Historical Marker roundup: Tulsa, Santa Fe, and Quarterflash

This newsletter started as a BlueSky account, and I post there a lot. Here are some recent topics:

Tulsa Race Massacre, a death in two parts. The U.S. Justice Department in early January 2025 finally gave official blessing to what was already obvious – that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was a coordinated attack by local authorities and white residents. Alas, acknowledging a crime only after it's too late to convict anyone is still a DOJ thing.

So the destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood in 1921 was part one. The neighborhood did rebuild. But it was killed for good in the mid-1970s, with the construction of Interstate 244 through the middle of the neighborhood. The expressway is named for Martin Luther King, Jr. My BlueSky post.

Americana Mexicana. I hope future historical markers about our current age emphasize its stupidity, such as once-and-future President Donald Trump's proposed maybe-invasions, and the need for other world leaders to response. Such as when Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented a map of former Mexican territory in the U.S. as "America Mexicana" in response to Trump's dumb proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America."

However, one, uh, benefit of this idiocy is that it reminds us that if U.S. history didn't have an East Coast bias, we'd know a lot more about the Spanish trying to clear out Natives in the "New World" long before Plymouth Rock was a thing. Take my BlueSky tour of the markers on Santa Fe, N.M., (and Kansas!) to learn more.

Where Are They Now: 1980s rockers Quarterflash. As I drove through Springerville, Arizona, on a recent Chicago-to-Tucson-to-Chicago road trip, I found one of 12 "Madonna of the Trail" statues placed from Maryland to California in the 1920s by a coalition that included the Daughters of the American Revolution and a road association led by future president Harry S Truman. The statues, as you can imagine on a 1920s statue honoring "pioneer women," have some very problematic language. But the DAR is still very proud of them.

The DAR not only still features Madonna of the Trail on its website, it also has a tribute video to the statues that features a band called The Trail (of course), whose lead singer, Rindy Ross, was the voice of Quarterflash, who were a big deal for a time in the early 1980s with such hits as "Harden My Heart" and "Find Another Fool." Here are Rindy Ross and the Trails overlaid on the DAR's tribute to its pioneer woman tribute.

Take my BlueSky tour of the Madonna of the Trail and its history.