Exterior of the Catalina Island Museum, a small, cream stucco colored building.

Catalina Island: A Tale of Chewing Gum, Grave Robbing, and Movie Stars

June 3, 2019, 4 Comments

On Sunday, Patrick and I finally made it over to the little island of Catalina. If you aren’t familiar with California geography, Catalina is a small island, roughly 30 miles off the coast of Long Beach, accesible by ferry from a handful of ports on the mainland. At just under 75 square miles, about 4,000…

The Buffalo Soldiers: Multi-Talented Defenders of Westward Expansion

February 28, 2019, 3 Comments

On September 21, 1866, a brand new regiment was formed. The 10th Calvary Regiment was comprised of Black men, and was given the nickname, The Buffalo Soldiers. The nickname was given to them by the Native Americans, due to their hair reminding them of the top of a buffalos head. The regiment served in the…

Bass Reeves: US Marshall and the Lone Ranger?

February 21, 2019, 1 Comment

Bass Reeves was born into slavery in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas. During the Civil War, he beat up his slave master to get out of slavery, and fled into Indian Territory. There he lived with the Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee Indians learning their languages, until he was freed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.…

Bill Pickett: The Rodeo Innovator that History Forgot

February 15, 2019, 1 Comment

Bill Pickett was born the second of thirteen children on December 5th, 1870 in Williamson County, Texas. Pickett’s bloodline was of Cherokee and Black. In the 5th grade, he left school to be a ranch-hand, and he learned all there was to know about being a cowboy. He invented the technique known as Bulldogging, which…

Nat Love: The Real Life Deadwood Dick

February 7, 2019, 4 Comments

Nat (pronounced Nate) Love was born into slavery around 1854 in Tennessee. He learned to read and write with help from his father, despite the statutes which outlawed Black literacy. When slavery was overturned, his family stayed on the plantation as sharecroppers with 20 acres of land. After his father died, he took on another…

Mary Fields: The Forgotten Badass of the US Postal Service

February 1, 2019, 6 Comments

Hello all! I’m Carla, and I blog over at Tiny.Angry.Crafts. This month I will be showcasing a Black Person of the week from The Wild West. As a young child, I was very fortunate to have my grandmother teach me something new; her being a schoolteacher and all, she would give me a double dose…

Introducing Black Heroes of the Wild West Series

January 30, 2019, 3 Comments

February is Black History Month, and this year I decided to honor it with a unique collaboration with fellow blogger Carla of Tiny Angry Crafter to produce a series. While I love the mid-twentieth century, I also love the history of the American West, and Carla thought it would be a good idea to shine…

Cut out images of James Dean and Vampira set against a yellow and red background.

The Mysterious Horror Hostess that Reportedly Cursed James Dean

October 18, 2018, 5 Comments

The inside of a “dingy frame house” on Larrabee Street in West Hollywood looked more akin to a “witch-doctor’s shack in the wilds of Haiti.” Scattered were “objects of the kind associated with Black Magic” and stuck to the wall by a small golden dagger were cut-outs of James Dean’s eyes and ears. On the…

Exploring the Historic Santa Monica Pier

July 27, 2018, 2 Comments

Nothing quite says summer like a day at the beach, especially if that beach is lucky enough to have a pier filled with a carousel, roller coaster, games and more. Around the turn-of-the-century California’s coast was dotted with what was known at the time as “pleasure piers” a wooden boardwalk along the coast that offered…

Old photograph of the exterior of The Pink Pussycat, painted pink and black, including a large mural of a cat rubbing against a fishnet covered leg.

The Pink Pussycat College of Strip Tease Where Yesteryear’s Strippers Learned Their Craft

July 11, 2018, 8 Comments

Imagine you are a woman living the high life in early 1960s Hollywood, you have a great husband, who after working hard as a door-to-door salesman, elevates himself to running a haberdashery in Beverly Hills and then enters the nightclub business. It’s a classy life. Then, one day, your loving husband comes home and tells…