Why We Square Dance (Spoiler: White Supremacy)

was in elementary school, I was the tallest gal. And not only that, I was a little pudgche punch pudge Okay. I also wore these really ugly bucket hats and I would wear three watches at a time. And because I was this big, massive girl, I'd always get paired with a big, massive guy while all the other teeny tiny children dance together. And I hated that. I felt I was being so othered, Like why do we have to be paired with someone of the same size? No idea?

Like was my elementary music teacher afraid that I'd do Si dough a tiny boy so hard that he'd be flung out into outer space or something. So, yeah, it was absolutely horrendous having the square dance and music class. But instead of blaming my music teacher for my negative square dancing experience, I've decided to be the bigger person and find even more people to blame. And who's at the top of my blame list, why none other than automobile mogul Henry Ford. Yeah, it's Henry Ford's fault that

we had to square dance in elementary school. He loved square dancing. He thought square dancing represented the true spirit of America. It had fallen out of fashion and he was determined to revive the dance. And it wasn't just that he loved square dancing. He also did this in response to all the new types of music and dance coming out of the nineteen twenties. Specifically, he hated everything that had to do with jazz. Jazz to him was filthy, vile, disgusting,

needlessly provocative. People were improvising, for Christ's sakes, and when people would listen to this music, they would do appalling things like the Charleston or they'd just be flapping their arms gyrating their pelvises. An abomination and extremely un American, and by Unamerican, what Henry Ford meant was that jazz was created and made by black people, and many of

the writers and performers of jazz were Jewish. And Henry Ford, Yeah, he spent a lot of time building cars, but he also set aside plenty of free time to be a white supremacist. Yeah, so we're squear dancing because Henry Ford wanted us to be real Americans who do traditional old time white ass dancing. He wanted to promenade Americans back to the past where we stood in a line and the only thing that was jiggling was not our asses but our toes. Cree the theme song This is American Film.

Then I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history. This week's episode, Why We Square Dance spoilers white supremacy. Henry Ford grew up in Michigan, and there he spent his time tinkering with equipment, experimenting and building his own vehicles. He became an engineer working in Detroit, founded a few companies that failed until finally he produced the Model T. And what was special about

that car? It was affordable, so After it came out in nineteen oh eight, it quickly became the most popular car in a man America. Henry Ford didn't just innovate automobiles. No, he also innovated work. He implemented the assembly line. He proposed the five day, forty hour work week. And some of you guys might be like, ough, he makes us go to work five times a week, what a bitch? Well before it was a lot worse. It was like six days, seven days a week, and sometimes people were

working one bazillion hours. So actually he was pretty good because he liked people working less. He was like, when they work less, they'll be more productive, have higher morale. And not only that, if they have more leisure time, they will buy more stuff. And Ford he loved when people bought stuff. He loved consumerism, not just because he was a capitalist who was making a lot of money

off of his cars. He also thought that consumerism would lead to world peace, because if you're buying stuff, you're gonna be too busy to start and fight in wars. Yeah, that's why women be shopping so much, because we're interested in world peace. Ford was a pacifist. He opposed World War One, even though his company ended up making a lot of wartime vehicles and equipment. But guys, you shouldn't let your morality get in the way of making oodles

of money. And here's a theory I have. I think the reason that Henry Ford was so interested in making cars was because he had a lot of people he wanted to drive away from and or run over. Henry Ford, he wasn't just races. He was also extremely anti Semitic. Men can do at all. One thing that Ford did that seemed progressive at the time was that he hired thousands of black men to work at his factories in Detroit, and when they first started, he paid his black employees

the same as his white employees. But if you can believe it, that didn't last because Ford was super opposed to unions, effectively cutting off people from advocating for better working conditions rights having any say in the business, and the labor was often dangerous, so he didn't listen to his employees when they complained, being like, hey, I might lose my arm or die in your factory. And he

especially didn't listen to his employees who were black. He also aggressively surveiled his black employees while they were working, and then he even hired people to spy on them outside of work. If they're getting into stuff he didn't approve of, he'd fire them. And throughout the nineteen twenties, the jobs for black workers and white workers started segregating, and the black employees were disproportionately assigned to more dangerous jobs, jobs that also didn't get as much pay as jobs

white employees were assigned to. And also in general, Ford was just really paternalistic to his black employees, like with the surveillance, he was like, I tell you what to do at work and outside of work. And of course Henry Ford was so anti semitic. How anti semitic was he? Well, Hitler gave him a shout out in his autobiographical manifesto Mind comp Now that's someone you want to compliment from. In nineteen nineteen, Ford bought a newspaper called The Dearborn Independent,

