Curio Cabinet

Last week, Texas experienced unprecedented power outages amid Winter Storm Uri. This wasn't the first time the system, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), dealt with freeze-related failure. In 2011, during Super XLV, generators failed, leading to rolling blackouts. Turns out many of those generators had similarly failed in 1989. To understand why these generators failing led to mass blackouts requires some background on how the United States gets energy to consumers. In the contiguous United States, there are three electrical power grids: the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT. Formally established in 1970, ERCOT is a nonprofit organization overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the Texas Legislature, and an unelected board (one third of whom lived outside of Texas before resigning yesterday). ERCOT covers most, but not all of Texas—parts of the panhandle, like El Paso, and East Texas, receive utilities from nearby states.
 

Because Texas is "off the grid," that is not connected to the other 47 mainland states, it cannot borrow energy in times of crisis. This design was intentional. During World War II, there was a substantial need for power along the Gulf Coast. Separate utilities in North and Central Texas combined forces to send excess energy to the region. For Texas, this interconnection also offered another opportunity—to evade federal oversight. Several years earlier, in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act to regulate interstate energy commerce. Texas utilities vowed to keep all power created within the state, avoiding federal regulation. Even today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cannot interfere in the state's energy operations or wholesale electricity sales. This system has always been a point of pride for free-market advocates. In the late 1990s, Texas went a step further in deregulating utilities. The legislature broke up existing utility companies into power generating, transmission and distribution, and consumer-serving companies. Supporters have argued this decision benefited companies and consumers. However, Texas must now reckon with the devastating outcomes of a system that allowed companies to self-regulate. By ignoring recommendations to winterize infrastructure, Texas energy companies prioritized profits over people. Some even cashed in from the surge in demand as people died of hypothermia, burned their possessions to stay warm, and faced food and water shortages. Meanwhile other companies are facing financial ruin.
 

And in case you're wondering clean energy is not to blame for the crisis. Texas only gets 1% of its energy from solar power, 11% from nuclear power, and 17% from wind power. (It turns out wind turbines thrive in cold places...even Antarctica.) The rest of the state's energy comes from natural gas and coal.
 
[Image description: The three large electric interconnections that span the United States, large parts of Canada, and a small part of Mexico. A very modest amount of power flows among these three regions over direct current cables so that the 60 Hz power is not synchronized among the regions. Hydro Québec, which is not shown, provides power to many states in the northeastern United States.] Credit & copyright: U.S. Department of Energy, 2016.

Every year in the United States, we celebrate Black History Month in February. But what, precisely, does that mean? Celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans as part of the official historical record began with Carter G. Woodson. A historian, Woodson was the second black man after W.E.B. DuBois to earn a PhD from Harvard. As the child of ex-slaves, Woodson witnessed firsthand the impact of slavery on black families, their cultures, and their communities. Yet, these voices were not part of U.S. History–they weren't taught in schools or recognized by historical institutions. In 1915, Woodson created a display about black progress and achievements at an event celebrating Illinois' ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the U.S. Thousands of African-Americans from across the country were in attendance. Inspired by their presence, Woodson established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), and began publishing The Journal of Negro History in 1916. In 1924, Woodson helped his college fraternity Omega Psi Phi, an African-American organization founded at Howard University, promote Negro Achievement Week.
 

Just two years later, Woodson would take the project nationwide, promoting Negro History Week in a February press release from the ASNLH. In choosing mid-February for Negro History Week celebrations, Woodson acknowledged the traditions of black Americans celebrating Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass' birthdays (February 12th and 14th, respectively). Both men shaped the outcome of the Civil War, forever altering the history of black Americans. Negro History Week was a runaway success, with the ASNLH opening local branches and providing study materials like teacher lessons, plays, and calendars with important dates.
 

