This collection uses primary sources to explore John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

For four years after the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, America held a monopoly on the production of atomic weapons. On September 24, 1949, however, news of a Soviet Union nuclear weapons test shocked the nation. The following April, a National Security Council report to President Harry S. Truman advised development of a hydrogen bomb--some 1,000 times more destructive than an atom bomb--and a massive buildup of non-nuclear defenses. The subsequent outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950 justified to many increased defense spending. When fighting reached a stalemate, some in politics and the military--including General Douglas MacArthur, head of the Far East command--advocated the use of atomic weapons against targets in China. Although the Korean War was fought solely with conventional weapons, peace came only after the Eisenhower administration threatened to use nuclear weapons. Following the July 1953 armistice, government and military officials debated the place of nuclear weapons in future defense planning. In this January 1954 Collier's article, Styles Bridges, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, laid out various proposals and assured citizens of their leaders' dedication "to finding the best solution." Despite a test ban treaty in 1963--sparked in part by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war--subsequent arms control agreements, and a vigorous nuclear freeze movement, the two superpowers nevertheless pursued an escalating arms race that reached a peak combined total of nearly 60,000 nuclear warheads by the late 1980s.

In the 1730s and 1740s many rural folk rejected the enlightened and rational religion that came from the cosmopolitan pulpits and port cities of British North America. Instead, they were attracted to the evangelical religious movement that became known as the Great Awakening. The English Methodist George Whitefield and other itinerant ministers ignited this popular movement with their speaking tours of the colonies. In this account farmer Nathan Cole described hearing the news of Whitefield's approach to his Connecticut town, as fields emptied and the populace converged: "I saw no man at work in his field, but all seemed to be gone. " Like many others during the Great Awakening, Cole achieved an eventual conversation by focusing not on intellectual issues but on emotional experience. Cole took away an egalitarian message about the spiritual equality of all before God, a message that confronted established authorities.

At the turn of the 20th century, many socialists within the labor movement argued that unions should be an instrument of larger social transformation. Others, led by American Federation of Labor (AFL) President Samuel Gompers, believed that the labor movement should have more limited goals. In 1903 Gompers told socialist AFL members pushing for independent political action and public ownership of the means of production: "Economically, you are unsound; socially you are wrong; industrially you are an impossibility." In 1914, Gompers once again participated in a public debate over the larger goals of the labor movement. His opponent was Morris Hillquit, a Jewish immigrant lawyer and a leading figure in the Socialist Party in New York. Gompers and Hillquit had been called to testify before a special session of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, set up by Congress to investigate the underlying causes of industrial strife in America.

This collection uses primary sources to explore F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This illustration from an 1855 publication, The Crisis; or, the Enemies of America Unmasked, depicted a labor demonstration in New York's City Hall Park demanding relief for the unemployed during the 1854-55 panic. Both Germans and Irish took part in the demonstration. The Crisis 's presentation of "foreign" labor demonstraters was meant to alarm readers who shared its "nativist," anti-immigrant position. This wood engraving was one of the few images of organized working-class action published before the Civil War.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Great Migration. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

From the Civil War through the 1920s, in New York and other American cities, there were numerous clubs, saloons, and dance halls known for transvestism (men or women dressing as the opposite sex), for male prostitution, or as places that catered to a "gay crowd"--meaning men and women interested in a less conventional evening's entertainment. In the 1920s, in part because of prohibition and the emergence of speakeasies, homosexuality became even more open. At the same time, psychologists, physicians, and social reformers had been at work attempting to study, classify, categorize, and label human sexual behavior. In an excerpt from his 1915 book, British physician and psychologist Havelock Ellis, a pioneer in the emerging field of human sexuality, mapped out for his readers the culture of "sexual inversion" in American cities, reflecting how practices that had long been common, or at least tolerated, were suddenly viewed as problematic.

The day after Charles Lindbergh reached Paris in May 1927, the only headline on the front page of the New York Times that did not directly concern the young American aviator read "Levine Abandons Bellanca Flight." It chronicled the unsuccessful efforts of Charles Levine of the Columbia Aircraft Company to complete the first transatlantic flight. Later that year the thirty-year-old millionaire did fly to Berlin with Clarence Chamberlin, breaking Lindbergh's record. Yiddish vaudevillian Charles Cohen decided to commemorate the flight in song when President Calvin Coolidge outraged Jews by receiving Chamberlin but not Levine at the White House. The song, sung in Yiddish and English, reflected the ambivalence of American Jews who were still outsiders but also wanted to be part of the mainstream. Like the Americans who greeted Lindbergh's flight by looking forward and backward, Jews were also caught between the past and the future. [English translation follows Yiddish.]

The sudden revival of the United Mine Workers of America in 1933 was a remarkable story. In late 1932 the UMWA was a shambles, yet by the fall of 1933 the miners' union had won a contract that guaranteed it recognition and stability in the hitherto nonunion southern Appalachian coal fields and was perhaps in the strongest position of its history. There was much debate over who had been the architect of this revival: some miners credited Franklin D. Roosevelt while others felt that the President of the UMWA, John L. Lewis, was the truly instrumental leader. For Buster Ratliff, interviewed by Nyoka Hawkins in 1987, the coming of unionization was the end of "slavery"and the emancipators were both John L. Lewis and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as another UMWA leader, Tom Raney.

Although publicists for the Gilded Age corporations celebrated efficiency and the science of management, their employees did not always join the celebration. What looked like careful and disciplined management from one perspective was often viewed as petty tyranny from below. While some workers assailed upper management for this abuse others experienced the tyranny more directly in their day-to-day work lives. In this transcript taken from testimony before the U. S. House of Representatives in the late 1880s, Joseph P. Cahill, a worker in the freight department of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, described the petty tyrannies inflicted on workingmen by the company dispatcher.

