Wilson, Brandeis, and the Supreme Court Nomination

In late January 1916, many readers of the New York World chuckled as they looked at Rollin Kirby's editorial cartoon entitled, "The Blow that Almost Killed Father." In the drawing, Kirby showed a Wall Street big-shot—one who looked a little like J. P. Morgan—prostrate in his desk chair, the ticker-tape machine broken and leaning against the desk, a picture of the New York Stock Exchange askew on the wall, and a newspaper dropped to the ground, its headline blaring " Brandeis for the Supreme Court ."     

Alberta Wilson Server

By highlighting central anthropological theories of food and identity—(1) food events, (2) group eating, (3) the act of eating itself, and (4) the idea of consumption—and linking them to medieval portrayals of Iberian diet, this article aims to elucidate societal coding based on a culinary system and reveal unconsidered or unnoted aspects of medieval Castilian culture. Medieval texts are analyzed, including Cantigas de Santa María, Siete Partidas, El libro de Alexandre, and El cantar del Mio Cid.     

President Wilson's Brain Trust: Woodrow Wilson,Francis X. Dercum,and American Neurology

On October 2, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left half of his body. Wilson's stroke forced the American public to confront stroke, and laypeople came to identify stroke as a nervous disorder, rather than a condition rooted solely in psychological phenomena. His medical care was overseen by Cary Grayson, his personal internist, and Francis X. Dercum, a remarkably accomplished neurologist from Philadelphia. Dercum was very involved in the treatment of the President, from the day of the stroke until years later. While the medical records have been destroyed, some basic facts of Wilson's treatment and rehabilitation can be inferred from the literature. Although Woodrow Wilson was an exceptional patient, his care, albeit administered by some of the most famous physicians of the era, was typical of the time. Therefore, this paper's approach to Wilson's 1919 stroke contextualizes the President's case into the larger scheme of early twentieth-century neurology.     

The Death of Frank Wilson: Race,Crime, and Punishment in Post-Civil War Pennsylvania

In 1877, Frank Wilson, an African American man, was executed for murdering a white tramp in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This article examines the trial, punishment, and press reporting of the case in the evolving context of race and criminal justice in post-Civil War Pennsylvania. It presents three main findings. First, it documents evidence of racial discrimination and wildly disproportionate rates of African American arrest and imprisonment in Harrisburg and surrounding counties comparable to earlier research focused on the largest northern cities. Second, it shows that views on law enforcement were diverse within both white and black communities and shaped by the exigencies of local and national party politics. Third, it makes the case that African American experiences of law enforcement in northern states are better understood as part of a national criminal justice culture than in distinctively regional terms.