Woodson himself proved a model worthy of study as well: his intent was to have Negro History Week be a phase of a much larger and substantive change to the way history is taught and its previous omissions of Black achievement. He also famously rejected efforts to commercialize, whitewash, or trivialize Negro History Week just so U.S. companies and grifters could profit off of the popular event, even once going so far as to warn teachers not to invite speakers who had less knowledge of African-American History than the students themselves. Woodson's influence no doubt had an impact on students who would later become leaders and other activists of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, Frederick H. Hammurabi and the House of Knowledge cultural center for African consciousness in Chicago began celebrating Negro History Month. And in 1970, the Black United Students at Kent State University celebrated the first Black History Month. Under President Gerald Ford, the tradition of issuing proclamations endorsing Black History Month became an annual tradition. If Carter G. Woodson were alive today, we bet he'd be amazed at how far his Black history project has come, and how far still it has to go in transforming the ways history is taught in our country.

 
[Image description: Black and white headshot of a young Carter G. Woodson]. Credit & copyright: Archives Center, National Museum of American History

 
Written by: Esther P.

A passionate speaker who minced no words in his quest to empower Black Americans, Malcolm X is one of the most famous civil rights leaders in U.S. history , alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. However, he and King used very different tactics to fight the same injustices. Malcolm was tragically assassinated on this day in 1965, just three years before King's own assassination. He remains one of the most controversial figures of his time.
 
Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, to activists Louise and Earl Little, he was one of seven children. Malcolm's parents were admirers of Jamaican civil rights activist Marcus Garvey. His father was outspoken about racial equality, and his family was under constant threat from white supremacists—the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Legion (a Klan splinter group) attacked their home on several occasions. In 1931, when Malcolm was six, his father was hit and killed by a streetcar. Though police called his father's death an accident, Malcolm's mother and other Black community members believed he was murdered. In 1938, Malcolm's mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental hospital. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and sent to foster homes.
 
In spite of the tragedies he'd faced, Malcolm excelled in school. He loved to read, and dreamed of becoming a lawyer. While attending Mason High School in Michigan, a white teacher told Malcolm he could never become a lawyer because he was black. Disheartened, Malcolm dropped out of school. He moved to Boston, then to Harlem, where, around the age of 21, he began committing crimes, including drug-dealing and robbery. When Malcolm moved back to Boston, in 1945, he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to eight to ten years in prison. Malcolm's incarceration proved to be a new beginning.
 

In prison, Malcolm read about the history of slavery and the United States education system. "You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge," he later wrote, in his autobiography. His reading guided him to the Nation of Islam, a religious and political movement for Black Americans led by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm began exchanging letters with Muhammad. He also changed his name to "Malcolm X", later explaining that, "For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears."
 
After leaving prison on parole in 1952, Malcolm rapidly rose within the ranks of the Nation of Islam, becoming one of its best-known ministers. By 1954, he led the Nation's Temple Number 7, in Harlem. He became known to most Americans in 1957, after he and other Nation of Islam members marched on a New York police station where several of their members were being held. Although the F.B.I. began aggressively tracking Malcolm, his popularity only increased. However, as the American Civil Rights Movement came into full swing in the late 50s and early 60s, and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as its leader, Malcolm's beliefs faced greater public scrutiny from Black Americans.
 
At the time, the Nation of Islam held ideas that were troubling to many Americans, such as the idea that Blacks were superior to whites, and that they needed to form their own nation (an idea called Black Nationalism). Because the American Civil Rights Movement focused on integration, Malcolm took issue with it. In several fiery speeches, Malcolm simultaneously sought to empower Black Americans and tear down the idea of integration, even going so far as to call the 1963 March on Washington "the farce on Washington." Malcolm also disagreed with King's non-violent approach to Civil Rights. Nonetheless, in 1964, Malcolm broke from the Nation of Islam because he believed they weren't active enough in promoting civil rights.
 

In 1964, Malcolm took an extended trip to Africa and the Middle East which seemed to change his view of the American Civil Rights Movement. He later wrote, "the true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision." Unfortunately, less than a year later, Malcolm X was shot by three Nation of Islam members as he tried to break up a scuffle at the Organization of Afro-American Unity, in Manhattan. Today, he is remembered as a man who spoke plainly about the violence facing Black Americans and the solutions he thought were appropriate, regardless of whether his beliefs made others uncomfortable.
 

Image credit & copyright: History.com

 
Written by: Maria C.