A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans (23 page)

For Elizabeth to remain compelling, though, she had to keep telling lies, which battered her credibility. So many questions were raised about her that J. Edgar Hoover was forced to publicly defend his informant before Senator William Jenner's Internal Security Subcommittee in 1954. “All information furnished by Miss Bentley, which was susceptible to check, has proven to be correct,” he testified. The director's endorsement thrilled Elizabeth and, she said, “made her feel like a different person.” Nevertheless, she became increasingly marginalized and sank deeper into an alcoholic stupor. A series of teaching jobs all ended the same way—with her dismissal—until she finally landed a position with a penal institution for girls. It was an ignominious end for the Red Spy Queen who had once commanded the attention of the nation and helped set its course during the early Cold War. On December 3, 1963, at age fifty-five, she died of abdominal cancer, already well on her way to obscurity.

The obscure Americans chronicled thus far all have the distinction of being dead. The fact that Dick Fosbury is alive and well (as of 2007) should probably have been an impediment to his inclusion here, since time is the ultimate arbiter of historical status. But Fosbury bent over backward to get in anyway—with an awkward maneuver known as the Fosbury Flop. It was a technique that transformed a third-rate athlete into an Olympic champion, and in the process revolutionized the sport of high jumping. Roy Blount Jr. described the still-unconventional flop in a 1969 edition of
Sports Illustrated:

Before the flop became standard, high jumpers cleared the bar with the traditional straddle method—kicking the outside leg straight up, ascending after it, stretching out facedown along the bar, and swiveling over it. Fosbury, a self-described gangly and uncoordinated wannabe athlete, never could master the straddle. To compensate, he adopted an antiquated style as a young jumper known as “the scissors,” where the athlete runs at the bar and goes over sitting up, with the legs positioned like an open pair of sheers. It was terribly inefficient, as the center of gravity was too high to achieve competitive results. But Fosbury began to modify the scissors jump by laying out more and landing on his back—the larval form of what would become the flop. The evolution of the unique form was gradual and intuitive.

“You'll read that I'm a gymnast,” Fosbury told Roy Blount in 1969. “You'll read that I'm a physicist and that I sat down one day and figured out a better way to jump. You'll read that I ran up and tripped one day and fell backward over the bar.” In reality, he said, “I didn't change my style. It changed inside me.”

Fosbury and his slightly ridiculous flop reached their apotheoses at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, when the twenty-one-year-old cleared the bar with a record jump (7 feet; 4
¹
/4 inches) and won the gold medal. Spectators roared their approval. Traditionalists were aghast. “Kids imitate champions,” U.S. Olympic coach Payton Jordan said at the time. “If they try to imitate Fosbury, he will wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers because they will all have broken necks.”

The kids did indeed mimic Fosbury, hurling themselves over sofas and landing on their backs. But instead of maiming themselves, they eventually helped make the Fosbury Flop the standard it is today. Still, the man behind it all—now an engineer in Ketchum, Idaho—has a rather subdued legacy, perhaps because the sport he transformed lacks the rabid following others have. That may change someday, and millions will gather to watch
Monday Night High Jumping
. But until that happens, Dick Fosbury's place here among some of America's more overlooked characters seems fairly secure. He's certainly in good company.

Books

Andrews, William L., ed.
Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century
. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Black, Clinton V.
Pirates of the West Indies
. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Blackman, Ann.
Wild Rose: Rose O'Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy
. New York: Random House, 2005.

Brands, H. W.
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
. New York: Doubleday, 2005.

Brekus, Catherine A.
Strangers & Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845
. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Brodhead, Michael J.
Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier
. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Brookhiser, Richard.
Alexander Hamilton: American
. New York: The Free Press, 1999.

Caesar, Gene.
Incredible Detective: The Biography of William J. Burns
. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

Canfield, Gae Whitney.
Sarah Winnemucca of the Northern Paiutes
. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983.

Davis, Burke.
Old Hickory: A Life of Andrew Jackson
. New York: Dial Press, 1977.

Donald, David Herbert.
Lincoln
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Duncan, Russell.
Freedom's Shore: Tunis Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen
. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986.

Durey, Michael.
With the Hammer of Truth: James Thomson Callender and America's Early National Heroes
. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1990.

