Category: Freethought History
Zora Neale Hurston: America’s First Black Female Atheist?
When you think of famous past American atheists, who comes to mind? Robert Green Ingersoll? Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Mark Twain? Clarence Darrow? Carl Sagan? Madalyn Murray O’Hair? No matter who’s on your list, it’s a safe bet that most are white males. As Melanie Brewster notes in Atheists in America, “studies find almost unanimously that …
Return of the Ingersoll Chronology
One of the most powerful online tools for researching the career of Robert Green Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic,” is back—and more formidable than ever. The Robert Green Ingersoll Chronology recently went live at https://chronology.secularhumanism.org. The site permits interactive online searches of the life of Ingersoll. It comprises 1,345 public lectures, 113 political speeches, 344 letters, …
The Ingersoll Chronology and Me
In doing research to develop the Walking Tour of Ingersoll-related Sites in Washington, D.C. (http://ingersoll.wash.org), I used the original Ingersoll Chronology to discover the events and dates of Robert Green Ingersoll’s life while he was living or visiting the nation’s capital. I could count the number of times he delivered lectures, where, and which lectures he delivered. …
We Stand Corrected!
Reader Paula Prince questioned the accuracy of a photograph we published in our December 2018/January 2019 issue that purported to show suffrage leader Matilda Joslyn Gage among a group of suffrage demonstrators (Letters, FI, April/May 2019). Prince argued that the clothing depicted was inappropriate for the claimed date of 1876; she argued that the photo …
Junius Revealed!
Two subtle lines of evidence appear to verify that the anonymous and anti-monarchical Junius Letters of 1769–1772 were penned by none other than Thomas Paine.
Dares God—and Lives to Tell the Tale
Though many have been falsely accused of daring God to strike them dead, those who really attempt the exercise invariably survive it.