Walking needs no publicist. The simplest, most accessible form of exercise has been around since humans first foraged and traveled on the ground.

But today, walking seems to have entered its influencer era.

It’s the subject of countless viral videos, of people doing it silently, collectively, for their mental health, for their physical health, for “hot girl” reasons (lawsuit pending), and yes, even for their gastro needs.

There’s something more to these micro trends than fitness personalities looking to make a quick buck off of brand-name water bottles or $30 socks. A new wave of fitness personalities—many of them women of color, of a variety of body types—have been able to reach people who, due to numerous factors from safety to layers of systemic discrimination, have historically shied away from the activity. This is exemplified by the explosion of walking groups in the U.S. in recent years, with headline after headline chronicling the rise of these meet-ups across the country, which has encouraged hundreds of strangers to come together each week and exercise.

This isn’t the first time a diverse group of influencers has widened the scope for walking. In the 1870s and 1880s, an unlikely assemblage of Americans became some of the nation’s earliest celebrities with the rise of the pedestrianism movement.

These professional walkers traversed hundreds of miles, around tracks and across state lines, to compete in the nation’s first spectator sport. Though the craze was short-lived, it left behind a legacy that challenges the stereotypical face of fitness to this day.

American pedestrianism began with a fateful bet: In 1860, the door-to-door bookseller Edward Payson Weston wagered a friend that Abraham Lincoln would lose the upcoming presidential election. Were Lincoln to win, Weston declared, he would walk the 478 miles from his home in Boston to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration—and he would do so in under 10 days.

After Lincoln won, Weston set out to make good on his promise, publicizing his itinerary in local papers along the Eastern Seaboard. People waited for hours in the cold to watch him pass through their towns. A run-in with a debt collector left Weston four hours and 12 minutes short of his goal; Lincoln, who was following his progress along with the rest of the country, was still so impressed by the feat that he offered to pay the latecomer’s fare home. (The press-savvy Weston demurred, seemingly knowing that the refusal would only earn him more coverage.)

Following the Civil War, Weston took his walking show on the road. Thousands of spectators lined up to buy tickets and place bets on whether he could beat the clock. In a divided country, his walks were a unifying event. “He’s so apolitical, and I think that helped his popularity,” Matthew Algeo, the author of Pedestrianism, told me in an interview. “He could go anywhere and walk, and people wouldn’t object to it.”

Walking was not a popular form of exercise in the U.S. when Weston began staging his exhibitions, but he and the competitors who rose up to challenge him spread “pedestrian fever” among the public. “A Plea for Pedestrianism,” published in the New York Times in 1878, was a typical literary endorsement of leisure walking. The op-ed supplied readers with a sample walk they could do around Staten Island, recommended attire (“easy, yet, stout, laced boots with broad soles and low heels”), what to eat (“a sandwich and some hard-boiled eggs in your pocket”), and how to prepare (“Those not accustomed to much walking ought to practice it moderately during the week before marching a whole day in the country”).

Celebrity, long reserved for royals and political figures, was expanding—allowing pedestrians, or “peds,” to gain real influence as some of the country’s first mass-market stars. They used their platform to promote not just the sport, but also everything from shoe brands to trading cards. They even were the first to sell advertising space on their competition outfits.

One of the reasons pedestrianism resonated with so many, Algeo suggested, is that these athletes took an activity that was relatable—an “expression of the everyday”—and pushed it to the extreme. The result, he said, struck people as “personal,” “genuine,” and “real.”

Professional walkers reflected an array of Americans, too. Because these walking matches were largely unregulated, there were no clear rules excluding certain groups from competition. One of Weston’s greatest rivals was Daniel O’Leary, an Irish immigrant who became “Champion Pedestrian of the World” in 1875 after defeating Weston in a six-day race. O’Leary took multiple athletes under his wing, including Frank Hart (born Fred Hichborn), a Haitian immigrant. Hart became one of the sport’s great stars and winner of the second-ever O’Leary Belt in 1880, where he earned more than $21,000 total, the equivalent of two-thirds of a million in today’s dollars.

Women “pedestriennes” also made a significant impact on the sport. At a time when conventional science held that strenuous athletic activity did lasting harm to female bodies, wiping them of their “vital energies” and their ability to reproduce, athletes like the Englishwoman Ada Anderson rose up as powerful counterexamples, showing what sportswomen were capable of.

“It is good for women to see how much a woman can endure,” Anderson told the New York Sun in 1878.

But there was a dark side to women’s pedestrianism. The sport was largely promoted and organized by men (including one of P.T. Barnum’s own PR people). A majority of women came to professional walking out of desperation, to escape poverty or abusive relationships. Then they pushed their bodies to the limit. They did what men did—24-hour walks, 100-mile walks, six-day walks—but also attempted even more extreme stunts, like walking 3,000 quarter miles over the course of 3,000 quarter hours.

“This was a really tough life,” Harry Hall, author of The Pedestriennes, told me. Women walked in hard-soled shoes, he said, because saboteurs threw rocks, tacks, and glass on their track, hoping to fix race outcomes.

The same laissez-faire setup that had allowed the sport to evolve so organically also led to it becoming synonymous with exploitation and scandal. Pedestrianism saw race fixing, early steroid use, and an extortion attempt that ended with a manager’s suicide. With the rise of bicycle racing in the 1880s, the public moved on, leaving pedestrianism to fade into a historical footnote.

“There was no way pedestrianism was going to last forever,” said Algeo. “But it’s a shame it kind of killed itself.”

Today’s walking influencers have different aims and goals, not to mention more agency, than the stars of the sport a century and a half ago. But both walking waves can be seen as promoting “physical activity in spaces where they’re not traditionally or not as easily done in the past,” as Damon Swift, an exercise scholar at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, told me.

For those looking to hop on the trend today, but aren’t ready to commit to a 10,000 daily step count—let alone a trek from Boston to D.C.—you might find some wisdom in that 1878 Times trend story, which advised readers to “walk as long as [you] like.”

Do just that, it promised, and you’ll return home “healthier and happier.”

