Flipping Tables

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Viola Fauver Liuzzo was a 39-year-old white civil rights volunteer from Detroit who traveled to Alabama in March 1965 to support the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. On the night of March 25, while driving 19-year-old activist Leroy Moton back toward Selma, she was chased down U.S. Route 80 by a car of Ku Klux Klan members—Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe. Wilkins fired a shotgun into Liuzzo’s car, killing her instantly; Moton survived by playing dead. The presence of Rowe, who had a history of participating in Klan violence while on the FBI payroll, sparked major controversy about what federal authorities knew and tolerated.
Alabama first tried Wilkins for murder, but his initial trial ended in a hung jury, and a second all-white jury acquitted him despite Rowe’s eyewitness testimony. After the state failed to secure a conviction, the Department of Justice charged Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas under federal civil-rights law (18 U.S.C. § 241) for conspiring to deprive Liuzzo of her civil rights. All three were convicted and received ten-year sentences, marking one of the earliest successful federal civil-rights prosecutions against white supremacist violence. In the aftermath, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated a smear campaign against Liuzzo—spreading false claims about her character to deflect criticism of the FBI’s role in managing informants. Her murder and the federal response helped galvanize support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and later fueled congressional scrutiny of FBI conduct during the Church Committee investigations.
Sources:
James P. Turner, Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials: The First Modern Civil Rights Convictions.
Mary Stanton, From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo.
Gary May, Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy.
Wayne Greenhaw, Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963.
Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–1965
Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma.
Peter B. Levy, The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban America during the 1960s.
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee Reports).
FBI COINTELPRO Files (Declassified).
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division Archives on the Liuzzo Case.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, The FBI and the Civil Rights Movement (archival materials).
NAACP Records and Papers on Selma and Voting Rights.
Civil Rights Documentation Project, Library of Congress.
Eyes on the Prize (PBS Documentary Series)
Home of the Brave (Documentary on Viola Liuzzo).
National Civil Rights Museum, Viola Liuzzo Exhibits.
Southern Poverty Law Center Archives on Ku Klux Klan Activity.
John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
Lerone Bennett Jr., “Selma: The Road to Freedom,” Ebony Magazine Archives.
Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution.
Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr..
Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam (context on FBI surveillance).
Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000.
David Carter, The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement (on federal infiltration of civil rights groups).
United States v. Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas (Federal §241 Trial Records).

Prepare to get angry.
I unfortunately fell back into the bad habit of doom scrolling. And it was so discouraging to watch what happens online. The increased amount of abuse towards women, calling for them to not be able to vote, taking away resources for single parents (because sure, lets punish the parent who stayed), and the double standard of women's sexuality has been gut wrenching for me.
Christmas Eve I read a book called "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls" by Grady Hendrix. I read it in one day. Now while its fiction, its factually based on what happened in homes for unwed mothers in the US- a grandchild of the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland. This double standard is so ingrained, so enmeshed in our culture and society and since the Dobbs decision, those homes - where so much abuse, fraud (gasp), coercion and trafficking happened, are now increasing in number.
Women will never be free and equal if we acquiesce, if we cave, if we allow it, if we carry shame that was never ours to begin with. We shatter those standards by first learning about them and what they have done to the women before us.

1803 Offences Against the Person Act (Lord Ellenborough’s Act)
1828 Offences Against the Person Act
1837 Offences Against the Person Act

1861 Offences Against the Person Act, Sections 58–59

Infant Life Preservation Act 1929

Abortion Act 1967 (UK)

Lane Committee Report, Report of the Committee on the Working of the Abortion Act (1974)

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) historical ethics reports

Brookes, Barbara. Abortion in England, 1900–1967. Croom Helm.

Fisher, Kate. Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain 1918–1960. Oxford University Press.

McLaren, Angus. A History of Contraception: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Blackwell.

Williams, Glanville. The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law.

Irish Department of Justice. The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (McAleese Report), 2013.

O’Sullivan, M. The Irish Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment. Manchester University Press.

Smith, James M. Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment. University of Notre Dame Press.

Finnegan, Frances. Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland. Oxford University Press.

Luddy, Maria. Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940. Cambridge University Press.

Raftery, Mary & O’Sullivan, Eoin. Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools.

BBC Panorama investigative reporting on the Laundries

Irish Times archives (historical reporting on Magdalene institutions)

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child briefs on Irish institutional abuses

Joint Oireachtas Committee hearings on institutional abuse

Solinger, Rickie. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade. Routledge.

Fessler, Ann. The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. Penguin.

Kunzel, Regina. Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945. Yale University Press.