based in a suburb of Detroit. He bought this newspaper because he wanted an outlet to express his opinions. You know, sometimes people write in a diary. Other people need a whole newspaper. Have you guys heard of this rich people buying newspapers so that they can express their opinions. What's up Washington Post? And Ford's main opinions were about pacifism and anti Semitism, which you wouldn't think those things would go hand in hand, being anti violence but also hating

a group of people. It's like owning a prius that saves the environment but using it to run over people. And why did Henry Ford hate Jewish people? Well, nothing can actually justify your bigotry, so if you can believe it, his reasons were really stupid. First, he was convinced that Jewish people were trying to take over the world. Why did he think this because of a book called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was a fabricated

text published in Russia in nineteen oh three. So he read a fake book and was like, look, the Jews are trying to have world domination. So if you're one of those people who are like, wow, everyone is so media illiterate nowadays, don't worry. We've always lacked media literacy. Ford was convinced that the Jews controlled the banks, specifically

this nebulous idea of the International Bank. And then he was like, the international Bank is what's responsible for the United States entering World War One and inciting the war for their own benefit. So Ford bought The Dearborn Independent because he needed to warn the American people, I mean specifically people in Michigan about the scourge of the American Jew. He's like, watch out, they're in kahoots to take over the world. And he was not subtle at all about

his anti semitism. From nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty seven, the front page of the weekly paper featured a series called The International Jew The World's Problem. Of course, many people hated the newspaper, and after he started the series The International Jew the World's Problem, a lot of people started protesting the newspaper. It was removed from libraries and people were boycotting Ford automobiles, and very briefly he stopped the series, but less than a year later he sneakily

started it up again. He's like, they're not gonna notice that I'm spouting this hateful red rick. But they did, and actually his anti semitism led to the downfall of the newspaper. Isn't that nice when a bad guy gets what's coming to him. I feel like that rarely happens today.

But what happened was in April nineteen twenty four, the newspaper started publishing pieces about this attorney named Aaron Sapiro, and Sapiro was like, guys, you know what you're writing about me are just full on lies, So I'm gonna sue you for libel. Dumbasses. That's why you don't go after lawyers. They know the law. Henry Ford was supposed to appear in court, but instead of doing that, because there's this whole media circus about it, he just shut

down the newspaper and agreed to a settlement. Part of that settlement was he had to release a formal apology to Sapiro, and being the little bitch that he was, he didn't even write the apology himself, but he did have to give Sapiro a lot of money, and you'd think, wow, justice has been served. Henry Ford won't be able to

poison the world with his anti Semitism now. Not exactly, because even though he lost his newspaper, he was still doing a lot of other stuff to try to prevent Jewish people from taking over the world, because he saw the threat of the American jew coming from everywhere. He blamed all things modern on the Jews, from women wearing shorter skirts to the general blooster societal norms of the time,

and one of the biggest threats out there jazz. Okay, let's make Henry Ford's ghost really upset and play some jazz music. Oh God, ghost screams, turn that racket off. Here's what one of those articles in The Dearborn Independence said about jazz in nineteen twenty one. Many people have wondered, whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent homes and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. Popular music is a

Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes are of Jewish origin. Yes, he thought that jazz was making everyone stupid. It was making people sensual and heaven forbid sexual, driving good Americans into a frenzy. Jazz must be stopped. But the real moron in this situation was Henry Ford, Because yeah, he was being bigoted against the Jews, but the Jews didn't even create jazz music. Black people created jazz.

What a dumbass like, Yeah, there are a lot of Jewish performers and writers, but there are also even more black performers and writers. So Henry Ford, he wasn't just being bigoted, he was also being real dumb. Henry Ford wasn't even fact checking his racism either way. He hated it, hated that jazz crap. So what did Henry Ford do

to combat the evils of jazz? Well, he was determined to bring us back to the good old days when America was great without the filth of that terrible music, where people were listening to music that made them dance and act appropriate music that would make you dance in a square be right back after these soothing advertisements. Henry

