Dallas was then, as Matthew Smith notes in JFK: THE SECOND PLOT (1992), "the southwest hate capital of Dixie... In its politics and in its people, Dalls represented the right wing as far as it could go." Before and during his Dallas visit, local right-wingers busied themselves to make JFK unwelcome. They were angry and indignant that JFK was coming to their city. In fact, at the very time shots were being fired at …

Book Review: And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder Of Mary Phagan And The Lynching Of Leo Frank (2003), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE: THE MURDER OF MARY PHAGAN AND THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK, by Steve Oney (Pantheon Books, 2003).

The Death Flight Of Larry Mcdonald, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Twenty years ago, on Thursday, Sept. 1, 1983, Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald suffered a horrible death when a Soviet fighter interceptor shot down the Boeing 747 airliner he was aboard over the Sea of Japan. The 268 other persons on the plane also perished. The airliner, Korean Air Lines 007, on its way to Seoul, South Korea, had twice entered Soviet airspace and was downed as it was about to leave Soviet airspace for the second time.

Book Review: The Betrayal Of America: How The Supreme Court Undermined The Constitution And Chose Our President (2001), And Supreme Injustice: How The High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (2001), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA: HOW THE SUPREME COURT UNDERMINED THE CONSTITUTION AND CHOSE OUR PRESIDENT, by Vincent Bugliosi (Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2001), and SUPREME INJUSTICE: HOW THE HIGH COURT HIJACKED ELECTION 2000, by Alan Dershowitz (Oxford University Press, 2001).

The Trial Of The Century--And Of All Time, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The defeat of Nazi Germany brought to the forefront a problem the Allies had been grappling with for years -- what should be done with the Nazi leaders who had not been killed, committed suicide, or escaped into hiding? The Allies agreed that the top Nazi leadership could not allowed their liberty. But beyond that the Allies were in sharp disagreement. Some wanted to summarily execute the Nazi leadership without further ado. Others wanted to place the Nazi leaders on trial and punish them only if convicted. On August 8, 1945 the four principal Allies -- the United States, the …

Book Review: The War Journal Of Major Damon "Rocky" Gause (1999), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE WAR JOURNAL OF MAJOR DAMON "ROCKY" GAUSE, by Damon Gause (NY: Hyperion, 1999).

The Cadaver Synod: Strangest Trial In History, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence."

The Eponymous Mr. Prince, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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An eponym, the dictionary tells us, is a name formed from the name of a person to designate a place, and an eponymous person is someone for whom a place has been named. Prince Avenue, the wide Athens street which stretches west almost exactly two miles from Pulaski Street to the Jefferson Road, is an eponym. Described as “once one of the nation’s finest boulevards” by Frances Taliaferro Thomas in her excellent book A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County (1992), but now dotted with professional buildings, fast food businesses, and parking lots, Prince Avenue was named after a …

A Civil War Lynching In Athens, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Recently, while reading E. Merton Coulter's classic history of antebellum Athens, College Life in the Old South (UGA Press, 1983 reprint), I came across a reference on page 247 to an Athens lynching occurring early in the Civil War. Having checked into the matter, I can now announce that, indeed, there definitely was at least one lynching in Athens prior to 1882. This lynching, possibly but not probably the first lynching in Athens, took place on Wednesday, July 16, 1862.

Book Review: The Leo Frank Case (1999), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE LEO FRANK CASE, by Leonard Dinnerstein (University of Georgia Press, 1987, 1999).

Book Review: Whisper To The Black Candle: Voodoo, Murder, And The Case Of Anjette Lyles (1999), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of WHISPER TO THE BLACK CANDLE: VOODOO, MURDER, AND THE CASE OF ANJETTE LYLES, by Jaclyn Weldon White (Mercer University Press, 1999).

Roots Of Racism, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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“Nothing is more susceptible to oblivion than an argument, however ingenious, that has been discredited by events; and such is the case with the body of writing which was produced in the antebellum South in defense of Negro slavery.” So wrote Eric McKitrick in a history book he edited, Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South (1963). McKitrick was correct. At the end of the twentieth century very few people are aware of the existence, much less the contents, of the vast mass of books, essays, pamphlets, magazine and newspaper articles, and printed sermons and speeches in which the …

"Bloody Injuries:" The Lynchings In Oconee County, 1905-1921, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In an article entitled “The Last Lynching in Athens,” published in the Flagpole on Sept. 10, 1997, I recounted the tragic story of the only lynching incident in Clarke County since lynching statistics began. It happened in February 1921. The victim, a black man named John Lee Eberhart, was wrested from an Athens jail by a mob and burned at the stake. By contrast, in our sister county, Oconee County, until recently far less populous than Clarke County, there have been at least two, perhaps three, lynching incidents during the same period. At least 10 and possibly 11 persons were …

"J'Accuse ...! Emile Zola, Alfred Dreyfus, And The Greatest Newspaper Article In History, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Last month marked the centennial anniversary of the greatest newspaper article of all time. Strangely, the American print and broadcast media barely mentioned the article or its importance or the astonishing story surrounding it. The article, by Emile Zola, the great French novelist, appeared in a Paris literary newspaper, L'Aurore (The Dawn) on Thursday, Jan. 13, 1898, "an essential date in the history of journalism," according to historian Jean-Denis Bredin. Written in the form of an open letter to the President of France, the 4,000 word article, entitled J'Accuse! (I Accuse!), rightly has been judged a "masterpiece" of polemics and …

Book Review: The Woolfolk Tragedy (1996), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE WOOLFOLK TRAGEDY, by Carolyn DeLoach (Aneewakee River Press, 1996).

The Last Lynching In Athens, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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It happened the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 16, 1921. It began in downtown Athens when a mob forcibly attacked the Athens courthouse, and ended less than two hours later when the prisoner seized by that mob was burnt alive six miles away in an adjoining county. It was the most tragic event in the history of Clarke county. It was the last lynching in Athens.

Remains Of Mass Murder House Found, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The most atrocious mass murder in the history of the state of Georgia was in 1887 when Tom Woolfolk (pronounced WOOL-FORK) killed nine members of his family with an ax. After two trials and two appeals Tom Woolfolk was publicly executed on the gallows in 1890. Thanks to the kindness of several persons--and they will remain anonymous, out of respect for their privacy--who are familiar with the part of Bibb county west of Macon, I was conducted to the ruins of the murder house on Saturday, February 10, 1996. On my visit I was accompanied by Mr. Ed Green, Jr., …

Jane Anderson: The Nazi Georgia Peach, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The thrill-packed life of a little-known Georgian, Jane Anderson, proves that truth is stranger than fiction.

Anderson led an amazing life filled with exciting adventures, daring deeds, breathtaking escapades, and romantic interludes, a life stranger than the dreams of most people. She changed her name several times. She often traveled across the United States, and lived in Georgia, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, and New York City. She criss-crossed the Atlantic ocean in ships numerous times; in Europe she visited 20 countries and lived in London, Paris, Spain, Germany, and Austria. As a young woman she was blessed with a stunning physical …

Osborne Tried To Overturn Brown Decision, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In regard to Richard Stenger's article, "The Bulldog Bell Curve," which appeared in The Observer on Jan. 26th, I wish to point out a few facts concerning R. T. Osborne and his claim that his research and studies show that blacks are in some way intellectually inferior to whites.