tradition

Seemingly every time President Trump speaks about race or what it means to be an American, he sparks outrage.

His purposeful use of divisive and inflammatory language to energize his political base isn’t new in American politics, though. It’s part of a legacy of racism going back to the country’s founding, when the authors of the Constitution gave slaveholders immense political power while allowing them to treat enslaved Africans as less than human.

“It taps into this racial resentment toward Black people that is deep-seated,” said Pearl Dowe, a professor of political science and African American studies at Emory University in Atlanta. “Politicians use it because it works.”

Trump’s tactics served him well in 2016, but they feel out of step in an election year that has seen a dramatic shift in the public’s attitudes about race.

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and protests against police brutality that have spread to all 50 states, Americans of various backgrounds, including many white people who live in conservative strongholds, seem eager to make amends for the bigotry and injustice the country has inflicted on Black people.

In a Civiqs poll conducted in early July, 53% of registered voters said they supported Black Lives Matter, up from 38% who said they supported the movement in the summer of 2017, after the violent white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va.

Russell Riley, a historian at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said that since the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and ’70s, Americans have come to expect something different from what Trump has offered so far — at the very least, a show of common cause with those demonstrating for racial progress.

“When Lyndon Johnson — a Texan — went before Congress and said, ‘We shall overcome,’ that changed the job description of every president since,” said Riley, who co-chairs the Miller Center Presidential Oral History Program at UVA. “Even with Nixon and Reagan, who trafficked in the seamier side of politics, there was some acknowledgement of the need for racial equality.”

Trump’s combativeness comes off as extreme and retrograde by comparison — whether he’s portraying Black Lives Matter activists as hellbent on “ending America,” summoning federal agents to face off with protesters or retweeting a video showing one of his supporters shouting “white power.”

And yet he rejects any notion that he’s fanning old racial hatred.

To understand this disconnect, Trump’s critics should know that he and many other Americans hold a competing view of the country, said Spencer Critchley, former communications consultant for Barack Obama.

They simply don’t see America as inherently unfair and racist, Critchley said. They believe the U.S. possesses a distinct identity and noble traditions that must be fiercely defended, not challenged.

An image of George Floyd was projected onto the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., during protests against police violence and racism.

(Steve Helber / Associated Press)

Given that outlook, no one should be surprised that Trump — who launched his 2016 campaign by disparaging Mexicans as rapists and murders, called NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem “sons of bitches” and refers to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” — resorts to the same formula of crude references and bigoted slights that helped previous presidential candidates curry favor with white voters, Critchley said.

“There’s this overlap between ethnic nationalism and racism,” said Critchley, author of the new book “Patriot of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next.” “It’s built into the foundation of the country, but he does have an instinctual sense of how to exploit it.”

What Trump fails to take seriously enough, Critchley said, is that successive generations of Americans have been denied the privileges and opportunities that make the country special. They love the country too, but they’ve been tormented by it instead of embraced.

In the 1960s, TV viewers watched in horror as footage showed violence against Black demonstrators: the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis and other activists in the South being beaten and attacked with water canons, police clashing with Black people during uprisings in Detroit and Newark and Watts.

They saw the hurt and anguish in the eyes of Black Americans who poured into the streets after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Even though Black Americans won the basic right to vote, to sit at lunch counters next to white patrons and send their children to integrated schools, racism lived on.

Alabama’s George Wallace ran for president in 1968 as a backlash against the civil rights movement, five years after declaring “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Richard Nixon ran that same year by appealing to the “silent majority” of conservative whites who felt threatened by social change and promised to respond to civil unrest with “law and order.”

In his July 3 speech at Mt. Rushmore, President Trump called Black Lives Matter protesters agitators who want to “end America” and vowed to protect monuments honoring what he described as the nation’s heritage, though some have been derided as emblems of white supremacy.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

A generation later, Ronald Reagan chose the Neshoba County Fair outside Philadelphia, Miss., to launch his 1980 general election campaign and tout “states’ rights,” a phrase that was popular with opponents of federal civil rights legislation. The county was the site of the 1964 murders of three voting-rights activists by white supremacists.

Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, refused to apologize for an attack ad featuring a convicted felon named Willie Horton that critics said stereotyped Black men as dangerous.

Trump’s campaign encompasses all those approaches: He demonizes entire ethnic groups as not fully American, lashes out at protesters and insinuates that white people, not people of color, are the ones most in need of protection.

In recent days, Trump has tried to stoke the fears of suburban white women, telling viewers of a town hall targeting Wisconsin voters that Democrats are planning to “eliminate single-family zoning, bringing who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.”