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Those two words, particularly in the borough that is now a punch line for hipster jokes, bring to mind a different America, one where the U.S. saw itself as more of a political innocent just discovering its global superpowers, where hardworking immigrant families advanced rapidly into the middle class, and where young people survived on a diet of knishes, homemade pasta, kielbasa, and other foods from the old country (but rarely drank anything stronger than a milkshake). The nostalgia evoked by the phrase “Brooklyn Dodgers” was broad enough to include African-Americans making steady advances into the promise of full citizenship, symbolized by the integration of baseball by Jackie Robinson and the excellence of his teammates, from Roy Campanella to Don Newcombe.

Those fantasies—of the Dodgers, of baseball, of America—came crashing down in 1957. It was announced that winter that the Dodgers and their uptown rivals the Giants, who made their home in Harlem, would leave New York the following year for Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This move West, still decried in Brooklyn and among older New Yorkers, changed how Americans thought about baseball and the country.

The move made Major League Baseball, the professional version of what was then the country’s favorite sport, a truly national institution and a richer one, with far bigger audiences for games in person and on television. (Before 1958, the league’s westernmost team was in Kansas City). The move West was so successful that within two decades teams would arrive in Oakland, San Diego, and Seattle. And in time, the two transplanted California teams would also make the game more global, as they led baseball in signing major stars from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Japan.

But the westward relocation was also part of a jarring postwar shift in American geography and identity. The rise of jet travel and the development of the interstate highway system made America seem smaller. And new technologies, notably television, flattened regional culture, making the country’s different places and peoples feel less distinctive. Every night Americans in Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, could see the same news and entertainment programs. They could also watch the same baseball games.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, what passed for national culture was very much a product of the East, particularly New York City. By 1980 or so, that notion no longer held.

The move by the Dodgers and Giants helped kill it. The baseball shift West sent the message that you didn’t have to make it in New York to make it anywhere. Anybody could leave and thrive. Celebrity became more widely distributed, as did the beloved players who had been regarded as city institutions. Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, Don Newcombe, and Johnny Podres, all players on the Boys of Summer-era Dodgers, went West with the team. When the Giants moved, they took Willie Mays, who New Yorkers viewed as one of their own.

During their first nine years in California, the two teams combined for five National League pennants. By the mid-1960s baseball fans understood that the World Series could now occur in California as regularly as it had in New York during the previous generation.

On October 23, 1957, officials and employees of the Brooklyn Dodgers posed in front of the club’s plane in New York City before leaving for Los Angeles. Courtesy of The Associated Press.

Exciting pennant races moved West, too. In 1965, the Dodgers edged out the Giants by only two games. That year also delivered major changes in immigration and civil rights, shifts mirrored by the Giants roster, which showed the country what America would become. The best pitcher on that staff was a Dominican, Juan Marichal, who went 22-13 with a 2.13 ERA (earned run average). Two of Marichal’s countrymen, brothers Jesus and Matty Alou, saw a lot of playing time in the outfield. (Elder brother Felipe Alou had been a Giant but was traded to the Braves a few years previous). The team’s top left-handed reliever was Masanori Murakami, the first big league player in the U.S. from Japan. And two African-Americans from Alabama, Mays and Willie McCovey, were the best hitters on the team, combining for 91 home runs and 204 RBIs (runs batted in).

In the mid-1960s, there were few such diverse workplaces in the U.S., and even fewer where nonwhites held positions of leadership and responsibility. The move to California had paved the way for this diversification of the lineup. In the late 1950s, when the Giants first began to bring players from the Caribbean into the big leagues, San Francisco had a larger and older Spanish-speaking community than New York. Similarly, the sizable Japanese-American community in California helped make possible Murakami’s experience, fewer than 20 years after the end of World War II.

Not everything about the shift was worth celebrating. In particular, the move foreshadowed changes in corporate behavior. Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers at the time, moved his team to Los Angeles because he wanted to make more money. It didn’t matter that in Brooklyn the Dodgers were one of the National League’s most successful franchises on and off the field—revenues would be higher in California.

While the Dodgers’ move was shocking, today we expect businesses or factories to abandon one community for another, or even the U.S. for another country, if it will lead to higher profits. The relocation of the Dodgers and Giants spelled out this fact of modern American life in a way that even a child could understand.

Something else was lost when the game spread out across the country. The concentration of leading baseball teams in the media center of New York had provided a neighborly flavor that made the World Series a core American event. During the 1950s, when baseball legends like Mays, Jackie Robinson, and Mickey Mantle were routinely playing in all-New York World Series, baseball was a bigger part of the culture than it is today. Almost all Americans paid attention, and the names of baseball stars were broadly recognized.

Despite the game’s notoriety, however, baseball was in bad economic shape during the 1950s. Players were not well-compensated, and many teams were unable to consistently turn a profit. Today, the reverse is true. Major League Baseball is a huge multibillion-dollar industry, but the game is a much smaller part of the culture. Most Americans struggle to remember who played in last year’s World Series. Few current ballplayers would be recognized in a grocery store outside the region where they play.

It is difficult not to see these shifts as a reflection of the changes in American life over the 60 years since the move. Our music, our sports, and our politics are bigger, louder, more broadly distributed, and more infused with money than ever. But our culture is less cohesive, with fewer of the things that brought us together when there were still three teams in New York.

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You can find Bigfoot everywhere. Its image adorns coffee cups, T-shirts, bumper stickers, bottle openers, and other sundries. Bigfoot is the Canadian-American version of the abominable snowman that has been in the public imagination for over 60 years. It is a curious celebrity in that the kind of phenomenon that it represents—whether exclusively cultural or also biological—has yet to be worked out. What is not in dispute is that people insist that they have seen Bigfoot, even if what “seeing” entails is not entirely clear. If you count eyewitness reports irrespective of their apparent authenticity, claimed encounters with this inhumanly tall and hairy beast number in the thousands.

The prosaic explanation is that there is an ape in the woods that’s pretty shy, and if you see one it is like seeing a bobcat—you’re lucky. But the persistence of this animal in the American imagination, considering that we have collected exactly zero verified specimens, suggests that this phenomenon is much more than a zoological curiosity. What really sets Bigfoot apart is its mythological gravity.

