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Sometimes a chat with your local butcher can lead you down a very curious rabbithole and that is exactly what happened to this week's returning guest, historian Joy Giguere, on this latest episode of the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast. Some history is easy to miss until you know what you’re looking for. In the 1920s, a surge of organized intolerance swept through American towns. It showed up in parades, in politics, and in the way some communities marked their dead. This episode traces how that movement tried to make itself permanent, and what the grave markers left behind can still teach us today.

Joy has been looking at archival records, historical newspapers, and local histories to understand how extremism became normalized, and in some cases, has been engraved in stone.

This episode is heavy. It’s important. And it’s not ancient history.

Content note: This episode discusses historical racism and extremism in the 1920s. It is presented for educational purposes.

If you have come across grave markers such as we discuss in this episode and you would like to pass the information along to Joy for archival purposes, you can reach her at: jmg66@psu.edu

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