Black Americans are on average three times more likely than whites to be killed by police, according to a Harvard study released in June that analyzed 5,494 police-related deaths between 2013 and 2017. But in a recent CBS News interview, Trump responded to a question about why Black people continue to be killed by the police by distorting the truth: “So are white people,” he said. “More white people.”

He also said that those who fly the Confederate flag, a symbol of hate for many Black people, are celebrating their heritage and practicing their 1st Amendment right to free speech.

“When Donald Trump talks about ‘heritage,’ he means who has the heritage to be an American citizen,” Dowe said.

“He’s deliberately pandered to the idea that America is a nation rooted in white culture and power,” she said. “Others that reside here just reside; they are not due the full rights of citizenship. If others — people of color — stake their rights to citizenship and equality, then the way of life that white people are comfortable with will be no more.”

Democrats have also fostered discord and condoned racial bigotry. Riley noted that Andrew Jackson approved the use of mob violence against Southerners who subscribed to abolitionist literature, citing his belief that anti-slavery activists were trying to incite enslaved Africans to rise up.

For decades, the party tolerated leaders among their ranks who openly advocated for white supremacy and racial segregation.

Woodrow Wilson, who once wrote that Black people were “an ignorant and inferior race,” permitted a screening of “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House, even though it presents Ku Klux Klansmen as heroes.

In more recent years, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have faced accusations of racism over their support of criminal justice reforms in the 1990s that have contributed to mass incarceration of Americans of color.

A Trump rally in 2016. The president often uses such racially charged expressions to appeal to his majority-white base and to draw a distinction between his vision of America and that of the Democrats.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Trump, however, is on another level with his defense of Confederate symbols and his casting of protesters as traitors, historians say.

The same us-versus-them mentality and ethnic nationalism were at play when he questioned whether the Hawaii-born Obama, the country’s first black president, was a U.S. citizen.

Riley believes Trump’s insistence on reigniting familiar culture wars to woo voters reveals he has a “tin ear” when it comes to sensing what the country needs at a time of profound distress.

Americans face crisis and uncertainty at every turn — not just the police killings of Blacks and Latinos but the government’s fumbled response to a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 147,000 Americans and caused swaths of the country to halt their reopening plans, prolonging the worst jobs slump since the Great Depression.

“Maybe he’s going to be headstrong and hidebound, and do whatever he’s going to do,” Riley said, “but he’s failed to understand what can happen when he does these antagonistic things.”

With Trump prodding an already jittery nation with a daily barrage of falsehoods and racist provocations, the country appears to be lurching toward a level of chaos that he won’t be able to manipulate.

Dowe borrowed an expression that her 87-year-old mother, Barbara Ford, relies on for high-anxiety times like these: “Something’s got to give.”

“At some point,” Dowe said, “things that are negative and evil must give way to the truth and what is right.”

At a time when its leadership is in question and its mission challenged, the Library of Congress has named a new U.S. poet laureate, the much-honored author and translator Arthur Sze.

The library announced Monday that the 74-year-old Sze had been appointed to a one-year term, starting this fall. The author of 12 poetry collections and recipient last year of a lifetime achievement award from the library, he succeeds Ada Limón, who had served for three years. Previous laureates also include Joy Harjo, Louise Glück and Billy Collins.

Speaking during a recent Zoom interview with the Associated Press, Sze acknowledged some misgivings when Rob Casper, who heads the library’s poetry and literature center, called him in June about becoming the next laureate.

He wondered about the level of responsibilities and worried about the upheaval since President Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in May. After thinking about it overnight, he called Casper back and happily accepted.

“I think it was the opportunity to give something back to poetry, to something that I’ve spent my life doing,” he explained, speaking from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. “So many people have helped me along the way. Poetry has just helped me grow so much, in every way.”

Sze’s new job begins during a tumultuous year for the library, a 200-year-old, nonpartisan institution that holds a massive archive of books published in the United States. Trump abruptly fired Hayden after conservative activists accused her of imposing a “woke” agenda, criticism that Trump has expressed often as he seeks sweeping changes at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian museums and other cultural institutions.

Hayden’s ouster was sharply criticized by congressional Democrats, leaders in the library and scholarly community and such former laureates as Limón and Harjo.

Although the White House announced that it had named Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche as the acting librarian, daily operations are being run by a longtime official at the library, Robert Randolph Newlen. Events such as the annual National Book Festival have continued without interruption or revision.

Laureates are forbidden to take political positions, although the tradition was breached in 2003 when Collins publicly stated his objections to President George W. Bush’s push for war against Iraq.