A good myth has to have at least three ingredients: It has to say something about the human condition, it must signify something that people care about, and it has to communicate its deeper meaning in a concise and effective way. Take any of these elements away and the myth loses traction. The one thing that isn’t essential to a myth is a verifiable physical presence. The absence of specimens, the documentation of hoaxes, and even admissions of fakery haven’t eroded the Bigfoot myth. But that’s not to say that Bigfoot leaves no trace.

Tales of feral man-monster chimeras were known from North America well before 1958, but it was a photograph of a cast of a gigantic, not-quite-human footprint on the front page of the Humboldt Times on October 6 of that year that thrust Bigfoot into the American collective consciousness. This was more than a campfire story; it was a record of something’s passing set in stone, enigmatic but undeniably real—you could touch it, after all.

It was this concoction of the tangible and monstrous that hooked me on the myth as a child. My brother, eight years my senior, regularly fed me thirdhand stories of encounters, some of which were sensational accounts of abduction or violence toward human interlopers. He was an experienced backpacker, and if he decided such tales should not be dismissed out of hand, then I felt obligated to take them seriously. Beginning in the late 1960s, motion pictures of Bigfoot appeared. I regarded many of these films as hokey, but the better ones were wonderfully ambiguous, perfect fuel for an evolving myth.

The myth of Bigfoot can be understood in the context of contemporary cultural anxieties, and it has adapted as those anxieties changed. In 1961 playwright and science writer Robert Ardrey’s popular account of human emergence, African Genesis, painted our ancestors as inherently homicidal, with an unquenchable thirst for territory. With the Cold War threatening our species with annihilation, we could understand how we got to that point but Ardrey’s thesis (which drew from the scientific orthodoxy of the time) explained why. Our predicament was a product, perhaps an inevitable one, from our ugly evolutionary past.

Originally, Bigfoot was cast in this monster motif: tossing culverts, smelling terrible, terrorizing intruders. But as encounters increased, Bigfoot’s bellicosity faded. Most eyewitnesses had peaceful or at least merely startling experiences. Bigfoot pivoted gracefully from bogeyman—Ardrey’s nightmarish vision of our true nature—to something that we could all aspire to be. The monster morphed into an intelligent being that could really, truly, perpetually live off the land—a symbol for environmental stewardship.

Bigfoot spoke to growing anxieties about the environment and our relentless destruction of it. As humans expanded in number, the wilderness shrank, becoming less mysterious and perhaps less interesting, and was definitely further fouled by garbage and pollution. Bigfoot endured in those shrinking woods, living quietly and invisibly without an apparent need for material things, and sightings continued unabated. Bigfoot fought no wars, built no factories, and persisted without destroying the natural order of things. Here was our hirsute kin, without the trappings of technology, existing without the comforts of civilization but living simply and wisely. Maybe Ardrey was wrong. We could have peace if we could only learn from our cousin, a teacher without words who led by example. Having Bigfoot in the woods brought back the allure of the unknown; it served as a foil for the intrepid explorer at a time when exploration itself was seemingly endangered.

Bigfoot’s endurance thus has to do with its malleability. We do not know quite what it is. The sphinx is odd—being an amalgam of lion and human with a fondness for riddles—but it is not ambiguous. Bigfoot, being just beyond clear perception, defies a neat categorization. It seems menacing, but is this borne of our fear or is it truly dangerous? Is it hidden because it is wise to avoid us or merely—just like ourselves—afraid of the unknown?

The unending argument among Bigfoot hunters is what ought to be a simple matter of taxonomy: Is this an ape or a human? If it is something in between the two, how does it straddle these two completely different realms of existence? The comedian Mitch Hedberg was going for laughs but unveiled the staying power of the myth in explaining “Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside.”

The consistent traits of Bigfoot are being big, hairy, and bipedal. Beyond that, all other characteristics are negotiable. Bigfoot’s ambiguity enables it to stay relevant. It serves us well as a monster when we need that escape, and it just as easily can stand in for as an imperturbable guardian of the wilderness. Either way Bigfoot embodies the American ideal of the rugged individualist; it is telling that Bigfoot is almost always described as being and acting alone.

Bigfoot also challenges scientific orthodoxy in ways that give myths legs. The disinterest of the scientific community in what some believe is our closest living relative is, to the community of Bigfoot enthusiasts, a moral transgression. Searching for it is deemed a waste of time by academics. Perhaps the idea that Bigfoot is not a real animal is understandable, but how easy it would be to disprove this! The prevailing attitude—that there is no value in investing time and money in a search—shows that the scientific community doesn’t even understand the importance of questions about Bigfoot. Why should scientists get to decide what is interesting and meaningful?

Americans have always had a fraught relationship with scientific elites, because those elites act as gatekeepers of knowledge, and with that, they control some levers of power. Today, the elites’ disdain for Bigfoot seems to implicate them in bigger conspiracies: If the government won’t cop to knowing about Bigfoot, what more consequential secrets are they hiding? It is no accident that as the myth has evolved, an association has emerged between Bigfoot and UFOs.

Wild man myths are common around the world and their origins are difficult to trace owing to their great antiquity. Not surprisingly, they have different manifestations cross-culturally. In Nepal it is promiscuous, gets drunk, and wrecks crops. In Russia it seems to seek out human contact and is a more of a cultural being. The beast has variable attributes in different Native American traditions.

By comparison, the modern American Bigfoot is very mundane. In many encounters it is more or less indifferent to human presence, but the human eyewitness is changed forever. I am not certain why that is, but I’d guess it has to do with an encounter changing one’s sense of place in the cosmic order. Bigfoot presents an impossible uncertainty. In defying categorization, it makes no sense at all. It is then up to the percipient to construct a category that necessarily reorders reality. A heretofore, undreamt-of natural history emerges out of that reordering that assures us that we do not know all there is to know. The footprints, the photos, and the persuasion of other eyewitnesses testify that Bigfoot is there, and the rest of us can be drawn in, reassured that our sense of wonder is not borne of foolishness.

I’ve never seen Bigfoot and do not expect to. Human shenanigans seem to provide a sensible explanation as to what is going on. Even so, it is clear that Bigfoot is not impossible. I have wondered if an encounter would precipitate an existential crisis for me. Perhaps it would be similar to how I felt after viewing a total solar eclipse. The astronomical event by itself was profound, but an inextricable part of the experience was walking to the top of a Georgia mountain with hundreds of strangers, every one of us hoping for and finding a common wish fulfilled. A friend texted me a few hours afterwards to ask what it was like. I struggled to articulate the depth of the experience. I could only write back to say, “I’ll never be the same.”

