The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, stunned virtually everyone in the United States military. Japan's carrier-launched bombers found Pearl Harbor totally unprepared. President Franklin Roosevelt quickly addressed Congress to ask for a declaration of war. In the wake of the attack and Roosevelt's speech, folklorists employed by the Library of Congress rushed out to the streets of Washington, D. C., to record public reaction. The selection of "man on the street" interviews showed a wide range of public responses to the attack and to FDR's speech. Young servicemen seemed most concerned about canceled furloughs, while a Polish immigrant swore his undying loyalty to the United States. African Americans in a poolhall insisted on their people's contribution to American history.

President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes required to accommodate a commercial civilization. An even more forceful publicist for the view that business and spirituality were compatible was Bruce Barton. The son of a Congregational minister, Barton cofounded one of the nation's largest and best-known advertising agencies. Barton's greatest fame, however, came from the best-selling book that he published in 1925, The Man Nobody Knows, in which he crafted a new vision of Christ and Christianity that was not simply compatible with, but organically connected to, the business-oriented 1920s. Barton's aggressive efforts to merge business and Christianity may seem comical in the late 20th century, but his exertions were sincerely felt by him and sincerely received by many Americans. The Jaqua Way, a business publication, offered on its first page the hymn, "A Man's Thanksgiving," in the which author thanked the "God of business men" for "my customers and for the power to serve them faithfully."

Migration across the Atlantic often involved a series of stages, drawing people to London before they embarked on their journey. John Harrower, a 40-year-old shopkeeper and tradesman, lived in the far north of the British Isles. Like many of the 40,000 residents of the Scottish Highlands who left after 1760, he faced poverty and little opportunity. Harrower initially planned to travel to the Netherlands but ended up in London. The great metropolis, the largest in the western world, swelled as thousands looked unsuccessfully for employment. After several weeks, Harrower signed an indenture to travel to Virginia as a schoolmaster. He sailed with 71 other male indentees, some from London, but many others from across England and Ireland. With his relatively privileged training, Harrower was fortunate and found a new life on a tidewater plantation. These excerpts from his journal tell of his time in London, journey across the Atlantic, and arrival in Virginia.

The emotional and highly publicized case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became a touchstone and rallying cry for American radicals in the early 20th century. The two Italian immigrants were accused in 1920 of murdering a paymaster in a holdup. Although the evidence against them was flimsy, they were readily convicted, in large part because they were immigrants and anarchists. Despite international protests, they were executed on August 23, 1927. The case was commemorated in an outpouring of literary expression. On the first anniversary of the execution, the Nation published Malcolm Cowley's "For St. Bartholomew's Day." The poem ended in defiance and resolve, when Cowley invoked Sacco and Vanzetti as saints martyred to the cause of freedom. In an ironic gesture, he used images of Catholicism to commemorate the two devout anarchists (and thus atheists) and to proclaim them as spiritual leaders.

"There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ," declared psychologist Lewis M. Terman in 1922. To the extent that this is true, it is in large measure because of Terman himself and the opportunity that World War I afforded for the first widespread use of intelligence testing. The army's use of intelligence tests lent new credibility to the emerging profession of psychology, even as it sparked public debate about the validity of the tests and their implications for American democracy. Some contemporaries expressed skepticism about the broad claims of army intelligence testing. In this lighthearted, anonymous commentary, from the April 1918 issue of the army post newspaper Camplife Chickamauga, a would-be poet mocked psychologists with gentle humor.

Alexander Graham Bell first exhibited his telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but many people were initially dubious about the utility of Bell's invention. Nevertheless, by the mid-1890s, about 300,000 phones were in use and by World War I, the number reached 10.5 million. Learning to use this new device, Americans wondered what to say to start a telephone conversation. Bell's choice for an initial greeting was "Ahoy." Others argued for more formal greetings like "What is wanted?" or "Are you there?" In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison, the famous inventor who developed the first practical telephone transmitter, solved the problem by introducing "Hello!" as the standard English telephone greeting. The word had been around for a little while--Twain had even used it in Tom Sawyer --but why Edison chose to use it is not known. Whatever the derivation, "hello" had become standard by 1880 when Mark Twain used it in this comic sketch, "A Telephonic Conversation."

