Mahaska County Historical Society Hosts Guest Speaker

Dr. Lisa L. Ossian speaks before a gathering of the Mahaska County Historical Society

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska County Historical Society hosted speaker and author Dr. Lisa Ossian to Bradbury Hall at the Nelson Pioneer Farm Monday evening. She spoke about “The Early Depression Dilemmas of Rural Iowa, 1929-1933” and was sponsored by Humanities Iowa.

Ossian is Professor of History at Des Moines Area Community College. She has two scheduled talks on the subject, one of them being here at Nelson Pioneer Farm. Her focus was on her upcoming third book – ‘The Early Depression Dilemmas of Rural Iowa, 1929-1933’ where she focused on one of the chapters in this upcoming book.

That chapter looks at the prohibition dilemma. “The 18th Amendment had passed in 1920. We had prohibition for a decade; 15 years in Iowa. People were starting to get a little concerned that the amendment might get repealed.” (It was eventually repealed in 1933.) There had never been a repeal of the Constitution before. So what I look at is 3 Iowa leaders and their arguments to keep prohibition.”

One of the things that is apparent about politics that surrounded government until recently was how partisan politics were. How distrust of even those in your own party ran deep, and it wasn’t uncommon to see Congressmen or Senators leading massive protests down the streets of Des Moines or any other town. In comparison to the rhetoric of today’s politics, we are well behaved and mild in our behavior compared to years past.

Dr. Ossian has written two previous books: ‘The Forgotten Generation American Children and World War II’ and also ‘The Home Fronts of Iowa 1939-1945’.