How long will the Bigfoot myth endure? That might depend on it remaining undiscovered. If Bigfoot is ever found, primatologists will flock to the Pacific Northwest and we will begin to learn all about Sasquatch behavior, ecology, reproduction, and the like. There will be less room to imagine other possibilities.

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The practice of naming places for Lafayette began even before the Revolutionary War officially ended. On May 15, 1783—four months before the Treaty of Paris was signed—the General Assembly of North Carolina gave the name Fayetteville to a new town in Cumberland County, making it the first city in the United States to honor the Marquis. As the United States expanded west and residents of Fayetteville followed the frontier, they brought the town’s name with them. Fayetteville, Tennessee, adopted the name in 1810, and Fayetteville, Arkansas took it in 1829. In 1846 the French name moved to the other side of the continent when Lafayette, Oregon was founded by a settler who had relocated from Lafayette, Indiana.

Lafayette, Indiana had adopted the name in 1825—a year when the United States was in the grip of Lafayette-mania. Between July 1824 and September 1825, the beloved Frenchman completed a triumphal tour of all 24 states in the Union at the invitation of President James Monroe. Politicians burnished their patriotic credentials by appearing alongside the Nation’s Guest, and municipalities vied to outdo their neighbors with parades, dances, and dinners in his honor. Men, women, and children turned out in unprecedented numbers to catch a glimpse of Lafayette—a link to the nation’s founding—and entrepreneurs made a tidy profit selling commemorative memorabilia (evening gloves, baby shoes, loaves of bread) emblazoned with Lafayette’s name or face. As Lafayette toured the country, more and more localities began naming stretches of land in his honor. President’s Park, facing the White House, was re-christened Lafayette Square in 1824. Place Gravier in New Orleans, Louisiana became Lafayette Square in 1825.

Lafayette Hose Company Cape, mid-19th century. Image courtesy of Division of Home and Community Life, National Museum of American History.

In the years that followed, memories of the triumphal tour inspired dozens of towns, parks, and schools to adopt names including Lafayette, La Grange (Lafayette’s chateau, about 30 miles east of Paris), and variations on the theme. In Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, local lore has it that an attorney named James Madison Porter was among the throng welcoming Lafayette to Philadelphia in 1824. During a brief conversation with the general, Porter had been moved to learn that the aging hero remembered Porter’s father and uncle as “good soldiers” during the Revolutionary War. Two years later, when Porter spearheaded the establishment of a college in Easton, Pennsylvania, the institution took the name Lafayette College.

When the United States came to the aid of France by entering World War I, another round of Lafayette commemorations began. In 1916 a group of American pilots fighting in the French Air Service dubbed themselves the Lafayette Escadrille. Most famously, perhaps, on July 4, 1917, Colonel Charles E. Stanton made it clear that the United States was repaying its revolutionary-era debt when he stood at Lafayette’s graveside in Paris’s Picpus Cemetery and declared “Lafayette, we are here!”

As the 20th century wore on, Lafayette’s name spread into nearly every corner of American culture. Lafayette cars were manufactured in Indiana in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1970, a basset hound named Lafayette appeared in the animated Disney film The Aristocats. And, on a 2015 visit to George Washington’s Mount Vernon, I bought French fries at the Lafayette Grill.

Thousands of French soldiers and sailors fought and died in the American Revolution, so why is Lafayette the first French name on every American tongue? His high rank and great wealth certainly had something to do with it: Lafayette was living, breathing evidence that the old European order had faith in a young country on the other side of the Atlantic. More important, though, might have been his earnest enthusiasm for the American cause and his unflagging determination to contribute to its success.

Lafayette Motors Co. radiator emblem, ca 1921. Image courtesy of Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History.

It all started on June 13, 1777, when the 19-year-old Lafayette reached North Island, South Carolina with some 20 officers and servants on a ship he had optimistically christened the Victoire—Victory. Lafayette had never seen a day of battlefield action and knew no English before he set sail, but he came filled with a burning desire to help 13 American colonies wrest their freedom from Great Britain, France’s age-old enemy.

Explaining his actions in a shipboard letter to the wife he had left in Paris, Lafayette described himself as a “defender of this freedom which I venerate” and insisted that “the happiness of America is closely tied to that of humanity.” More practical motivations had also influenced his thinking. Hailing from a line of men who fought and died for their country, Lafayette had dreamed of martial glory since childhood. But the French army quashed his hopes in 1776 when a wave of reforms removed from active duty hundreds of young officers who, like Lafayette, had risen through the ranks thanks to money and connections. Fighting under George Washington in the Continental Army represented a second chance.

Lafayette had been granted the rank of Major General by Silas Deane, one of Congress’s envoys to France, and expected to be awarded a command upon his arrival. But Congress and Washington hesitated; surely the rank was meant to be honorary. They had grown wary of the French officers who had been sailing across the Atlantic to join the American army. Although many were fine soldiers, some were mercenaries or troublemakers who had been driven from the French army. Others expressed open disdain for the American military.

Lady’s glove with a portrait of Lafayette, 1825. Image courtesy of Division of Political History, National Museum of American History.

On July 27, 1777, the same day that Lafayette and his shipmates reached Philadelphia, Washington wrote a letter from Morristown, New Jersey complaining of the influx of Frenchmen: “Almost every one of them,” he wrote, harbored “immoderate expectations” and became “importunate for offices they have no right to look for.” Massachusetts Congressman James Lovell was even more pointed in his criticism, explaining to Lafayette’s group that Deane had recruited no useful men in France, but only “some so-called engineers … and some useless artillerymen.”

America would soon learn that Lafayette was an exception. Of the officers who arrived on the Victoire, he was the only one invited to stay, with Congress evidently persuaded of his value by a letter from Silas Deane that praised not only Lafayette’s uncommon “zeal,” but also his “noble lineage, his connections, the high dignities exercised by his family at this Court, his ample possessions in the Kingdom, his personal worth, his celebrity.” As it happened, Lafayette was an exceptionally wealthy orphan who had allied himself with one of the most influential families at the French court when he married Adrienne de Noailles in 1774. What he lacked in experience he made up in funds and influence. It helped that Lafayette was immensely likeable: His straightforward demeanor and self-deprecating sense of humor sometimes rendered him out-of-place in the perfumed halls of Versailles, but they endeared him to Americans. If he was willing to forego a salary, he would be welcomed in the army.