Newlen is identified in Monday’s announcement as acting librarian, a position he was in line for according to the institution’s guidelines. He praised Sze, whose influences range from ancient Chinese poets to Wallace Stevens, for his “distinctly American” portraits of the Southwest landscapes and for his “great formal innovation.”

“Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences — and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space,” his statement reads in part.

Sze’s official title is poet laureate consultant in poetry, a 1985 renaming of a position established in 1937 as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. The mission is loosely defined as a kind of literary ambassador, to “raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”

Sze wants to focus on a passion going back more than a half-century to his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley — translation.

He remembers reading some English-language editions of Chinese poetry, finding the work “antiquated and dated” and deciding to translate some of it himself, writing out the Chinese characters and engaging with them “on a much deeper level” than he had expected. Besides his own poetry, he has published “The Silk Dragon: Translations From the Chinese.”

“I personally learned my own craft of writing poetry through translating poetry,” he says. “I often think that people think of poetry as intimidating, or difficult, which isn’t necessarily true. And I think one way to deepen the appreciation of poetry is to approach it through translation.”

Sze is a New York City native and son of Chinese immigrants who in such collections as “Sight Lines” and “Compass Rose” explores themes of cultural and environmental diversity and what he calls “coexisting.”

In a given poem, he might shift from rocks above a pond to people begging in a subway, from a firing squad in China to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia. His many prizes include the National Book Award for “Sight Lines.”

He loves poetry from around the world but feels at home writing in English, if only for the “richness of the vocabulary” and the wonders of its origins.

“I was just looking at the word ‘ketchup,’ which started from southern China, went to Malaysia, was taken to England, where it became a tomato-based sauce, and then, of course, to America,” he says. “And I was just thinking days ago, that’s a word we use every day without recognizing its ancestry, how it’s crossed borders, how it’s entered into the English language and enriched it.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

OAKLAND — Mayor Jerry Brown, who has projected an unconventional, even enigmatic, persona during 3 1/2 decades of public life, took a traditional step in his private life Saturday, marrying his longtime companion and manager of his upcoming campaign for state attorney general.

In a formal and quasireligious civil ceremony orchestrated by Brown himself and attended by almost 600 guests, the 67-year-old former governor exchanged rings with former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust. It was the first marriage for each, and came after 15 years together.

Elements of Brown’s past, present and future converged in the half-hour ceremony packed with much of the Bay Area’s Democratic political establishment. It was held in the rotunda of a renovated, historic Civic Center office building, the sort of project Brown has promoted as a pro-development mayor. The wedding was laced with biblical readings and Gregorian chants in Latin that Brown knew all too well as a former Roman Catholic seminarian.

“I wanted the sound to be traditional,” Brown said afterward. “Most [of it] is 800 years old and nothing is less than 500.”

It was not exactly the sort of wedding people had come to expect from a man who many years ago was dubbed Gov. Moonbeam for living in Spartan fashion, driving a state-issued Plymouth and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. Nor was it the wedding of a man who studied yoga, volunteered for Mother Teresa’s home for the poor people in Calcutta, or more recently lived in lofts in gritty parts of this city.

“This is more than traditional,” former San Francisco mayor and onetime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said after the wedding. “It would have satisfied anything the Kennedy clan would have put together. It’s California [political] history for 40 years.”

The attendees were like signposts on the political road traveled by the son and namesake of the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.

Jerry Brown, who grew up in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, served as secretary of state from 1970 to 1974 and governor from 1975 to 1983. He also ran for president and headed the state Democratic Party. He was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999, and is seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 2006.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, presided over the wedding in a pink dress. The 47-year-old bride, in an ivory Diane von Furstenberg dress, was presented by her father, Rockwell T. Gust Jr., who once ran for lieutenant governor of Michigan.

Gust, who is a lawyer, and Brown, in a black suit with white shirt and tie, exchanged rings and vows. Then Feinstein declared them husband and wife, and they embraced and kissed to applause as singers performed the final chant.

Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a former state treasurer and candidate for governor, was present. So were many other Democratic politicians, including Oakland’s top city officials, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis.

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Brown’s designated successor as mayor, was there along with people from the early years of Brown’s career, such as Orville Schelle, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley, and PG&E; executive Dan Richard, who served on then Gov. Brown’s staff from 1979 to 1982.

“One person just said we should have buttons saying ‘I’m from the ‘70s,’ … ‘I’m from the ‘80s’ … ‘the ‘90s,’ ” Richard said.

