Climate change

Chicago Defender, February 10, 1917. Read more.

Lucky number

Baltimore Afro-American, October 19, 1923. Messed up on so many levels. I didn’t know that Southern papers tried to discourage migration of the black labor force with actuarial fictions.

Black Widow II: Cheaper by the dozen

Detroit News, May 29, 1931. The hausfrau or boardinghouse mistress with a secret penchant for murder-for-profit is an enduring American phenomenon. Before Mrs. Summers there was Belle Gunness. Since then we’ve had Dorothea Puente and the deadly septuagenarian partnership of Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt . God knows how many others have joined Margaret Summers in historical oblivion. It’s rank sexism if you ask me.

Black widow

Detroit News, May 26, 1931. Serial murderers work so hard at what they do, but most of them simply fall down the memory hole regardless. As we shall see, this Margaret Summers gal was ultimately credited with at least a dozen killings, but who now remembers her name? Ah well, sic transit gloria mundi.

A few years ago, I wrote what I still think is a pretty funny profile of a bogus profiler of serial killers for the Chicago Reader. I thought I was scuttling her barge, but I still see this nutjob crop up in the media as an “expert” from time to time.