Two broadcast journalists from “Back Story with the American History Guys,” a public radio show, interviewed me a few weeks ago for a show titled “Committed: Marriage in America.” The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia sponsor the shows, which bring “historical perspective to the events happening around us today. On each installment, renowned U.S. historians . . . tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths.” As they explore the roots of what’s going on today, they seek to reveal connections or disconnections between the past and the present.
For this past week’s airing the headline under the magnifying glass concerned marriage in America. From the colonial era to the present, the hosts examined a range of issues. I talked to them about quickie marriages in Maryland in the 1930s, a time when one place in the State was “Vegas before Vegas was Vega.” By the time of the Great Depression eloping to Elkton had entered the nation’s lexicon” so I explained how that all came about for the University of Virginia broadcasters.