After the civil ceremony in Oakland, another set of nuptials was to be held at the San Francisco church where Brown’s parents were married and he was baptized.

Then Brown said the newlyweds plan to spend a couple of days on the Russian River — then take a belated honeymoon in Italy in August — after the June primary.

“We have a little campaign in the meantime,” he said.

The Foothill League doesn’t have to take a back seat to any league when it comes to tradition and success, from producing state champions to being the league where Hall of Fame coaches Harry Welch and Mike Herrington once saw huge success.

All seven schools that are part of the William S. Hart Union High School District took part Saturday in the first Foothill League media day at Saugus High. There’s much to admire about the league, including that all seven schools have athletic trainers and six of the seven head coaches are also full-time teachers.

Hart, Canyon and Valencia have produced their share of NFL players. And this season, Valencia has the talent to make a run in Southern Section Division 2 or 3 with the return of running back Brian Bonner, a Washington commit, and quarterback Brady Bretthauer.

Coach Larry Muir is entering his 20th season as head coach and still teaching four classes of U.S. history each day. “He’s a lot nicer in the classroom,” Bretthauer joked. “He picks on the football player.”

Bretthauer also revealed how he motivates his linemen to block. “If I get sacked, no In-N-Out,” he said.

Even though Muir is challenged daily to balance his time and commitment from teaching to coaching football, Muir said he wouldn’t want it any other way. “I love being in the classroom,” he said. “I literally don’t feel I go to work. “

The rivalries in the league guarantee the sports-crazed Santa Clarita Valley weekly entertainment. About the only issue is a lack of stadiums. Canyon and Valencia have stadiums and College of the Canyons also hosts games.

“It’s playoffs every week,” Golden Valley coach Dan Kelley said. “There are no slouches.”

Golden Valley will have a four-year starter in lineman Evan Nye, a 6-foot-3, 250-pound senior.

Castaic is turning to junior Aidan Mojica, a former tight end, as its new quarterback. There’s a promising sophomore linebacker in Lucas Duryea, who will be eligible at the end of September after transferring from Chaminade.

West Ranch has a first-year head coach in TJ Yonkers. Its top returning defensive player is Max Piccolino, who had 15 1/2 sacks last season.

Carson Soria, a former receiver, is moving to quarterback for Canyon. He’s also the punter, so beware of trick plays.

Hart quarterback Jacob Paisano will be trying to get the ball to junior Matix Frithsmith in a variety ways, whether Frithsmith is playing running back or slot receiver. Two of Hart’s players are the sons of principal Jason D’Autremont.

Saugus has the son of Valencia principal Kullen Welch playing for them, which should make for an interesting game when those two schools play. Beckham Welch is an offensive lineman for the Centurions.

Saugus coach Jason Bornn, who organized the media day, wondered how many championships would be won if the talent in the area was concentrated at one or two schools rather than seven.

“If we only had one or two high schools, Mater Dei and St. John Bosco wouldn’t have a chance,” he said.

The Skirball Cultural Center, an institution dedicated to exploring the shared ideals of American democracy and Jewish heritage, will kick off its 28th annual free Sunset Concerts series on July 17 with Latin music.

The courtyard stage will host the music of singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante from Brazil and the electronic sounds of Ecuadorian American musician Helado Negro.

“These [musicians] that we have invited to participate … present a return to tradition and elements of hope and discovery and creating new opportunities that reflect the American democratic ideals grounded in pluralism,” said Marlene Braga, vice president of public programming.

“Many diverse artists coming together from different parts of the world to celebrate the great [American] experiment and looking to create a more perfect union through lifting their voices and their identities through music,” she added.

The Skirball Cultural Center will kick off its free 28th annual Sunset Concerts series on July 17 with musical performances in its courtyard from Rodrigo Amarante and Helado Negro.

(Skirball Cultural Center)

In previous years, the series staged other Latinx artists like the Marías and were a stop during the U.S. debut tour of the Cuban son conjunto Chappottín y sus Estrellas.

Amarante, who has been a member of bands Los Hermanos, Orquestra Imperial and Little Joy, and who wrote and performs the theme song to Netflix’s critically acclaimed series “Narcos,” will open the series with his rock tunes infused with bossa nova and folk. His latest project, “Drama,” was released in 2021. On the 11-track album, Amarante sings both in his native language Portuguese and in English.

“[Music] is one of the most powerful political acts,” Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante told The Times.

(Courtesy of Rodrigo Amarante)

“[Music] is one of the most powerful political acts,” Amarante told The Times. “Because when you are dancing … you’re opening up and moving your body and pretty much loving everyone that’s around you.”

