Controversial issues are complex topics that are grounded in conflicting values or opinions and can result in emotional reactions and public dispute. Schools may avoid difficult issues that could bring forth feelings of fear, confusion, or anger. Addressing these issues, however, can motivate students to learn and make relevant connections to their local and global communities. For students to become active and engaged citizens, they will need civil discourse and reasoning skills, as well as tolerance, empathy, compassion, and an interest in civic knowledge.

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.

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." Alain Locke's 1925 collection The New Negro --a compilation of literature by and essays about "New Negro" artists and black culture--became a "manifesto" of the movement. Some of black America's foremost writers contributed stories and poems to the volume. The work of these artists drew upon the African-American experience and expressed a new pride in black racial identity and heritage. Zora Neale Hurston--novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist--was known during the Harlem Renaissance for her wit, irreverence, and folk writing style. She won second prize in the 1925 literary contest of the Urban League's journal, Opportunity, for her short story "Spunk," which also appeared in The New Negro.

In this video from ThinkTV Dayton, learn about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the basis of her famous book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, that documented racial injustice before the Civil War.

In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Harry and Eliza Briggs describe their experience in the first school desegregation case, Briggs v. Elliott.

In 1915, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) established a branch union, the Agricultural Workers' Organization (AWO). The AWO organized temporary harvesters, known as "harvest stiffs," in railroad yards, migrant camps, and shelters. At its height in 1917 the AWO had more than 70,000 members, but like the IWW it was undermined by President Woodrow Wilson's wartime attack on dissent and by local vigilante organizations. The AWO, like its parent organization, used folksongs, stories, and poetry to spread its message to migrants. One such song, "Harvest Land," by "TD and H," first appeared in the Little Red Songbook, a free booklet that IWW members regularly distributed to organizers and workers. Like most IWW songs, it set satirical lyrics to popular or traditional tunes, in this case "Beulah Land." "Harvest Land" attacked "John Farmer" for recruiting laborers with false promises, and it urged workers to withhold their labor until they received better wages.

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 made critics hesitate before challenging him. Those accused by McCarthy faced loss of employment, damaged careers, and in many cases, broken lives. After the 1952 election, in which the Republican Party won control of Congress, McCarthy became chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. McCarthy then extended his targets to include numerous government agencies, in addition to the broadcasting and defense industries, universities, and the United Nations. After Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, refused to intercede to halt an overseas assignment for McCarthy's chief consultant, G. David Schine, who had been drafted, McCarthy's committee began a two-month investigation of the Army. Viewers saw the following dramatic encounters televised live as they occurred between McCarthy, Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch, Counselor for the Army John G. Adams, and the subcommittee's chief counsel, Roy Cohn. Although McCarthy's power declined sharply following the hearings and the Senate voted to condemn him a few months later, scholars disagree on whether McCarthy's appearance before a mass television audience caused his fall. Historians do, however, credit ABC-TV's decision to broadcast the hearings live, the only one to do so, with the network's rise to prominence.

Pressures for abolition of slavery increased in the Revolutionary era; five northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804. Pennsylvania was the first in 1780 when its legislature passed a gradual abolition bill. However, no one was actually freed; all those enslaved when the law went into effect remained enslaved, and all those born after that date were required to provide their mothers' masters with twenty-eight years of servitude before they could obtain their freedom. Despite the law's extreme gradualism, the following year a more conservative legislature attempted to repeal it. Newly freed African Americans petitioned the Assembly to reject such a move. Cato, newly freed with his children, wrote to Philadelphia's Freeman's Journal, an African-American newspaper, in 1781, making his case by using the legislature's own words about the promise of universal civilization while adding his own views of the meaning of the Revolution. The legislature voted against repealing the gradual abolition act.

