Dear Dashhounds, have you lost the ability to handle all the things? Enough that you are thinking about bringing back the streaking fad of the 70s? Before you get all hot and bothered and start taking off your clothes in front of strangers, listen to this Strange Country episode #300 about where streaking in ‘Merica originated. If you thought it was something free and fun, you are a little right, but only for a chosen few. Thanks always for listening, it is an act of love that you can do with your clothes on.

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands

Cite your sources:

“CRUMP, George William.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000956. Accessed 03 July 2025.

KIRKPATRICK, B. (2010), “It Beats Rocks and Tear Gas”: Streaking and Cultural Politics in the Post-Vietnam Era. The Journal of Popular Culture, 43: 1023-1047. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2010.00785.x

Margoshes, Pamela. “Speaking Personally; A College Streaker Bares the Whole Naked Truth.” New York Times, 4 August 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/04/nyregion/speaking-personally-a-college-streaker-bares-the-whole-naked-truth.html.

“Music: Streaking, streaking everywhere.” Time, no. March 18, 1974, https://time.com/archive/6844977/music-streaking-streaking-everywhere/.

Stevens, Ray. The Streak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtzoUu7w-YM.

“Streaking - Wikipedia.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaking. Accessed 3 July 2025.

Charlotte Osborne Mason was one of the biggest benefactors of the Harlem Renaissance but her patronage came with a cost. While she gave noted luminaries Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston monthly stipends to make art, she wanted a say in what the art would be in order to realize her vision: a flaming bridge to connect America to Africa. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about this strange rich white lady who believed she knew more about being Black than the artists she supported with strings.

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands

Cite your sources:

Boyd, Valerie. “About Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora Neale Hurston, 18 September 2024, https://www.zoranealehurston.com/about/. Accessed 7 May 2025.

Kaplan, Carla. Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance. HarperCollins, 2013.

Panovka, Rebecca. “A Different Backstory for Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon.”” Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 July 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/different-backstory-for-zora-neale-hurstons-barracoon/. Accessed 7 May 2025.

We love our trials of the century here at Strange Country and this one is a doozy. It’s likely one you’ve never heard of: Rhinelander v Rhinelander. See a young aristocrat married a domestic worker and everyone went all “heavens to betsy” about it, but what made it bring out the worst in people was that the working class bride was biracial. This was in 1924 before the country accepted interracial marriage and the KKK was on the resurgence—or what we could now call the present time.

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands

Cite your sources:

Greene, Bryan. “How an Interracial Marriage Sparked One of the Most Scandalous Trials of the Roaring Twenties.” Smithsonian Magazine, 20 November 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-an-interracial-marriage-sparked-one-of-the-most-scandalous-trials-of-the-roaring-twenties-180985486/. Accessed 8 May 2025.

Onwuachi-Willig, Angela. A Beautiful Lie: Exploring Rhinelander v. Rhinelander as a Formative Lesson on Race, Identity, Marriage, and Family , 95 California Law Review 2393 (2007) https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/310