Martha Hodes Summary

Words: 449
Pages: 2

As Martha Hodes explores the catalyst for the 1900 race riots in New York City, she employs a unique process of analyzing the murder of a white NYC police officer by a black man. Illuminating both the limits and insights asymmetric information, Hodes begins by compiling a collection of court testimonies and statements from the main actors in the racially motivated squabble - including various witnesses. By illustrating the varying points of view separately, Hodes initially enables the reader to consume each individual's point of view, piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit. In the process, Hodes both consolidates and elucidates how various narratives were more successful than others. How Arthur Harris’s testimony proved impotent in his defense, and how …show more content…
Examining the life of Hanna Reitsch, a former Nazi pilot who teaches flying in postcolonial Ghana, Allman uses Reitsch’s memoir and Ghanaian newspaper articles to examine the public reception of someone, who in hindsight, should have been a controversial figure. Examining, various primary sources, newspaper articles of the time, Allman uncovers how a Nazi was welcomed mostly devoid of criticism in Ghana. Through a detailed review of primary source reading, Allman discovered that no Ghanaian journalists noted Reitsch incredibly ‘close connection to Adolf Hitler.’ Upon the flight school’s official opening, Ghanaian newsreels described Hanna Reitsch as a famous ‘German’ entirely omitting that her fame was during the tyranny of the Third Reich. In fact, Allman herself admits that both the newspaper accounts and Reutsch’s own memoir, clarify little about ‘how or why this former Nazi pilot became a critical player’ in Ghanaian nation-building. Furthermore, another parallel between Allman’s work and Hodes’ is the ability of various institutions to act politically, or for political circumstances to destroy the historical record. Allman explains how the Ghana Police Service in 1966, not entirely dissimilar from the police in the United States in the wake of the 1900 race riots, lost or destroyed official