The Chicago radicals convicted of the infamous May 4, 1886 Haymarket Square bombing in which one policeman was killed remained openly defiant to the end. In his final letter to his wife, written August 20, 1886 from the Cook County "Bastille" (jail), convicted Haymarket bombing participant Albert R. Parsons, an Alabama-born printer, admitted that the verdict would cheer "the hearts of tyrants," but still optimistically predicted that "our doom to death is the handwriting on the wall, foretelling the downfall of hate, malice, hypocrisy, judicial murder, oppression, and the domination of man over his fellow-man."

The Chicago radicals convicted of the infamous May 4, 1886 Haymarket Square bombing in which one policeman was killed remained openly defiant to the end. Twenty-one-year-old German-born Carpenter Louis Lingg enthusiastically embraced the principles of anarchism and the violence he thought necessary to emancipate the working class in his final address before the court that convicted him of participating in the bombing.

The entry of Europeans into the Indian's world caused a series of dislocations through disease, trade, and warfare. Indian leaders, who encountered new diplomatic and trading partners, found themselves caught between a familiar old and an unsettling new world. John Lawson, employed by Carolina's proprietor to explore the colony's backcounry and aspiring to a career as a natural scientist, spent months traveling through the Carolina interior in the company of colonists and Indians. This excerpt from Lawson's published account of the trip describes the final leg of the journey, when Lawson relied on Enoe Will, the chief of the Eno-Shakori. Will was a well known and trusted guide among colonial traders. He confided to Lawson that he feared he had alienated some of his own people, and now sought European protection. But Will remained close to his native religion and roundly rejected Lawson's offer of conversion to Christianity.

The Haymarket Affair, as it is known today, began on May 1, 1886 when a labor protester threw a bomb at police, killing one officer, and ended with the arrest of eight anarchist leaders, three of whom were executed and none of whom was ever linked to the bombing. Some labor organizations saw the executed men as martyrs and tried to rally support but in the end, the hanging of the Haymarket anarchists not only emboldened capitalists, it undercut labor unity. Knights of Labor leader Terence V. Powderly was desperate to distance his organization from the accused anarchists and maintain the order's respectability. In this excerpt from his 1890 autobiography Powderly explained his decision three years earlier to keep mainstream labor out of the furor that surrounded the Haymarket Affair.

The rise to prominence in the 1930s of legendary black sports figures--the heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and the Olympic track and field star Jesse Owens--challenged the barriers that separated white and black American athletes and their fans. Louis's boxing prowess had excited black fans as early as 1934, and he quickly worked his way through the heavyweight ranks, dispatching white and black opponents alike with brutal efficiency. Louis's one defeat before attaining the title came at the hands of the German fighter and ex-champion Max Schmeling, who knocked Louis out in twelve rounds at Yankee Stadium in 1936. Two years later, Louis faced Schmeling in a rematch, this time not only with the championship belt on the line but bragging rights among nations lurching toward war. Louis knocked out Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds of the first round. The radio announcer's call of the fight, including the knockout punch, conveyed the drama, as did a postfight radio interview with the Champ.

This recorded section of Russell Conwell's popular lecture "Acres of Diamonds" comes from a 1916 record. To modern listeners, Conwell's monotone might seem considerably less compelling than it apparently was to his own contemporaries. Still, his message that it was easy to get rich quick remains a familiar one. (Click here for a text excerpt of another portion of this lecture.)

The 1912 presidential election offered American voters a choice between a conservative and generally unpopular Republican incumbent (William Howard Taft), a moderate governor who won the heavily contested Democratic nomination (Woodrow Wilson), third party candidate former President Theodore Roosevelt, and a Socialist Party candidate running for the fourth time (Eugene V. Debs). Angered over what he felt was a betrayal of his policies by Taft, his hand-picked successor, Roosevelt and others abandoned the Republican party and founded the Progressive or "Bull Moose" Party. Voter interest, already piqued by the unusual campaign and the candidates' slashing attacks on one another, was further heightened by the availability of sound recordings of campaign addresses and, for the first time, film footage of the candidates on the campaign trail. In this recorded speech, entitled "The Liberty of the People," Roosevelt took the most openly pro-labor stance of the three major candidates. When the voters went to the polls in November, however, Wilson was the clear victor.