Lafayette joined Washington’s closest circle of officers and was one of more than 10,000 American troops who awoke on the banks of Pennsylvania’s Brandywine River on the morning of September 11, 1777, awaiting a British attack. The Battle of Brandywine—Lafayette’s first—would end in a loss for the Americans, but it inaugurated the young Frenchman’s lasting American celebrity. In an account of the battle written that night, Washington mentioned the names of just two officers, reporting that “the Marquis de Lafayette was wounded in the leg, and General Woodford in the hand.” In the weeks that followed, as Lafayette was nursed back to health by the Moravian Brethren of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Washington’s letter made its way into patriot newspapers throughout the colonies. Lafayette was introduced to the American people as the French aristocrat who had shed blood on behalf of their freedom.

Thanks to careful guidance from Washington, who gently shepherded Lafayette through positions of increasing responsibility, the young man’s skills as a leader increased. In March of 1778 Lafayette put his enthusiasm for the American cause and his personable disposition to use in recruiting a group of Oneida men to fight under his command. And on June 28 his quick thinking was instrumental in salvaging a narrow victory at the Battle of Monmouth after General Charles Lee gave a disastrous order to retreat. Even more significant were the contributions Lafayette made away from the field of action. Taking every opportunity to write letters to France praising the Americans, and assuring Americans at every turn that France was on their side, Lafayette became the unofficial spokesperson for the French-American alliance.

Equestrian statue of Lafayette. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

When France pledged open support for the Americans by signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Lafayette rightly took some of the credit. Hoping to be named commander of the French troops who would soon be sailing to the New World, Lafayette returned home to make his case. Although that role went to the far more senior Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), Lafayette carried the news to Washington that guns, ships, and men would soon be on the way. Taking up an American command once more, Lafayette played leading roles in the Virginia campaign of 1781 and in the Siege of Yorktown that marked the last major hostilities of the American Revolution.

Lafayette returned to a political career in France, but throughout the 1780s he devoted himself to furthering America’s political and commercial interests. Sometimes working with America’s emissaries in France and sometimes acting on his own accord, Lafayette lobbied for a diplomatic post with the American government, advocated for favorable trading relations between France and the United States, and generally did what he could to help the young nation conquer the herculean task of establishing a new system of government while digging out from crushing debt. It was also important to him that the people of the United States learn of his efforts; as he put it in a 1783 letter to the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs Robert R. Livingston, “I have a great value for my American popularity.”

Around the world, Lafayette’s name became synonymous with liberty. In France, where the Revolution and Napoleon’s reign would tear society asunder, his reputation suffered ups and downs over the course of his long life. Things were different in the United States, though, in the 1820s and today. Thanks to the scores of places that bear his name, his American popularity lives on. As Lin-Manuel Miranda put it in his 2015 hit musical Hamilton, Lafayette remains “America’s favorite fighting Frenchman.”

The post Why Has America Named So Many Places After a French Nobleman? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I’d been away from Santa Monica for quite some time and had yet to fully unpack and organize my apartment. The floor of my closet was a wreck. Piles of miscellaneous footwear and chaos lay everywhere as I dug through debris in the hope of finding a matching pair of slippers.

There, stuck in the corner under the shoe rack and covered in dust, lay a forgotten pair of brightly colored, orange, woolen slipper-socks my Sicilian grandmother, Teresa, knitted well over a quarter-century ago. I salvaged the little booties, quickly put them on, and was struck by the gems on my feet. The knitting was close to perfect, the craftsmanship remarkable, and the bold orange and light-green yarn woven throughout showed such a playful humor that it made me smile.

Everyone in the family—her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren—was given my grandmother Teresa’s crocheted wares. Sometimes they were given as birthday or Christmas gifts, but most of the time when she finished a project she would offer the crafted article to whomever wanted it. In my youth, I considered her creations passé and unfashionable. But as the booties instantly warmed my feet, I examined these meticulously made items more closely, marveling at their workmanship and my grandmother’s gumption.

Bedspread afghan, made by the author’s grandmother. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Garrett.

My eye caught another woolen object sticking out from the mound of wreckage at the bottom of the closet. Shoving shoes, boots, and whatever else in that pile aside, I pulled out a knitted wire hanger. Years before the velvet, non-slip hangers became popular, my resourceful grandma took metal hangers and crocheted over them. This woolen covering not only prevents clothes from falling off, but also makes the unsightly wire attractive with bright, multi-colored yarn intricately stitched around it.

Making the best out of unlovely things was a particular skill of Teresa Munafo, born in the small town of Fondachelli-Fantina, Sicily, in 1901. Her father bought cheese from local farmers, picked filbert nuts and sold them in the coastal city of Messina, some 80 miles away, while her mother raised their four small children. In 1908, the massive Messina earthquake struck southern Italy, killing her father and leaving the family destitute. Teresa’s education never went beyond the third grade, as she and her siblings had to quit school and work picking crops for pennies. At night and whenever there was free time, she and her sister would weave and crochet garments and coverlets for the family.

The art of crocheting developed throughout the world at different periods of time. In Italy, it dates back to the 16th century, and according to Danish researcher, Lis Paludan, “crocheting was known as ‘nun’s work’ or ‘nun’s lace,’ where it was worked by nuns for church textiles.”

Teresa’s older brother, at 14, left to find work in America and sent what little money he earned back to the family. Her sister married at 14 or 15 (the exact age is unclear), had two children, then died of a heart attack at 19.

Teresa found herself pregnant out of wedlock by her first cousin, Carmelo Salamone, when she was 19; a scandal in her strict Roman Catholic family and community. But Carmelo was unaware he was to become a father, and shipped off with his brothers and male cousins in 1920 for America. Learning of Teresa’s condition, he was forced to return to Italy to marry her. Her older brother scornfully asked before her wedding, “Aren’t you ashamed to wear a veil?” referring to its symbolism of purity, which he felt she no longer deserved. Carmelo then went back to America, and two years later sent for Teresa and their new son to join him. They settled in a large Italian community in Schenectady, New York, which is where Teresa further honed her skills with knitting needles, learned English, and became a businesswoman.

