John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Booker Tea Washington & Margaret Bourke-White

This photo is both bitter and sweet. I appreciate the wry humor of the owner who is having a little fun -- signifyin' -- at the expense of someone who was once the most famous colored man in the world. (I'd bet my next paycheck that the owner was black.)... Read more →

Things Historians Like: Old Stuff -- Like Paper & Ink

Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. --Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson * * * Analogue is better. Paper, ink, typewriters, LPs. Film. I've been rediscovering this simple truth as I look through the 18 September 1950 issue of Life magazine. Digital may be more convenient, but it's almost never... Read more →

Margaret Bourke-White, FDR, & the Casual Rituals of Race

In 1938, Margaret Bourke-White went to Warm Springs, Georgia, to shoot the president. She was on an assignment from Life magazine to cover the Thanksgiving banquet that Franklin Delano Roosevelt [FDR] hosted each year for patients at the Warm Springs Foundation, a treatment center that he had founded for people... Read more →