Penn's 'History Detective' Investigates His Own Possession
By John Ostapkovich
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A Penn professor who is one of the hosts of the PBS show History Detectives investigates one of his own possessions.
Tukufu Zuberi moonlights. His day job is as chair of Penn's Sociology Department, but for ten years he's done his History Detectives gig, unearthing the real story behind various objects. In tomorrow's episode, he focuses on something of his own.
"The poster I have is called Our Colored Heroes, and it was printed in 1918, during World War I, and to me this seems kind of odd, and in 1918 race relations were not that good," since there was widespread discrimination including in the armed forces.
"The other thing that struck me about this poster is the imagery that was on the front of it. Here were two African-Americans fighting a large number of German soldiers and these German soldiers were white."
Professor Zuberri says if you want to know its back-story, you're going to have to watch the show.
