WPAA-TV is part of the America250 | CT Commission. “Moses Yale Beach Revealed” is our primary “Doing History” humanities project. This initiative has created several educational resources, including:
- An all-ages book titled The Check Minus, which features a timeline of Beach’s life.
- Videos and podcasts like “In His Time: Antebellum America and Moses Yale Beach In His Own Words,” available on the WPAA-TV YouTube channel.
The creative team is planning a dramatization called ‘In Conversation.’ It draws inspiration from Steve Allen’s Meeting of the Minds. Allen had notable historical figures, such as Socrates, Galileo, Marie Antoinette, and Attila the Hun, discuss timeless contemporary issues from their unique perspectives. The goal was accessible history, brought to life in conversation. These conversations about complex ideas shed light on topics from different points in time. Our dramatization will delve into the complex ideas that shaped Antebellum America and inform our understanding of an America Divided, today.
Moses Yale Beach, a native of Wallingford, was a key figure in 19th-century American media and technology. However, information about Beach is scarce. To date, he remains a footnote in history. An avid reader, he was unlike others in the conversations in development, he did not write a biography. However, his decade as publisher and editor of the penny paper The SUN (1838-48) provides us with a pivitol window into mass communication leading up to the Civil War.
A narrator will set the stage for each conversation and potentially add a woman’s perspective to the topic at hand.
Roger Sherman Baldwin (1839) – Amistad Case Attorney
Historical questions: What did “human rights” mean to different classes of white Northerners? How did newspaper coverage shape public opinion on Amistad? On Slavery? On the role of newspapers?
P.T. Barnum (1842) – The Showman
Historical questions: How did these entrepreneurs understand their role in shaping public taste? What’s the line between innovation and manipulation?
Edgar Allan Poe (1844) – Year of “The Balloon Hoax”
Historical questions: Was hoax journalism considered ethical entrepreneurship? How did literary figures navigate commercial publishing?
Willis A Hodges (1846) – anti-slavery activist, newspaper editor, black member Convention 1867-68
Historical questions: Does the Sun shine for all?
Daniel Webster (1849) – The Statesman
Historical questions: How did media figures participate in expansion politics? What compromises did “principled” men make?