When the United States went to war against Germany in 1917, German …
When the United States went to war against Germany in 1917, German Americans faced vicious and unfair attacks on their loyalty. Many anti-German incidents were not recorded, but they lived on powerfully in people's memories. In this 1976 interview, Lola Gamble Clyde, the daughter of an Irish-born Presbyterian minister and a teenager during World War I, described the "hysteria" that faced German Americans in rural Latah County, Idaho.
Many Americans blamed themselves for their troubles during the early years of …
Many Americans blamed themselves for their troubles during the early years of the Great Depression. Middle-income workers, while financially better prepared for the economic hard times than were most workers, were psychologically vulnerable and often felt shame at even modest economic setbacks. With men out of work and deeply depressed, women also found it difficult to keep going. Mama
These are source data and an article from the Journal "Nature" to …
These are source data and an article from the Journal "Nature" to use with students for anchoring the effects of Global Climate change on ice durations of local lakes. The article describes ice conditions and methadologies of 6 Wisconsin Lakes. There are links to raw data that can be used to generate graphs and develop sensemaking for students.
In its decision in the case of U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind …
In its decision in the case of U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme Court deemed Asian Indians ineligible for citizenship because U.S. law allowed only free whites to become naturalized citizens. The court conceded that Indians were "Caucasians" and that anthropologists considered them to be of the same race as white Americans, but argued that "the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences." The Thind decision also led to successful efforts to denaturalize some who had previously become citizens. This represented a particular threat in California, where a 1913 law prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning or leasing land. Only in 1946 did Congress, which was beginning to recognize that India would soon be independent and a major world power, pass a new law that allowed Indians to become citizens and also established a small immigration quota. But major immigration to the United States from South Asia did not begin until after immigration laws were sharply revised in 1965.
Paul Revere's ride is the most famous event of its kind in …
Paul Revere's ride is the most famous event of its kind in American history. But other Americans made similar rides during the American Revolution. Who were these men and women? Why were their rides important? Do they deserve to be better known?
Help your students develop a broader understanding of the Revolutionary War as they learn about some less well known but no less colorful rides that occurred in other locations. Give your students the opportunity to immortalize these "other riders" in verse as Longfellow did for Paul Revere. Heighten your students' skills in reading texts critically and making defendable judgments based on them.
Anticommunist crusader Senator Joseph R. McCarthy stepped into national prominence on February …
Anticommunist crusader Senator Joseph R. McCarthy stepped into national prominence on February 9, 1950, when he mounted an attack on President Truman's foreign policy agenda. McCarthy charged that the State Department and its Secretary, Dean Acheson, harbored "traitorous" Communists. McCarthy's apocalyptic rhetoric--he portrayed the Cold War conflict as "a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity"--made critics hesitate before challenging him, as his purported lists of Communist conspirators multiplied to include employees in government agencies, the broadcasting and defense industries, universities, the United Nations, and the military. Most of those accused by McCarthy were helpless to defend their ruined reputations and faced loss of employment, damaged careers, and in many cases, broken lives. The following editorial from the popular magazine Collier's sharply criticized McCarthy's tactic of trying to scare away advertisers from a magazine that had publicly criticized him. Collier's made sure, however, to announce to its readers--some of whom responded in letters included below--their own solemn concern about "Communist infiltration in government."
In the years following the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment extending …
In the years following the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment extending voting rights to women, the National Woman's Party, the radical wing of the suffrage movement, advocated passage of a constitutional amendment to make discrimination based on gender illegal. The first Congressional hearing on the equal rights amendment (ERA) was held in 1923. Many female reformers opposed the amendment in fear that it would end protective labor and health legislation designed to aid female workers and poverty-stricken mothers. A major divide, often class-based, emerged among women's groups. While the National Woman's Party and groups representing business and professional women continued to push for an ERA, passage was unlikely until the 1960s, when the revived women's movement, especially the National Organization for Women (NOW), made the ERA priority. The 1960s and 1970s saw important legislation enacted to address sex discrimination in employment and education—most prominently, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the 1972 Higher Education Act—and on March 22, 1972, Congress passed the ERA. The proposed amendment expired in 1982, however, with support from only 35 states—three short of the required 38 necessary for ratification. Strong grassroots opposition emerged in the southern and western sections of the country, led by anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schafly. Schlafly charged that the amendment would create a "unisex society" while weakening the family, maligning the homemaker, legitimizing homosexuality, and exposing girls to the military draft. In the following 1970 Senate hearing, a representative of working women and members of the National Woman's Party, including founder Alice Paul (1885–1977), argued that protective legislation harmed, rather than helped, working women by restricting their opportunities to acquire higher-paying jobs.