National Florence Crittenton Mission Archives

Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, early 20th-century records on “unmarried mothers”

Maza, Sarah. Work on U.S. adoption coercion practices

Original court records from state maternity homes (various—primarily Minnesota, Tennessee, New York)

Liberty Godparent Home archives, Liberty University (reporting, survivor testimony, investigative journalism)

Liberty Lost podcast and transcripts (primary oral history from survivors)

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports

New York Times investigative reports (1950s–1990s) on maternity homes and adoption coercion

Senate Subcommittee hearings on adoption abuses (1970s–1980s)

Social Security Bulletin archives on “Aid to Dependent Children” (ADC) and out-of-wedlock births

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What does real, REAL resistance look like?
Tad Stoermer is a public historian, teacher, and author of the forthcoming book A Resistance History of the United States releasing June of 2026.
His work dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history. He removes the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. That continue to protect that abusive power.

From his website:
"A Resistance History of the United States is a record of repeated fights against abusive authority, carried out by people who refused the lies used to justify it. Those battles have taken different forms: the women and men in Salem who would not confess to witchcraft, the Black Loyalists who seized their own freedom during the Revolution, and the Anti-Federalists who forced a Bill of Rights to limit nationalist power. It’s a tradition carried forward by people like Ona Judge and Henry David Thoreau, by the clandestine networks of the Underground Railroad, and by the violent resolve of John Brown and the Secret Six—resistance so disruptive it helped push the nation into civil war, and so ambitious it took the focus and will of the Radical Republicans to begin building a new republic from the ruins. A Resistance History of the United States uncovers these moments not as steps toward inevitable progress, but as a set of hard-earned lessons—a usable playbook for confronting the abuse of power in our own time.

ad is one of the most widely followed public historians in the world here today to help us face what is to come.
He is a currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern Denmark’s Center for American Studies and a Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He previously taught public history at Harvard, served as a public historian at Colonial Williamsburg, and was advisor for history content at C-SPAN.

Happy almost New Years Eve!!! Here on Flipping Tables we are going to end each year with an inspirational story. So here's one of my heroes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident whose life continues to challenge how faith responds to power, violence, and injustice. Raised in an intellectually rigorous, non-religious household, Bonhoeffer came to believe that Christianity was not merely a system of beliefs, but a call to costly, lived obedience—especially when moral clarity comes at personal risk.
As Adolf Hitler rose to power, Bonhoeffer warned early that the church faced a defining test. When Christianity was fused with nationalism and racial ideology, he argued, the church had ceased to be the church. He became a key figure in the Confessing Church, opposing the Nazification of German Christianity and rejecting loyalty oaths to the Führer. His theological writings during this period—including reflections on “cheap grace” versus “costly grace”—confronted complacent faith that avoids sacrifice.
Eventually drawn into resistance circles connected to the German military intelligence service, Bonhoeffer wrestled deeply with ethical responsibility in a world where evil left no clean choices. Arrested in 1943, he continued writing from prison, leaving behind letters and reflections that would later shape modern Christian ethics and political theology. Executed by the Nazis in April 1945, just weeks before the war’s end, Bonhoeffer’s life stands as a haunting reminder: faith that refuses to act in the face of injustice is no faith at all.
Sources:
Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Fortress Press.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Act and Being. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 2. Fortress Press.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Fortress Press.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Sanctorum Communio. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 1. Fortress Press.
Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives).
Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) – Bonhoeffer family records.
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education), Germany.
Cambridge University Press. The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. John W. de Gruchy, ed.
Chickering, Roger. Imperial Germany and the Great War. Cambridge University Press.
Christian History Institute. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Timeline & Biography.”
Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Harper.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (DBWE), English Edition, Vols. 1–3. Fortress Press.
Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin.
Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War. Penguin.
Fischer, Fritz. Germany’s Aims in the First World War. W. W. Norton.
Fulbrook, Mary. A History of Germany 1918–2014. Wiley-Blackwell.
German Reichstag Records, 1918–1923.
Green, Clifford J. Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality. Eerdmans.
Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary. Arnold.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. Vintage.
Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin.
Keegan, John. The First World War. Vintage.
Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Harcourt.
MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. Random House.
Marks, Sally. The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe 1918–1933. Palgrave.
Marsh, Charles. Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Knopf.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Thomas Nelson.
National Archives (UK). World War I diplomatic records.
Overy, Richard. The Dictators. W. W. Norton.
PBS. Bonhoeffer Timeline.
Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic. Hill and Wang.
Stevenson, David. Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy. Basic Books.
Strachan, Hew. The First World War. Oxford University Press.
Treaty of Versailles (1919), full text.
Union Theological Seminary Archives – Bonhoeffer Papers.

2025 has been a year of difficult conversations. It's been a year of angst, anger, and frustrating conversations. How do we continue to talk about the hard things, especially when we don't know how to get through to the other person?

You've seen Anna Connelly online with her cheeky conversations with her "conservative cousin" talking about history, immigration, politics, government. She uses these disarming conversations to help prep people to hear an opposing perspective and to arm people to have these conversations themselves. (If you're home now and trying to figure out how to talk to family, maybe open your phone and watch a few).

Anna shows us how to continue to show up with humanity, humor and humility. And she's brilliant at it.

These conversations are needed now more than ever and all of us have the power to have them.