Mo Rocca > Quotes

“I love Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, peace on Earth and mangers, Salvation Army bell ringers and reindeer, the movie 'Meet Me in St. Louis,' office parties and cookies.”
― Mo Rocca

“Oh, this has got to be something humorus.”
― Mo Rocca

“In 1799, he moved to a relatively small house in the expensive and fashionable London neighborhood of Mayfair, where, in the words of an article written shortly after his death, he “established himself as a refined voluptuary.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“These men were very much heroes. They deserve to be in textbooks and comic books. They are the Black Congressmen of Reconstruction.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“(It’s probably not coincidental that corsets passed from the world at the same time as “fainting couches.”) But it wasn’t health concerns that killed the corset; it was World War I. The need for metal for ammunition led the US War Industries Board in 1917 to urge women to stop buying corsets. Serendipitously, the very first modern bra had been patented only three years earlier, by debutante Caresse Crosby.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“The North won the war, but the South won the textbooks (blink and you might have missed Reconstruction in high school history class) and the movie house: in one scene in D. W. Griffith’s 1915 landmark and deeply racist film The Birth of a Nation, black legislators are depicted drinking, eating chicken, and putting their bare feet up on desks in the South Carolina statehouse. The movie’s message was clear: black people were inherently corrupt and unequipped to lead.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“the press hailed him as “the Genius of Freedom,” on a par with Sumner and Lincoln himself.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“Left-Handedness The 10 percent of human beings who are left-handed have long been considered unlucky, deceptive, or even evil in cultures the world over. During the Spanish Inquisition the Catholic Church condemned those who used their left hand. Zulu tribesmen of the 1800s placed the left hands of children into holes filled with boiling water to discourage their use. The nineteenth-century criminologist and white supremacist Cesare Lombroso lent dangerous authority to the long-standing social stigma, claiming a scientific connection between left-handedness, moral degeneracy, and the “savage races.” No wonder schoolteachers continued discouraging it in students, often through physical abuse. J. W. Conway’s 1935 On Curing the Disability and Disease of Left-Handedness argued that being a lefty was a handicap in a world that was industrializing and standardizing. Handicap? Turns out being a southpaw is a fast lane to the West Wing. Seven of our last fifteen presidents—that’s a whopping 47 percent—have been left-handed. I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure a CNN panel will eventually sort it out.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“Men they had been trained to regard as subhuman were now their representatives in Washington, not to mention their governors, judges, sheriffs, and schoolmasters. In reaction, the region saw the flourishing of domestic terrorist groups like the Red Shirts in South Carolina, the White League in Louisiana, and the White Liners in Mississippi. Violence became part of everyday politics.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“acrobatic”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“He occupied the very seat once held by Jefferson Davis, who had left the Senate to become the president of the Confederacy. (After the war Davis had been apprehended attempting to flee to Cuba, disguised in his wife’s clothing.)”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

“the incongruity of slaves waiting on the author of the Declaration of Independence.”
― Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving