Historian Michael Luick-Thrams: 1918 Flu Pandemic//The Cow War

2-part lecture from historian Michael Luick-Thrams:
FIRST 4-5:30pm One of the Deadliest Killers Ever: 1918’s Flu Pandemic
SECOND 6:30-8pm The Cow War: Farmer Rebellions in America’s Heartland during the Great Depression

The Old Capitol Museum welcomes historian Michael Luick-Thrams, presenting a set of two lectures focused on the 1918 Flu Pandemic and the Cow War. This program is co-sponsored by the UI Department of History, free to attend, and open to the public.

“One of the Deadliest Killers Ever: 1918’s Flu Pandemic” outlines suspected and documented origins of that cataclysm, as well as charts and maps of the infection’s rates, routes and tolls; articles, photos and other print-media documentation of the disease and its vast impact. A short related film will be presented and discussion about how Iowans’ responded.

Using photos, documents, maps and realia, “The Cow War: Farmer Rebellions in America’s Heartland during the Great Depression” illustrates related yet differing agrarian rebellions during the 1930s that mirrored rural folks’ desperate attempts to survive, for example: the “Farmers Holiday Association” (forerunner of the NFO) which strove to forcibly increase the price of farm commodities; the “Cow War”, where Iowa dairy farmers blocked Federal agents from TB-testing their herds; and loosely-organized “Penny Auctions”, which tried to keep bankrupt farmers on their farms through collective action.

Michael Luick-Thrams (Ph.D. 1997, Humboldt Universität in Berlin) divides his time between Germany and the American Heartland, as he serves as executive director of a non-profit, educational organization in each country—Spuren e.V. and TRACES (www.TRACES.org); both of which provide history-based public programming to educational and cultural institutions of various kinds. He is the recent author of a genealogy-based Midwest social history, “Oceans of Darkness, Oceans of Light—a Pentalogy: Our Troubles and Treasures in the New World”. (For details, see http://roots.traces.org/michael-luick-thrams or find the author’s complete works at www.Amazon.com.)

This program is supported by Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities: The views and opinions expressed by this program do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities Iowa or the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding provided by Illinois Humanities, Center for Prairie Studies/Grinnell College, and Vander Haag’s Inc., as well as by local hosts and their supporters.