Free Love and Radicals with Sherry L. Smith
Greetings all! It’s a real pleasure to welcome Dr. Sherry L. Smith to the show! Sherry grew up in Northwest Indiana, a place tucked between Chicago’s cultural treasures and the natural wonders of the Indiana Dunes. Yet, the American West won her over as a subject of historical study and place to live.
After undergraduate education at Purdue University, she moved to Seattle, enrolled in the University of Washington for her Ph.d., and has resided west of the Mississippi River ever since. She is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. Her award-winning books include Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940, both published by Oxford University Press. Smith is a former president of the Western History Association and received the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for her latest book: Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America from Heyday Books. Sherry has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University and currently lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California.
You know, I love to venture outside of my field of expertise and discuss fascinating historical events and actors with distinguished scholars (or anyone, really) so this interview was a lot of fun. We discuss:
How Sherry discovered this story
Free love in a late-19th and early-20th century setting…what does it mean and just how underground was the experience?
The value of pricing together a story through personal correspondence
How does the West as a place factor in to the story…or does it factor in at all?
The protagonists intersections with some big-time movers and shakers
The tension between tradition and progressive politics
A most fascinating road trip to lobby for women’s suffrage
Why the protagonists remain in relative obscurity
Using the past to help us understand the present
Naturally, you will want to head over to Sherry’s website to check out all the latest…and you can preorder the book (due out at the end of August 2020) HERE or from these independent booksellers. AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.
With compliments,
Keith