Ann S. Epstein Writer

After her success as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton appeared in My Little Chickadee but had only minor film roles after that. She had a long-running radio career from 1944 to the 1950s on Ethel and Albert, where she played the scatter-brained Aunt Eva. In the 1960s and 1970s, Hamilton was a regular on the soap operas The Secret Storm and As the World Turns. She reprised her role as the Wicked Witch on Sesame Street in 1976, but parents complained that it scared their children, so the episode was never reshown. Read more about the making of Oz and the lives of its stars in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

The 1867-1868 great famine in Sweden combined with discontent from a repressive government made the American advertisement of land and freedom in Kansas particularly attractive to Swedes. They became the third-largest group of foreign-born citizens in the state, after Germans and Russians. Italians followed in 1871, coming to the coal-mining regions in SE Kansas. Read more about Topeka and Kansas history, and the immigrants who helped build the United States, in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Little People of America (LPA) is a nonprofit for people no taller than 4’10” and their families. It was started by Billy Barty in 1957, who called on people of short stature to meet in Reno, Nevada. The original gathering of 21 people grew into the organization. A newspaper reporter wrote, “The small people gathered here today are endowed with that good quality which takes them out of the realm of oddity into the realm of humanity.” LPA’s motto “Think Big” was established in the 1960s. Today LPA has over 6,000 members in 70 chapters across the U.S. and internationally and is politically active in the disabilities rights movement. Read more about Little People of America in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press), a fictional biography of the actor who played the Munchkin Coroner in The Wizard of Oz (see NOVELS). Munchkin actors were called “midgets,” now considered a derogatory term.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, workers were unionized under the CIO’s United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). An interracial committee led organizing in Chicago, where the majority of industry workers were black, and in other major cities, such as Omaha, Nebraska, where they were a sizable minority. The UPWA secured important gains in wages, hours, and benefits. Other labor unions remained largely segregated however, until the AFL and CIO merged in 1955 and declared in their new constitution that “all workers without regard to race, creed, color, national origin or ancestry shall share equally in the full benefits of union organization.” Read more Chicago and labor history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Rubies get their name from ruber, the Latin word for red. The color is caused by the element chromium. Rubies are one of the four precious stones; the others are sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds. Like diamonds, the value of rubies is determined by 4 C’s: color, clarity, cut, and carets. The brightest and most valuable color is called pigeon blood red. The Smithsonian has a 23.1 carat ruby mined in Burma in the 1930s. Ruby is the July birth stone (Cancer), a symbol of the 40th wedding anniversary, and a sign of good luck in Asia. Read more gems about gems, including Dorothy’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz, in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

After failing at farming in the Catskills, Selig and Malke Grossinger, Polish immigrants, bought a large house on 100 acres, named it Grossinger’s, and made their daughter Jennie the manager. Malke, the daughter of an innkeeper who knew about hospitality, believed that “a life without sharing is barren.” Grossinger’s served strictly kosher food and attracted winter guests with the first artificial snow machine in 1952. By the time Jennie Grossinger died in 1972, the hotel’s 1,200 acres had 35 buildings and served 150,000 guests a year. The hotel closed in 1986 and only the golf course remained open. Read more about Grossinger’s and U.S. cultural history in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Kansas became the 34th state in January 1861. The Civil War began three months later. When rumors circulated that President Lincoln was about to be kidnaped or assassinated, Kansas senator James H. Lane recruited 120 Kansas men dubbed the “Frontier Guard.” For nearly three weeks they were billeted in the White House to protect the President. Kansans were staunch Union supporters. Of 30,000 Kansans of military age, 20,000 enlisted in the Union Army. After the war, Kansas returned to agriculture. Topeka, where the cattle ranches of the Southwest meet the Corn Belt, prospered as a typical Midwestern city. Read more Topeka and Kansas history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).