Doily, circa 1920, made by the author’s grandmother. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Garrett.

Hanging in the back of my closet was a deep burgundy, button down, knitted sweater my grandmother made when I was a teenager—not much younger than she’d been when she became pregnant with her first child. At that age, I didn’t think this handcrafted garment was trendy enough to wear, though I couldn’t part with it either. In examining the cardigan more closely on that damp night, I realized its three-quarter sleeves and scoop neck were not out of date at all, but rather fashionable, so I put it on. The softness and warmth of the wool caressed me as though it were the loving embrace of my long-departed grandmother.

Although Teresa had only minimal education, she possessed the work ethic and ingenuity of an executive. When the Great Depression rocked the world, the migrant community of Mont Pleasant, a sub-section of Schenectady, was hard hit. Basic household items, such as blankets and curtains, could not be purchased in stores, so the women of the neighborhood sewed, knitted, and crocheted in groups, making these necessities for one another.

A loom was set up in Teresa and Carmelo’s driveway and the women worked together to create comforters and window dressings. A horse and wagon came around, selling thread, yarn, and other needed materials for their projects. This gave Teresa the idea to purchase the materials from wholesalers in New York City, and sell them for a small profit to the neighborhood paisans.

As the demand for material grew, so did my grandmother’s need for a supply room. She took over one of her sons’ bedrooms, moving him into his two brothers’ tight sleeping quarters, and filled the new storage space with shelves of material from floor to ceiling. Business went so well that she and her husband decided to buy the apartment building across the street, and convert it into a department store, and thus the family business was born.

The beautiful afghan stretching across my queen-size bed is her largest and one of my most treasured heirlooms. It is white with little granny squares of multi-colored flowers knitted throughout. This particular type of blanket was a special work. My uncle offered me his one day since he had so many other knitted throws and blankets she had made. I was thrilled to possess such an artistic treasure.

Looking at the stitching more closely, my grandmother’s nimble fingers appear like a vision, rhythmically and supplely knitting in rapid precision. I recall her barely looking at her hands as her fingers swiftly moved the yarn in and around the needles, creating intricate patterns and designs. She never used a knitting outline or instructions of any kind. Nor did she ever count aloud or write down the stitch number. She just seemed to know how many knits and purls, traveling, twisted, and slip stitches she had done. She knitted blankets, sweaters, bedspreads, booties, baby caps, mittens. She crocheted tablecloths, bedlinens, doilies, and handkerchiefs. Even pocketbooks. There wasn’t anything my grandma’s knitting needles couldn’t create.

Table runner, made by the author’s grandmother. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Garrett.

Being a disciplined and industrious woman, and believing idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Grandma Teresa attempted to instill her work ethic in her granddaughters, insisting we learn how to knit. But my adolescent temperament couldn’t appreciate the skillfulness and imagination of her work, nor how useful this craft could be. Years later, while performing in a one-woman show, I had to knit a sweater in a scene, and thought of all those times she tried in vain to teach me. Fortunately for me and the show, my character knitted badly.

Another of her handmade, woolen blankets rests on the back of my sofa. It is a motif—loud, free, and fanciful, with wide lime green and hot pink stripes running throughout. In looking at these whimsical objects, I suddenly realized perhaps this was the only way my grandmother, a serious and formidable woman, could express the imaginative, childlike joviality that was kept bottled within her.

Grandma Teresa was not always as warm as her creations. She did not spoil her grandchildren with outward affection, nor let the grandkids get away with behavior their parents would not allow. Perhaps she never knew what it was like to be a fancy-free child laughing and playing without a care in the world. Maybe the only way she knew to express her love to us kids was to insist on discipline, instill work habits, and give us the tools that brought her a successful life.

Today, when I am wrapped in her afghans or my feet warmed by her knitted booties, I am reminded of my grandmother, Teresa Munafo Salamone—and inspired by her mettle to come to a new land taking on a different language, culture, and life, and having the courage to never stop creating.

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Today, many people understandably dislike the word “ghetto” for its associations with stigmatizing and harmful stereotypes—especially of African Americans. In Ghettonation: A Journey into the Land of the Bling and the Home of the Shameless, Cora Daniels writes that “ghetto” today refers to “gold teeth, … Pepsi-filled baby bottles, and baby mamas.” One New York City councilwoman went so far as to try to ban its “negative usage” in New York City’s official government documents. Even a figure as prominent as Mario Luis Small, the first black dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago—the very university where the ghetto was established as a social scientific idea almost a century ago—has written a nuanced essay explaining his reasons for abandoning the idea.

In this book, I hope to show that the ghetto remains a useful concept—provided we recall its rich historical background and stop divorcing it from its past. The word derives from the name of a Venetian island that once housed a copper foundry, or geto. Five hundred years ago, in 1516, the Venetian authorities required the city’s Jews to live on that island, in an area enclosed by walls. Venice was thus the first place to have a ghetto with today’s connotation of restriction in space. In 1555, Pope Paul IV forced Rome’s Jews into a similarly enclosed quarter, which, a few years later, came to be called by the Venetian name “ghetto.” The term then gradually spread to other European cities where Jews were similarly segregated from the larger population. In all these places, they simultaneously suffered and flourished.

Although the ghettos were demolished in the 19th century, in tandem with a gradually swelling wave of Jewish emancipation, the term “ghetto” was increasingly used from the late 19th century on, first to refer to dense Jewish quarters in Europe and America and then occasionally in reference to black urban neighborhoods. The word was given even greater prominence when it was reappropriated by the Nazis as they confined the Jews of Eastern Europe behind barbed wire in the late 1930s. A few years later, the idea of the ghetto took on new significance in the United States. During World War II, as black Americans served in the military (usually in arduous roles of logistical support) and witnessed the liberation of the Jews, blacks at home saw parallels between the ghettos established by the Nazis and their own segregated neighborhoods, between the Caucasian purity that whites were seeking to preserve in the United States and the Aryan purity that Hitler was trying to impose on Europe. As they had during World War I, they found themselves asking, in effect, “Have we been fighting once again for everybody else’s freedom except our own?”

