All Episodes

ABC:LHS #061-1   Henry Walter “Slick” Schlichter...
...started as a bantamweight and a boxing promoter who became a sportswriter. When he partnered with Black baseball pioneer Sol White, they formed the best Negro league team in the country at the turn of the 20th century.

ABC:LHS #061   Play Ball! (part 3): Four More Baseball Pioneers 
Henry Walter “Slick” Schlichter started as a bantamweight and a boxing promoter who became a sportswriter and then partnered with Black baseball pioneer Sol White to organize the best Negro league team in the country at the turn of the 20th century.
Cub Stricker was a "good field - no hit" 2nd baseman with a hot temper who was arrested on the field to avoid fan rioting when he struck a heckler with a thrown ball.
Jack McFetridge was the best amateur pitcher in Philadelphia for years; when he finally went pro, he wasn’t that good.
Pete Childs was a fine 2nd baseman and served in the role for the 1902 Phillies.  It was while serving as player-manager for an Ohio League team that he pulled the unfathomable feat of throwing one pitch as a reliever and getting three out.
 

BBB:LHWS #030   Grayce Nottage-Nicholas...
...was an older sister of Civil Rights activist C. Delores Tucker, but she made a name for herself as a teacher, parole officer, police detective, and beauty queen at a time when women of color were not welcomed to traditional beauty pageants.

ABC:LHS #060-3   Anna Justina Magee...
...was the last of seven siblings who lived together their entire lives.  Her legacy for the family was a hospital designed for people who were convalescing from injury – The Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.

ABC:LHS #060-2   Elizabeth Duane Gillespie...
...came from a politically active family; she was the chief fundraiser and organizer for the Sanitary Fair of 1864, which put her in the position to lead the way for the Centennial Exposition of 1876.  She ended up rescuing it from disaster. 

ABC:LHS #060-1   London-born Esther DeBerdt Reed...
...married a colonist who became George Washington’s right-hand man. Esther switched her Tory allegiance to become a radial patriot. The organization she founded to provide some relief to the soldiers who fought for her freedom didn’t quite go the way that she had planned.

ABC:LHS #060   Women's History Month for 2024 features...
London-born Esther DeBerdt Reed who married a man who became George Washington’s right-hand man. She switched her Tory allegiance to become a radial patriot; the organization she founded to provide some relief to the soldiers fighting for her freedom didn’t quite go the way that she had planned.
Elizabeth Duane Gillespie came from a politically active family; she was the chief fundraiser and organizer for the Sanitary Fair of 1864, which put her in the position to lead the way for the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
Anna Justina Magee was the last of seven siblings who lived together their entire lives.  Her legacy for the family was a hospital designed for people who were convalescing from injury – The Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.
 

BBB #029   The City of Philadelphia...
...dropped a bomb on one of its neighborhoods in 1985.  The resulting fire killed 6 adult and 5 child members of a radical primitivist environmental anarchic group called MOVE.  The fire spread along Osage Avenue, destroyed more than 60 homes, and left 250 men, women, and children homeless.  Former MOVE members are interred in Nature’s Sanctuary, the green natural burial section at Laurel Hill West.  Louise Leaphart James and LaVerne Leaphart Sims were sisters to the acknowledged group leader John Africa but left the organization before the conflagration.  To tell their story, I must tell the story of John Africa, the formation of MOVE, and its frequent confrontations with neighbors and city officials. 

ABC:LHS #059-3   Winifred Harris...
...was the woman you wanted as your next-door neighbor.  She rescued abandoned properties in West Philadelphia and converted them into vegetable gardens for the neighborhood, while planting more than 1000 trees for the city.  Her shocking death at the hands of a home intruder was mourned by all who knew her.

ABC:LHS #059-2   Samuel L. Evans...
...saw five lynchings before he was 10 years old.  Through machinations that people are still pondering, he made himself the “Godfather of Black Philadelphia” despite never being elected to public office.  His wake was in City Hall.

ABC:LHS #059-1   Sarah A. Anderson...
...served 17 years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and quietly changed life for the better for thousands of Pennsylvanians, Black and white.

ABC:LHS #059 Black History Month for 2025 features...
Sarah A. Anderson came from an educated family – her father was the first Black dentist in Florida and her husband was a politically active podiatrist.  Sarah served 17 years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and quietly changed life for the better for thousands of Pennsylvanians, Black and white.
Samuel L. Evans was also from Florida and saw five lynchings before he was 10 years old.  Through machinations that people are still pondering, he managed to make himself the “Godfather of Black Philadelphia” despite never being elected to public office.  His wake was in City Hall.
Winifred Harris was the woman you wanted as your next-door neighbor.  She rescued abandoned properties in West Philadelphia and converted them into vegetable gardens for the neighborhood, while planting more than 1000 trees for the city.  Her shocking death at the hands of a home intruder was mourned by all who knew her. 
For Black history month, learn about these three lesser-known heroes of Black Philadelphia in the February 2024 episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Three More Black Pioneers”. 

BBB #028   The Philadelphia Orchestra...
...has been one of America’s “Big Five” philharmonics for more than a century.  As it was being assembled in the late 1890s, it looked like the job of “first conductor” would go to local concertmaster and second generation Irish American Harry Gordon Thunder, but instead the position went to Johann Friedrich Ludwig “Fritz” Scheel, a German immigrant with seemingly unlimited energies and innovations; the job probably shortened his life. 
In contemporary times, the first violinist chair was held for decades by Germantown-born William Joseph de Pasquale, a calm, dependable right-hand man to the conductor, and one of four brothers who played together in a string quartet. 
These three men – Thunder, Scheel, and de Pasquale – are part of the reason that the Philadelphia Orchestra has its universal reputation.  

ABC:LHS #058-5   McNeil Laboratories...
...introduced Tylenol Elixir for Children in 1955, then watched it become one of the best-selling over-the-counter meds of all time.

ABC:LHS #058-4   William Warner learned how to sugarcoat pills to make them palatable. Warner’s Pharmacopeia was distributed internationally and served as the standard reference for doctors and pharmacists for years.