In the spring of 2018, James Madison Memorial High School in Madison embarked on an all school read of Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from a Minneapolis High Schools. Over 2,000 students read immigration stories written by authors of their own age, and were introduced to the authentic and diverse stories of Minneapolis immigrants from thirteen countries. The book inspired a more empathetic understanding of immigrants, and showcased the need for a similar publication featuring student immigrants from Wisconsin. As Green Card Voices planned the production of a book featuring stories from a Madison high school, they were contacted by the College Possible Milwaukee team, who hoped to collaborate and highlight the stories of immigrant students at Milwaukee high schools. Through this connection, the idea of a book featuring student immigrants from both cities was developed.

3:06 video where Sal Kahn talks with Stanford Professor Carol Dweck about her research on the Growth Mindset. What is it? Why is it important?

Guinea Bissau Conflict. Program examines the guerilla warfare underway in the African country of Guinea Bissau as part of the campaign for independence being waged in that country. Program is divided into two segments: the first consisting of an on-location British film about Guinea Bissau guerilla troop B-30 as it proceeds to an attack site, the second of an interview with Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) representative Gil Fernandes, who discusses his work, background, and the state of the war. Film contains commentary by PAIGC founder Amilcar Cabral. Produced by John Slade. Directed by Russell Tillman.

The dispute over whether or not to ratify the Versailles Treaty and approve American participation in the newly formed League of Nations became one of the sharpest foreign policy debates in American history. The League of Nations was President Woodrow Wilson's great hope. He believed that the international organization would mitigate the failures of the Versailles Treaty while ensuring free trade, reducing reparations against Germany, extending self-determination beyond Europe, and punishing aggressor nations. On July 10, 1919, the president presented the 264-page Treaty of Paris to the U.S. Senate for ratification, including the controversial Article 10. Speaking in the style of an evangelical sermon, Wilson presented his case to Congress in this address. But the League faced bitter opposition and stirred nationwide debate. Warren G. Harding's victory in the 1920 presidential election ended the debate and closed the door on American participation in the League of Nations.

Women's suffrage activists used a variety of tactics during World War I to advance their cause. While the more conservative North American Woman Suffrage Association energetically supported the war by knitting socks, selling war bonds, and preparing Red Cross supplies, members of the more militant National Women's Party were arrested for picketing the White House. During a July, 1917, visit from representatives of the new Russian government, demonstrators in front of the White House appealed to the envoys to support suffrage for American women as a condition for Russia's remaining in the Allied camp. The banner roused the ire of patriotic passersby, and soon after this photograph was taken an angry crowd attacked the suffragists.

These two pieces appeared in the Farmer's Register, a periodical of practical information for farmers, in 1837. Yet they go far beyond the simply practical to convey a great deal about the culture of slavery in the antebellum south--perhaps more than the authors intended. Two unnamed Virginia slaveholders debated the advantages and disadvantages of employing overseers; opined about the best types of food, housing, and clothing for slaves; and weighed the relative benefits of kindness and severity in their treatment of slaves. They also speculated about the characters of the enslaved African Americans they compelled to work for them. While these slaveholders confidently related their methods of control over their enslaved work force, their own words told quite another story about slaves' resistance through trickery and theft. And their insistence that slavery was a humane and necessary system was belied by their own descriptions of slaves who were ill, exhausted, and undernourished. Such innate contradictions weakened and ultimately damaged the institution of southern slavery.

Rationing was one way that World War I affected people on the home front. Seeking to manage domestic consumption in order to feed the U.S. Army and to assist Allied armies and civilians., the U.S. Food Administration declared "Food Will Win the War." In this droll reminiscence, Ethel George recalled one kind of home-front conservation effort: the hard work of chewing whole-grain foods. Born in 1903, George told her story to John Terreo, who interviewed her for the New Deal Oral History Project of the Montana Historical Society.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed into law on June 25, 1938, as the last major piece of New Deal legislation, outlawed child labor and guaranteed covered workers a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour and a maximum 40-hour work week. Although more than 22 million workers benefited, conservative forces in Congress saw to it that the Act exempted many others--including agricultural workers, public employees, and domestic workers--from its provisions. The landmark law, nevertheless, helped establish a precedent for the Federal regulation of work conditions. In the following testimony to a Senate subcommittee, Ruth Green, a worker in an interstate company serving business laundry needs, argued that despite efforts by her union to raise wages, a federal law mandating a minimum wage of at least 75 cents an hour was needed to insure adequate wages during hard times. In addition, she maintained that competition from non-unionized laundries made it difficult for the union to obtain "decent contracts." On October 26, 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949, which established the new minimum at 75 cents an hour. Some groups, however, remained excluded from the Act"s protection.

Hundreds of writers and artists lived in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s and were part of a vibrant, creative community that found its voice in what came to be called the "Harlem Renaissance." Vigorous debate also characterized the Harlem Renaissance. Rejecting stereotypical depictions of African-American life that had dominated all the arts, Alain Locke urged black artists to incorporate the themes and styles of African art into sophisticated, genteel, modern works. But journalist George Schuyler denied that there was such a thing as "black art" or a black sensibility. In this 1926 article, "The Negro Art Hokum," Schuyler argued that black artists in America were equally as diverse as white artists, and that to expect a uniform style or subject matter was as insulting as the stereotypes that were being rejected. In a scathing response, Langston Hughes argued that for black artists to paint anything but images of African Americans was tantamount to wanting to be white.