Ford hated modernity. He wanted the country to return to a pastoral, good old boy past, you know, before Jewish immigration exponentially increased in the late nineteenth century, and perhaps even when black people were still enslaved. The fact that Henry Ford was thirsty and nostalgic for this old time America was really hypocritical because he hated farming. He grew up on a farm, and he said in his autobiography that the only thing he liked about farming was that

it reminded him of his deceased mother. He said, I never had any particular love for the farm. It was the mother on the farm I loved. He's like, oh, Mommy, how I miss you. But thank gonna see you're gone so that you don't have to see the horrors of jazz music. And even though he hated farming, he was like, that's when America was great, you know, that's when ladies were wearing long skirts and I only had to hear music played by fiddles and shit, none of this jazz

crap existed. Jazz is so evil, you know. It's music that's played in a wide variety of time signatures. People were improvising, which we all know. If you improvise, that's how the devil gets into your soul. Like, how do people come up with those notes so fast? It's because their soul is tethered to hell. Hell makes you creative. Board started collecting old farming equipment and antiques, and that

wasn't all. He was like, I need to remind people how great life used to be when everyone was dancing in an appropriate manner. So around the same time he was publishing his anti semitic newspaper in Dearborn. He bought several historic ends there and made it a hub of old time music and dance. He hired a dance master an old time dance orchestra. He then paid for old time dance to be introduced into surrounding schools and universities. He was like, hey, guys, you can use this as good, classic,

pure physical education. He said that square dancing provides quote, social training, courtesy, good citizenship, along with rhythm, though nothing too complicated. Remember this is white people dancing. He hosted fiddle competitions, made an old time music radio series, made films about old time musicians, and he and his wife

even wrote and distributed old time dance manuals. And here's another bad thing about working in a Ford factory, besides the racism and the paternalism, was he also made his employees attend square dancing events. Don't you guys hate it when you've been toiling at a factory all day and then your boss is like, now you gotta do some dosey do promenade. Twirl your partner, but don't twirl her too hard. That would be crazy. We don't want anyone to get dizzy. Dizziness is bad ergo also created by

the Jews. So Henry Ford, he thought that consumerism would lead to world peace. Ha ha ha ha ha he he he he. And he also thought that dancing was great for the body and the spirit, and one of the dance manuals he and his wife wrote, he was like, dancing is great. It has the quote tendency to allay nervous trouble. It can improve health. It's an important cultural and social diversion. But of course, he was like, it has to be a certain kind of dancing. Other dance

could corrupt you. He called square dancing and other folk dances the style of dancing which best fits the American temperament. Yes, Americans should just dance in a square. We should only be dancing to beats of four and sometimes three if we're feeling naughty and want to do a waltz. But nothing else. In the dance manual, he also tried to rationalize why this new dancing was bad. He said, dancing to jazz, or as he called it, ultra modern dancing,

has a one on one quality. He said, It begins and ends with a single couple, no more as necessary, the group's spirit of fun is absent. He was also like this, dancing takes place in cramped, crowded, possibly sweaty rooms, he said. Dancing that inspires the group's spirit of fun requires room. Rooms in cities, especially in cabarets, are expensive. Hence the form of dancing has been encouraged that enables the largest possible number of paining couples to dance together

in the smallest possible space. The result is that, in the modern method, the movement of the dance is mostly above the feet. That's right. Jazz dancing and other modern dances have people dancing above their dogs, above their toesies, above their foots. What a terrible thought. You guys know what's above the feet, hips, waists, arms, chests, and worst of all, genitals. Henry Ford's like, God, the steaks couldn't

be higher. People are dancing with their pelvis? Is Ford believe that the only part of your body that should touch another body during dancing was the arms? Anything else was inappropriate and Unamerican? Isn't it great when people disguise

racism and anti semitism with propriety and patriotism. Of the many ironies in his square dancing campaign is that what Ford thought of as square dancing was actually created by black people and Antebellum America often enslaved people were forced to dance at white balls as ornaments, you know, but usually they didn't have any dance training, so they would have to observe, you know, the dances of the time, the French quadrille, etc. And then adapt them because they

had no instruction. Like in square dancing, there's all this call and response, and black people were actually the people who started doing that. So again, Henry Ford is bigoted and also stupid. Another big irony to all of this is that he hated modernity, and yet he was the one who created an affordable car that people could buy, thus propelling everyone into a more modern era where you could just scoot around, and if you could scoot around, it was easier to get up to all sorts of

modern business. But Henry Ford was probably like, oh, but I just wanted people to use my cars so they could drive real fast to like church, or to like the barn, or to like, you know, stores that sell really long skirts for women. At first, a lot of people saw his square dancing crusade as homie as missionary work is innocent, just a guy who wanted to do