For many of the undergraduate students who take my seminar on the idea of the ghetto, it comes as news that Jews, not blacks, were the original ghettoized people. This is a first clue to a motivation behind this book: ghettos can get lost. Had my course been offered earlier in Princeton’s history, before the mid-1940s, it would have had nothing to do with blacks and no one would have expected it might. Instead, an instructor would have focused exclusively on Jews. The link between blacks and the ghetto has been around for less than 10 percent of the term’s 500-year history.

It is not just the Jewish ghettos that have been forgotten by certain younger cohorts. It has become harder and harder to recall the black ghettos of previous generations—ghettos that were quite different from those we know now. And as the word “ghetto” has itself become less meaningful in many quarters, so too have we largely forgotten the way the word was understood in discussions of race, poverty, and place by social scientists, activists, politicians, journalists, and other intellectuals. It’s little recognized that the term embodies some of the most brilliant work in the history of the social sciences, much of which was contributed by black scholars such as those presented in these pages.

I have tried to recover that particular history by focusing selectively on a series of figures: Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, whose account of the Chicago “ghetto” in the Nazi era underlined the importance of restrictive housing covenants and other coercive measures—and served as an alternative to the famous portrait of the black situation in An American Dilemma by the Swedish economist and later Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal; Kenneth Clark, who revived the ghetto as an explanatory concept during the civil rights movement to show how segregation was damaging Northern blacks even without Jim Crow; and William Julius Wilson, who showed how the successes of the civil rights movement facilitated the departure of the black middle class from the ghetto, leaving behind a destitute population with a paucity of economic opportunities. In an era when the spotlight was no longer on the problems of poor blacks, he argued that the only way to interest whites in joblessness among black adults or even poverty among black children was to focus on programs that would also help whites. But working around the racism (and classism) of advantaged whites was not in itself enough to build the kind of support he had hoped for.

So we’re back to individual ghettos that are left to their own devices, as well as the activists and reformers who desperately try to achieve miracles on the ground. One particular effort garnered recent attention, support, and celebrity for its guiding founder: Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children’s Zone. He advances the idea that whereas single-focus efforts to improve the lot of the black poor do not succeed, a full-court press will. His initiative also presumes that private philanthropy can sometimes be a substitute for public policy, and at best an integral part of it. Although President Barack Obama tried to make Canada’s ideas the centerpiece of a national urban policy, Obama found it impossible to get meaningful support from Congress. Thus far, Canada’s success hinges on his own charismatic efforts and on the generosity of a few highly committed white billionaires.

We are left with the remains of an age-old system of exclusion—and no straightforward remedy. Worse yet, we are only now emerging from what has arguably been the largest and most consequential of all recent interventions in the lives of poor blacks: a War on Drugs based, ultimately, on its own misguided fantasy of a solution. The tactic emerged gradually, only after deindustrialization rendered poor urban blacks increasingly superfluous. The black ghetto became a hyperpoliced and monitored zone. Today, most men in the ghetto, subject as they are to paramilitary-style policing such as stop-and-frisk operations, will spend some time in prison. The ghetto can no longer be simply defined as a segregated area in which most blacks live. It is better understood as a space for the intrusive social control of poor blacks. As such, many of the ideas about the ghetto that emerged at the time of World War II may be more relevant than ever.

In this book, I seek a sense of historical awareness that is increasingly missing from our understanding. So much has been lost that needs to be remembered, if only because the ghetto’s troubled legacy has not gone away.

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The evening’s discussion, which took up the question, “Do We Still Know How to Be Good Citizens?” unfolded before a large audience at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

“We are at our best as citizens when we are being critical,” said one panelist, Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University historian of American political rhetoric. And that’s an old idea, she added, citing the early American thinker John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which were published in the late 1760s.

Mercieca drew particular attention to a point Dickinson raised about the necessity for citizens to be vigilant in defense of their own freedom: “Ought not the people therefore to watch? To observe facts? To search into causes? To investigate designs? And have they not a right of judging from the evidence on no slighter points than their liberty and happiness?”

But maintaining that steadfast watchfulness toward government in a democracy requires a difficult balancing act. The panelists discussed these dual imperatives of citizenship for Americans, who are supposed to forcefully challenge their leaders and public officials, while also cooperating with them; to engage tightly with issues while yet remaining dispassionate enough to be objective and rational.

“We have an obligation to be very forceful in speaking out when we think things are wrong,” said former Congressman Mickey Edwards, who now works on political reform and teaching political leadership.

But Edwards emphasized that it’s also vital, particularly among elected representatives, “to sit down and respectfully work out where you can work together and find the common ground.”

Turning to another theme, the panelists expressed varying degrees of concern about whether some of the necessary balances in exercising American citizenship have been breaking down, particularly in light of the bitter 2016 presidential election. Johann Neem, a Western Washington University historian of civil society and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners, noting that he was an immigrant, said that some of the abrasive language on both sides of the political divide made it “harder to have a home politically” in contemporary American society.

Edwards, the former congressman, said one reason for today’s mounting anxiety about the nation’s social cohesiveness is that the United States has become less stable and predictable. The event’s moderator, Nancy Barnes, editor and executive vice president for news at the Houston Chronicle, said she worried about growing political polarization within journalism, and asked what the deepening political split—with “media organizations that represent the right and represent the left”—might mean not only for media but for the country.

But the panelists also took heart in historical examples of how the United States met past challenges of citizenship, rising above periods of intense discord and partisan acrimony. Neem said that the country previously has managed to disagree over fundamental questions, while still retaining sufficient solidarity needed to solve its problems and reach compromise.

“The kind of trust that bridges partisan divides, that bridges ethnic divides—our whole history is figuring out how to build that trust,” Neem said.

Another panelist, The Washington Post “Civilities” columnist Steven Petrow, who is an expert on etiquette, pointed to Emily Post, who wrote about proper etiquette in the post-World War I era, a time of tremendous social dislocation and economic upheaval; and to Miss Manners, who during the turbulent post-Vietnam War years offered Americans witty but sensible advice for coping with their anxieties and stresses, while also exhorting her readers to taking responsibility for their actions and words.