Playing on the same bill will be the musician Roberto Carlos Lange, the artist better known as Helado Negro. Known for songs like “Gemini and Leo” and “Lotta Love,” Helado Negro released the critically acclaimed LP “Phasor” in early 2024.

Helado Negro, known for songs like “Gemini and Leo” and “Lotta Love,” released the critically acclaimed LP “Phasor” in early 2024.

(Sadie Culberson Studio / Sadie Culberson)

The first show of the series will also include a special DJ performance from KCRW’s DJ Jason Bentley.

The series will continue every Thursday through Aug. 17, and its lineup includes Latin musicians like La Perla, Frente Cumbiero and Mula.

As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat – the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century.

The painstaking work of “footing turf”, as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell.

But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland’s biggest sources of planet-warming gas emissions.

As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc’s environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality.

“The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf … They don’t know what it’s like to live in rural Ireland,” Smyth said.

He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people who, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland.

“That’s what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them.”

When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home.

Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels “extravagant fuels”, such as gas or electricity.

The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland’s utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year.

Smyth, nevertheless, acknowledges that digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive.

“They don’t want to go to the bog. I don’t blame them,” Smyth said.

Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs.

In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses.

In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel.

By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands.

Ireland has lost more than 70 percent of its blanket bog and over 80 percent of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively.

Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats.

As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy.

In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned.

An exception was made, however, for “turbary rights”, allowing people to dig turf for their personal use.

Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country.

The agency also said 350,000 tonnes of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published.

The European Commission, which lists more than 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites.

The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland’s fiscal watchdog and climate groups.

Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland’s transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tonnes in 2023, government statistics show.

The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80 percent of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011.

It has tasked Bord na Mona with “rewetting” the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks.

So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored approximately 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) of its 80,000-hectare target.

During his days as an All-City quarterback at San Fernando High during the 1980s, Michael Wynn was considered one of the best athletes in the San Fernando Valley.

Now his son, Michael Jr., enters his senior year at St. Genevieve hoping to show everyone he can play quarterback as well as his father once did and perhaps be an even better passer.

The younger Wynn is coming off a junior season in which the Valiants switched to using four receivers to take advantage of his athleticism. He passed for 2,014 yards and 24 touchdowns with just one interception. Aided by a year’s experience running the offense, look for Wynn to be even better this fall. He had seven touchdowns running, so he’s got some of his father’s speed.

St. Genevieve coach Billy Parra is expecting big things from Wynn, who’s 6 feet, 200 pounds and gaining in confidence. …

June is a big month for seven-on-seven passing competitions. Western in Anaheim is hosting an event on Saturday that includes defending Southen Section Division 1 champion Mater Dei. Simi Valley is also hosting a competition for mainly Ventura County schools. …

Championship games in baseball and softball will be played on Saturday at home sites to determine Southern California regional champions. Here’s the schedule.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

May 14 (UPI) — A lard-covered obelisk is more than a slippery slope for U.S. Naval Academy plebes, who view it as a rite of passage that changes them into midshipmen.

Dozens of freshmen who are called “plebes” were tasked with climbing the 21-foot-tall Herndon Monument on Wednesday, with the mission being to replace a cap placed on top to mark the end of their first year at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

They accomplished the feat in 2 hours, 27 minutes and 31 seconds by using the kind of teamwork that is required to effectively operate vessels on the high seas like the U.S. Navy has done for almost 250 years, and as it today carries out missions on land and in the air, as well.

The annual climb is a 75-year tradition that started in 1950 and scales the monument to Commander William Lewis Herndon, who went down with his ship when a hurricane sank it in 1857.

The climb requires Naval Academy plebes to scale the obelisk after it has been covered with 200 pounds of lard, remove a “Dixie cup” placed on top and replace it with the hat of an upperclassman.

The Dixie cup is not a reference to the paper cup that often is used at water dispensers.

Instead, it is a reference to the “low-rolled brim, high-domed item constructed of canvas” cap that was created in 1886 and has represented the U.S. Navy throughout the 20th century and beyond.

The Dixie cup cap is featured in the iconic photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in New York City’s Times Square on Victory over Japan Day in 1945.

It also was featured in many classic films and was worn by the S.S. Minnow’s first mate Gilligan on television’s “Gilligan’s Island.”

Members of the Naval Academy’s class of 2028 successfully undertook the task of replacing the Dixie Cup with the upperclassman’s hat.

The 2028 class has about 1,187 plebes, who now are referred to as “midshipmen” upon their completion of the annual rite of passage.