Mickey McElya
speaker
374 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 3 Aug
Mickey McElya’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The midterms are coming, and that means the news cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall.
So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated.
I'm Laila Fadil.
On Up First, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes.
Follow or subscribe to Up First today, wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Fresh Air.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
There was a time when the Miss America pageant was the biggest show in America.
Tens of millions of people gathered around their televisions every September, and for years, it was the highest-rated broadcast in the country.
Today, the Miss America pageant has become more like a relic.
It doesn't even air on television anymore.
But back in September of 1968, Miss America was a symbol of what a woman should be and the target of a burgeoning women's liberation movement.
That year, one of the most iconic moments in American history took place, feminists on the Atlantic City boardwalk setting fire to their bras.
There's just one problem.
The bra burning never actually happened.
My guest today, historian Mickey McElyea, writes in her new book, Liberation Summer, that the bra burning was a creation of the newspapers invented before the protests even began.
And that detail matters because it meant the women's liberation movement was defined by a caricature before it could define itself.
The real story, she says, is bigger than the myth.
That same afternoon, three groups of women took a stand.
Feminist protesters, contestants of the first-ever Miss Black America pageant, and the women who came to defend Miss America herself.
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