Urban as well as rural Americans flocked to fundamentalist and evangelical churches …
Urban as well as rural Americans flocked to fundamentalist and evangelical churches in the 1920s. Preaching tradition and timeless value, American evangelicals adopted innovative techniques for spreading their message. Billy Sunday, the most famous preacher of the early 20th century, began his career as a professional baseball player. He emphasized a rugged, swaggering, masculine Christianity spoken in plain, slangy English. Widely regarded as the model for novelist Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, he combined the modern and the traditional in attacks on liquor, like this excerpt from one of Sunday's sermons. Sunday denounced the government's attempt to regulate and tax liquor as immoral. In his famously forceful and slangy style, he insisted that America needed God, not liquor.
In 1933, newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt announced a "Good Neighbor Policy" …
In 1933, newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt announced a "Good Neighbor Policy" that promised a more friendly and less interventionist policy toward Latin America. The policy was prompted as much by Latin American resistance to U.S. intervention as by the U.S. government's benevolence. In 1937, the policy was put to the test when Bolivia charged that Standard Oil of New Jersey had defrauded the Bolivian government; Bolivia canceled the company's oil drilling rights and confiscated its facilities. True to its new policy, the United States avoided military intervention and instead pressured Bolivia by withholding loans and technical assistance. The following year, a war of words erupted between the government of Mexico and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey over who owned the rights to exploit a portion of Mexico's oil reserves. After U.S. oil companies refused to accept the arbitration terms of the Mexican labor board, Mexican President Lzaro Crdenas expropriated oil company properties worth an estimated half billion dollars. In The True Facts about the Expropriation of the Oil Companies' Properties in Mexico, the Mexican government clarified its position to the American public and justified expropriation of Standard Oil's property.
The years following World War I in the United States saw devastating …
The years following World War I in the United States saw devastating race riots around the nation, in cities small and large. But the 1921 Tulsa race riot, a 24-hour rampage by white Tulsans, was one of the most vicious and intense race riots in American history before or since, resulting in the death of anywhere from 75 to 250 people and the burning of more than 1,000 black homes and businesses. Although the city's white leaders assured the nation's press that restitution and reconciliation would be forthcoming, other whites denied any responsibility for the carnage. In an article in the magazine Survey, Amy Comstock, personal secretary to the editor of the Tulsa Tribune, attempted to deflect attention from Tulsa's white citizenry by fixing blame for the 1921 riot on an ostensibly impoverished and licentious black community. Comstock argued that the responsibility for improving conditions, and for enforcing law and order, in this bustling community rested with white officials.
In the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people …
In the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people during World War II, the U.S. government viewed its popular performers--singers, dancers, and actors--as a crucial weapon. Although a number of stars directly joined the military, those who made movies probably contributed the most to the war effort. Even before Pearl Harbor, Treasury Department officials began making plans to raise money to finance the war by selling bonds to the public, which would be repaid with interest after the war was over. During the war, private citizens and organizations bought $190 billion worth of war bonds at the low interest rate of 1.8 percent. In addition to their work as bond sellers, movie stars also encouraged the populace to follow wartime policies, particularly exhorting them (or joking with them) to observe rationing and save scrap metals. One of the more unusual public service announcements was this 1942 song from Tony Pastor and His Orchestra: "Obey Your Air Raid Warden."