Petrow said that Americans need similar help during this difficult moment. One key requirement of civil citizenship, he said, is to avoid using words as weapons to shut down conversation; better to engage respectfully with people, even when they savage you on social media.

“I love the people who agree with me, but I love my haters just as much,” he said. When he writes back to people who fire off vicious emails, about two-thirds of his correspondents write him back, apologize for the language they used, and engage in productive conversation, he said.

Mercieca, the rhetorician, said that people in politics and media prosper by dividing Americans against themselves. But what Americans really hunger for is the “language of transcendence”—making a broad appeal to everyone. Petrow jumped in to ask the audience, “Who would like to see more transcendence?” Hundreds of hands went up, and Petrow nodded. “We’re all suffering with this level of incivility. And people want to find ways to come together because there are so many ways that we’re disconnected.”

Mercieca said that citizens can withdraw consent from political systems that don’t serve them. Edwards argued that political reforms that move people away from partisanship and parties—he mentioned nonpartisan legislative redistricting efforts in several states, as well as the top-two-vote-getter primary system in California—can create more spaces for citizens to engage in politics. “Washington, Adams, and Jefferson all said, ‘Don’t create political parties.’ And we did it. And we’re paying the price, and if we don’t fix it, they’re going to drag us down.”

During a question-and-answer session with the audience, panelists fielded queries on topics ranging from the case for mandatory voting; to how white privilege has compromised citizenship and representation; to how the panelists themselves would attempt to engage more young voters.

All of the panelists expressed pride in their American citizenship, and stories. Mercieca said that she’s a child of an immigrant—her father grew up in Malta during World War II, when it was the target of bombing—and America represents opportunity and safety to her.

Edwards echoed that, noting that his father grew up in an orphanage. Petrow reiterated the American credo of e pluribus unum—a Latin phrase meaning, “out of many, one,” which expresses an ideal of how the citizen relates to the larger society and nation.

Neem said that even the disagreements we have among ourselves, and over ideas about citizenship, reveal something essential about the national character. “Those disagreements remind us that being American is not genetic,” he said. “It’s something that can be argued over. It’s something that people can become.”

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The discussion, before a full house at a Smithsonian/Zócalo “What It Means to Be American” event at the Landmark Theaters in Los Angeles, explored both the opportunities and the obstacles in trying to bridge seemingly vast cultural divides via TV.

Bowman, an Emmy award-winning writer and creator of Martin, described his experience in 1995 as “the white head writer of a black show” called The Show. “I wanted to explore racial issues in an integrated show,” he said. “It was the best reviewed show I ever wrote, and it was canceled after four episodes.” At a subsequent focus group, he recalled, a white respondent and a black respondent bonded over their dislike of the show and wound up hugging. Small comfort, Bowman said. “I had brought black and white together in their hatred of my show.”

The trick, said Dan O’Shannon, former executive producer of Modern Family, is to find a way to create relatability without “condescension and preachiness.” When the show first aired, in 2009, much of television “was divisive, about making fun of the other side.” In crafting the story line for Cam and Mitch, the gay couple on the show, the writers intentionally avoided physical intimacy in the first season, O’Shannon said. “We wanted to have Americans embrace them as empathetic human beings first and as a gay couple second.”

Jennie Snyder Urman, Jane the Virgin showrunner, concurred, saying it’s important to understand every character, “from the most evil villain to the family unit at home.” Empathy, she said, is “the catchphrase in the writer’s room,” with scripts given a painstaking review from every character’s point of view.

Portraying characters honestly, even when it’s unflattering, is essential, said, Gloria Calderón Kellett, co-showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s One Day at a Time. When the teenage daughter on that show came out as gay, her father refused to dance with her during the traditional father-daughter dance at her quinceañera.

Why portray the father in that light? Bowman asked.

“We wanted to let the audience know that she was going to be supported and be okay, but maybe not everyone was going to have that perfect, warm response to it,” Calderón Kellett said. “It wasn’t just hurray, she’s gay! We wanted to represent the totality of that experience.”

All of the writers on the panel—as in much of television itself—Bowman observed, had worked on shows revolving around families struggling with the deepest social and cultural questions of the day. “In TV history, the family is always the crucible of social issues,” Bowman said. “It’s where we talk, it’s where we tolerate.”

The holy grail of placing family at the heart of television’s efforts to sort through social divisions is the 1970s Norman Lear sitcom All in the Family, Bowman said. That ground-breaking show succeeded in provoking thought and conversation among non-like-minded people. But, said O’Shannon, at that time there were just a few networks competing for viewers’ attention, and even if they offended some viewers, others would tune in “to see what this car wreck was about.” Now, he said, with much greater competition, no one wants to offend because they can’t take the risk of “losing a single viewer.”

What then, is the way forward, asked Bowman, citing as an example of the vastness of the divide one recent survey that found that the favorite television show among liberals was Modern Family, and among conservatives Duck Dynasty. He specifically wondered whether in this moment where audiences place a premium on authenticity, his whiteness would be an obstacle. He posed the question to Urman, who is white and whose protagonists are Latino.

Urman said that initially she did question whether she should embark on the show, but then, she said, she realized that, “I spent all of my career writing men. I’m a lot closer to Jane,” the show’s heroine, who she described as “type A with a very complicated relationship with her mother.”

The key, Urman said, is “being open, listening and making sure that your family is so specific that they are not caricatures. We all want the same thing: We want happiness, we want love, we want to be respected.”

One of the big challenges, the panelists agreed, is in fairly portraying “red” characters—those with conservative values—without relying on the buffoonery of an Archie Bunker, for example.

Jay, the grandfather on Modern Family presents one such opportunity, said O’Shannon. “Jay spent his whole life following rules. Everything he was taught was okay is bad, he’s the bad guy now,” O’Shannon said. “I don’t know if you forgive him for some of the things he does, but you understand him.”

During the question-and-answer session, one audience member asked whether the writers worried that when they presented their characters’ flaws they were disrespecting them, suggesting that viewers might extrapolate negative stereotypes about them.

“It’s humanity and we’re flawed,” Calderón Kellett responded. “We do things that are good and we do things that are bad and that’s the totality of being human.”

Urman agreed. “Our characters mess up all day every day,” she said. “If we just made these characters that are perfect, then they have no relatability.”

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