American History Tellers

As a catastrophic hurricane approached Galveston, Texas on the morning of September 8, 1900, residents continued to go about their daily lives, with little warning of what was to come. Children played in the surf at the beach, and workers clocked in for their shifts downtown. But when the full strength of the storm hit, water from the Gulf of Mexico flooded the streets of the island city, and 100 mile-per-hour winds sent bricks, tree branches, and slate roof tiles flying through the air. Between 6 and 8 o’clock that night, a monster storm surge washed over the island, forcing thousands of men, women, and children into a battle for their lives.

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At the turn of the 20th century, a booming cotton trade had made the Gulf Coast city of Galveston, Texas an economic powerhouse. Located just a few feet above sea level on a narrow barrier island, it was prone to flooding. But in a time before sophisticated weather forecasting, residents failed to grasp the danger lurking in their midst.
In early September 1900, as a tropical storm gathered strength in the Caribbean Sea, Cuban forecasters warned that a powerful hurricane was charging toward Texas. But in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, U.S. Weather Bureau officials had banned all weather-related telegrams from Cuba. Soon, the deadliest natural disaster in American history would strike Galveston without warning.

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In 1949, aspiring writer Nelle Harper Lee moved from her home in small-town Alabama to New York City. She was following in the footsteps of her childhood friend, author Truman Capote. Within a few years she had penned a novel of her own, and called it To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird catapulted Harper Lee to the heights of literary fame. But just as she found success, she withdrew, overwhelmed by being in the public eye, and the pressure to produce another book as good as her first. Decades would pass before anyone mentioned the possibility of her publishing again - and this time, people wondered how much of a voice she really had in the publication of her second book.

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Born into poverty in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin rose to become a celebrated novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet, and a leading voice in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In his debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and in his essay collections, Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, Baldwin wrote eloquently and provocatively about race, religion, sexuality, politics and class.
To distance himself from the racial hatred and discrimination at home, Baldwin spent much of his adult life in France, helping to create a vibrant community for other Black artists, such as Nina Simone, Miles Davis and Josephine Baker. But he returned to America often to provide a fearless and incisive testimony to the events that defined his tumultuous era.

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Growing up in the Salinas Valley of Northern California, John Steinbeck dreamed of becoming a professional writer. In his youth he took on odd jobs and worked amongst ranch hands and migrant workers, who would inspire some of his greatest work, including The Grapes of Wrath. Published in 1939, the book captured the struggles of everyday Americans during the Great Depression, and Steinbeck became famous for his empathetic portrayal of the working class.
Steinbeck would go on to become one of the most decorated authors of the 20th Century, winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he was plagued by marital struggles and chronic illness that threatened to cut short his writing career.

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