Eastman, Tamara J., and Constance Bond.
The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read
. Cambria, California: Fern Canyon Press, 2000.

Fischer, David Hackett.
Raul Revere's Ride
. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Flynn, John T.
Men of Wealth: The Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941.

Gabaldon, Guy.
Saipan: Suicide Island
. Privately printed, 1990.

Gaustad, Edwin, and Leigh Schmidt.
The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today
. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2002.

Hatfield, Mark O., with the assistance of the Senate Historical Office.
Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789–1993
. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997.

Haynes, John Earl and Harvey Klehr.
Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.

Herman, Arthur.
Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator
. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca.
Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims
. 1883. Reprint, Bishop, California: Sierra Media, 1969.

Hoyt, Edwin P.
Spectacular Rogue: Gaston B. Means
. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.

Hunt, William R.
Front Page Detective: William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880–1930
. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990.

Kauffman, Michael W.
American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies
. New York: Random House, 2004.

Klement, Frank L.
The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War
. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1970.

LaPlante, Eve.
American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, The Woman Who Defied the Puritans
. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.

Lewis, Arthur H.
The Day They Shook the Plum Tree
. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963.

Lewis, Charlene Boyer. “Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: Napoleon's American Sister-in-Law,” in Racine, Karen, and Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian, eds.,
The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500–1850
. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming.

Macdonald, Anne L.
Feminine Ingenuity: How Women Inventors Changed America
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

Marszalek, John F.
The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House
. New York: Free Press, 1997.

McCullough, David.
John Adams
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

McPherson, James M.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War
(Oxford History of the United States). New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Moody, Richard.
The Astor Place Riot
. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1958.

———. Edwin Forrest:
First Star of the American Stage
. New York: Knopf, 1960.

Nicolay, John G., and John Hay.
Abraham Lincoln: A History
(ten volumes). New York: Century Co., 1890.

Old, Elizabeth Fagg.
Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America's First Women Explorers
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Olmsted, Kathryn S.
Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley
. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Oney, Steve.
And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank
. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Pitch, Anthony S.
The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814
. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1998.

Purcell, L. Edward, ed.
The Vice Presidents: A Biographical Dictionary
. New York: Facts on File, 1998.

Remini, Robert V.
Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832
. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Rogers, Horatio.
Mary Dyer of Rhode Island: The Quaker Martyr That Was Hanged on Boston Common, June 1, 1660
. Providence, Rhode Island: Preston and Rounds, 1896.

Ross, Ishbel.
Rebel Rose: The Life of Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Confederate Spy
. New York: Harper, 1954.

Russell, Francis.
The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times
. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Safire, William.
Scandalmonger: A Novel
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Sandburg, Carl.
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
(four volumes). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.

Schom, Alan.
Napoleon Bonaparte
. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Seaver, James E.
A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison, De-He-wa-mis, The White Woman of the Genesee
. Seventh Edition. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1910.

Slack, Charles.
Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon
. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Spargo, Tamsin.
Wanted Man: The Forgotten Story of Oliver Curtis Perry, an American Outlaw
. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.

Sparkes, Boyden, and Samuel Taylor Moore.
Hetty Green: The Witch of Wall Street
. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935.

Stanley, Autumn.
Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology
. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Tierney, Kevin.
Darrow: A Biography
. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979.

Tuller, Roger H.
Let No Guilty Man Escape: A Judicial Biography of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker
. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

Widmer, Ted.
Martin Van Buren
. New York: Times Books, Henry Holt, 2005.

Willison, George F.
The Pilgrim Reader: The Story of the Pilgrims as Told by Themselves and Their Contemporaries, Friendly and Unfriendly
. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1953.

Zanjani, Sally.
Sarah Winnemucca
. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Zug, James.
American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, The Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World
. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Periodicals

Blount, Roy Jr. “Being Backwards Gets Results.”
Sports Illustrated,
February 10, 1969.

Gillis, Anna Maria. “A Socialite Conquers an Arctic Wilderness.”
The Washington Post,
April 10, 1996.

Kakesako, Gregg K. “‘Pied Piper' Returning to Saipan.”
Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
June 6, 2004.