Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

O'Mohandro Institute.

Hello and welcome to

to

and welcome to episode 244 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart. There's an old saying that tells us that we should walk a mile in someone else's shoes.

It's meant to remind us that we should practice empathy and really try to

understand people before we cast judgment. Now, history is a field that helps us develop and

practice empathy, as we're always trying to get it information that tells us how and why people acted as they did, how they lived.

And as it happens, that expression that we can walk and choose and use them to better understand people is really right on the mark.

Because it seems that when we use shoes as historical objects, we can learn a lot about people in their everyday lives and actions.

Kimberly Alexander is a curatorial expert who specializes in reading clothes for information about the past.

And over the last eight years, she's been researching and reading shoes to better understand

what they can tell us about the lives of both their makers and their wearers.

So today, we're going to metaphorically walk in some of the shoes early Americans left behind and as we walk

Kimberly reveals how we can read shoes for information and what they can tell us about early America.

How early Americans purchase shoes and the work 18th century shoemakers perform to produce them.

And why early Americans made certain fashion choices and how politics

inform some of the fashion choices they made. But first, have you ever

wondered why we celebrate American independence on the 4th of July

when the Continental Congress voted for independence on the 4th of July when the Continental Congress voted for

...