While the United States had officially guaranteed Native American rights and recognized …
While the United States had officially guaranteed Native American rights and recognized the sovereignty of Native American nations through several legally binding treaties since the eighteenth century, the government repeatedly violated these treaties, opening land that was reserved for Indian nations to settlers, speculators, and developers. Native Americans’ right to a sovereign existence included maintaining traditional relationships to the lands and waters that Native peoples had historically used. But 200 years of treaty violations, land theft, and forced assimilation by the federal government threatened the existence of many Indian nations. In their protests to the federal government from 1968 to 1978, Native American activists demanded that the federal government honor its treaty obligations so that tribes could restore their traditional relationships to the land, an effort that continues today. The National Park Service, as a steward of many Indigenous lands, played a significant role in this history that will continue into the future.
In the late 19th century, William Graham Sumner, an Episcopal minister turned …
In the late 19th century, William Graham Sumner, an Episcopal minister turned academic sociologist, applied Darwin's scientific ideas of evolution to the social sphere to produce his theory of the economic survival of the fittest. Sumner's writings justified government inaction in the face of vast social dislocations caused by rapid industrialization and the periodic economic depressions that accompanied it. Critics of the new industrial order rejected the rigid "laws" propounded by Sumner and other conservative social scientists. They countered with their own laws of social development based on alternative readings of nature and science. Some labor thinkers proposed a sort of working-class social Darwinism, which challenged the ideas of conservatives. Other critics simply greeted the ideas of conservatives with derision. Phillips Thomson's 1878 poem, "The Political Economist and the Tramp," poked fun at the social Darwinism championed by conservatives who preferred to believe that the working class was fated to be perpetually bested by the "fitter" middle class.
Part 2 of offshore hydromechanics (OE4630) involves the linear theory of calculating …
Part 2 of offshore hydromechanics (OE4630) involves the linear theory of calculating 1st order motions of floating structures in waves and all relevant subjects such as the concept of RAOs, response spectra and downtime/workability analysis.
In this activity, students will explore the ten interactive tours on the …
In this activity, students will explore the ten interactive tours on the Off the Map Web site, taking into account what readily available items each artist used to create his or her vision. The students will discuss what items each artist used, and how they themselves might turn their everyday trash into something special. Grade level 7-9.
Coal mining and railroad work were the two most dangerous trades in …
Coal mining and railroad work were the two most dangerous trades in the United States in the early 20th century. Coal miners frequently died in spectacular explosions and cave-ins that could kill dozens or even hundreds at a time. Although most testimony about coal mining disasters came from survivors and observers, the men who suffocated to death in the Fraterville, Tennessee mines in May 1902 left behind their own grim account. Trapped in the mine after an explosion and with their air rapidly depleting, they wrote letters to their loved ones describing their final moments.
On the morning of October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), billions of dollars …
On the morning of October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), billions of dollars in stock value were wiped out before lunch. Prices recovered somewhat that afternoon, but the Great Crash was underway. The next day President Herbert Hoover counseled reassurance, but as stock prices continued to plummet Hoover's reassurances rang increasingly hollow. The president's efforts to reassure the public did not stop, in part as he tried to convince voters that his policies were bringing recovery. In 1932, Edward Angly published a short book filled with optimistic forecasts about the economy offered by Hoover and his associates. The sarcastic title, Oh Yeah?, reflected his contempt for political leaders who did not seem to know what was happening to the country. These 17 quotations from or about Herbert Hoover proved that he was a poor prophet of the hard times ahead.
The most visible signs of industrialization in mid nineteenth-century America occurred in …
The most visible signs of industrialization in mid nineteenth-century America occurred in mushrooming factory towns such as Lowell, Massachusetts, but changes in manufacturing also took place in metropolises like New York City. Waves of immigrants entered the port cities 'small workshops, sites of intense craft activity. Cabinetmaking resisted mechanization and unskilled labor because the trade required intricate work on complex pieces of furniture. In his unpublished memoir German immigrant Ernst Hagen recalled that many of the leading names in nineteenth-century furniture, well represented today in museum collections, presided over large shops of toiling workers. Some employed over two hundred hands. The post-Civil War rise of western factories disrupted this urban system; skilled workers either found other employment or were relegated to margins of the trade such as repair work.
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