some harmless old time cracker barrel style living. And with his efforts, square dancing did catch on for a few years, and it would have been really embarrassing if it didn't because he was funneling so much money into square dance education across the country. He was so desperate for the square dance. He's like a square dance simp. And yeah, square dancing did catch on for a little bit, but unfortunately it didn't last. Oh no, no, square dancing could

not compete with the rhythm and the fun of jazz. Sorry, Henry Ford, Maybe you should have introduced some other shapes to square dancing. Maybe a circle if you're feeling crazy, maybe a triangle. Maybe you should have let people shake their asses a little bit, like just a hint of jiggle. And wouldn't it be nice if that was the end of the story, that Ford failed to bring square dancing back to its zen in American culture, that his beliefs

rooted in white supremacy were thwarted. That would be nice if it was the end of the story. But unfortunately for us, and specifically for me, in my elementary school music classroom, which, by the way, was not a classroom, it was a trailer outside. Ford's crusade for square dancing inspired a bunch of other people to get on the square dancing bandwagon and try to make it a thing again. One of these crusaders for square dancing was this guy named Lloyd Shaw. He was also known as doctor Lloyd

Pappy Shaw. I don't think he was actually a doctor though. Maybe he was a pappy though. And the nineteen thirties and forties he traveled across the country with a dance show that advocated for square dancing to be part of physical education. There are also other folk dancing groups that started advocating for square dancing to become the national folk dance.

But there was infighting amongst the square dance community because over the decades a new version of square dancing emerged called modern Western square dancing, and the folk purists were like, that's not real square dancing. They're like, it's a bastardization of it. Sometimes in modern Western square dancing they don't even have a live fiddle player. If you don't have a fiddler, how can you even dance? And sometimes with modern Western square dancing. They just danced to recorded music.

That's disgusting to think. If we keep doing modern Western square dancing, we won't be able to employ all of the fiddlers. The fiddlers need jobs. Despite their differences, the square dancer rallied and when Ronald Reagan was president, not only did he introduce crack into neighborhoods, he also signed a bill that made square dancing the national folk dance. The bill said, the American people value the display of etiquette among men and women, which is a major element

of square dancing. It's a traditional form of family recreation that dissolves arbitrary social distinctions. Actually, what it was supposed to do was make everybody white. But unfortunately for the square dancers, that bill only made square dancing the national folk dance between the years nineteen eighty two and nineteen ninety three. But the square dancers couldn't be stopped, and they sasheyed their way to the states. They started law being legislators at the state level to make square dance

their official state folk dance. And it was pretty easy to do because most states didn't have official folk dance. And so today square dancing is the official state dance in thirty one states, and so unfortunately, Henry Ford got his way and many of us had to grow up square dancing, which was humiliating and also originated from white supremacy. I think this story does illustrate something about racists. They're very persistent and sometimes they can be creative in the

way that they like to legally enshrine white supremacy. Henry Ford did it with dancing and also just by having a shit ton of money. But something cool that's happening right now is I think square dancing line dancing is being reclaimed. We're shifting the narrative because recently one of my friends, Bushwick, was at a lesbian bar and there's a bunch of diverse lesbians learning how to line dance and square dance. Yes, diverse lesbians. Henry Ford would have

hated that. He probably couldn't even comprehend the idea of diverse lesbians. Every episode of American filth we learn a lesson, and I think the lesson we learn in this episode is that perhaps it's pretty easy to change the state dance. Like, I'm from Georgia, grew up there. That's where I had to square dance. And I'm thinking it's time for a change. I'm from Atlanta, the home of krunk music. I'm thinking it's time to change Georgia State dance from square dancing

to the Soldier Boy. Because what's really more valuable learning how to promenade dosey dough sachet but not in a gay way? Or is it more valuable to learn how to superman on these hoes? Anyway, any of you guys in Georgia let me know if you want to get in cahoots to change the state dance. Cue the credits. American Field is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was written, hosted, and produced by me Gabby Watts. The theme song is by Jesse and Eiswanger.

Our exec producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crole, and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show on Instagram at American filth Pod. Also make sure to give the show a review, leave some stars, send the show to your friends, to your family, to your enemy, to all the people you are talking to on tender Hinge Grinder, Rayah. Do I have any listeners on Riya? If so, make sure to send this to all the celebrities on your dating app. Talk at you, guys next time. School of Humans