Market to Market is a part of the Iowa Public Television. The website includes videos of feature stories and market analysis by analyst Ted Seifried. In addition, there is Market to Market in the classroom where there are videos on business, technology and science of agriculture.

Railroads were among the earliest U.S. industries to apply modern management principles to their operations. Beginning in the 1850s and 1860s, railroads were the first American businesses to have a large number of salaried managers and an internal organizational structure with clear lines of communication, responsibility, and authority. These managerial innovations, standard by the 1880s, were necessary to control a large number of employees and offices scattered over a vast geographical area. With the growing professionalization of railroad management came a burgeoning professional literature. Marshall M. Kirkman wrote prolifically about railroad management. This excerpt from his multi-volume The Science of Railways: Organization and Forces (1896) extolled the virtues of military-like discipline in the running of American railroads.

This is a lesson on history for students to gain knowledge and understanding of  what makes a hero using Martin Luther King Jr. as the prime example.  Students will explore a time line of Dr. Kings life and the major contribututions he made in order to become a hero.  By exploring his life in detail, the students will be able to compare and contrast their lives with the life of Dr. King. 

The state governments that came to power in the South in 1865 and 1866 passed harsh laws regulating the movement and conditions of work for newly freed slaves. Known as Black Codes, these laws sought to recreate slavery in all but name by preventing blacks from working outside of agriculture and domestic service, limiting their movement, and subjecting those without a contract for employment to arrest and forced labor. Local officials also gave tacit or overt support to intense racist violence. Rioting whites in Memphis killed forty-six African-Americans in May 1866. Two months later, thirty-four blacks and three white supporters were murdered by a white mob in New Orleans. In this picture, Thomas Nast gave his view of Andrew Johnson's role in the July 1866 New Orleans riot.

The history of McDonald's in Wisconsin. This exhibit uncovers some of Wisconsin’s surprising connections to the fast food giant.

Camp meetings such as this one, held near Sparta, Georgia, in 1807, were a manifestation of the nationwide Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. The Second Great Awakening was an evangelical religious revival conducted by Baptists, Methodists, and other dissenting Protestant sects. Evangelical religion was often described as "enthusiastic," and people attending expressed their feelings through spontaneous movements and speech. Like the first Great Awakening of the 18th century, the Second Great Awakening was notably egalitarian, with men, women, blacks, and poor whites mingling together in worship.

In the dramatic 1919 steel strike, 350,000 workers walked off their jobs and crippled the industry. The U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor set out to investigate the strike while it was still in progress. In his testimony before the committee, John Anderson, a helper in the open-hearth furnace at the Homestead steelworks in Pennsylvania, maintains that the steelworkers were satisfied with conditions. Although born in Scotland, Anderson identified himself as an"American" in distinction from the (also) foreign-born laborers who are out on strike.

In the Cold War period of the 1950s and early 1960s, an era in which married life was often idealized as essential for personal happiness and success, non-conformance became a social problem in need of study and explanation. Experts in social science fields of psychology and sociology, and commentators in the popular press conducted research and published findings that sought to account for the relatively large numbers of men and women who remained unmarried despite societal pressures to wed. In this sequel to an earlier article on unmarried women, Look magazine writer Eleanor Harris, in response to suggestions of readers, addressed the topic of bachelorhood by presenting testimonies of selected men on the reasons they remained unmarried and conclusions of authorities regarding these explanations. The divergent ways that the two articles presented their subjects revealed some gender biases of the period. Unmarried women were depicted as "depressed" or "frantic," while single men were typed as "fixated on a mother figure," inclined to "antiresponsibility," or "latent homosexuals." Men often failed to find the "perfect" woman; women frequently could not find even an "eligible" man. Ultimately, the articles portrayed the unwed female's predicament far more portentously than the male's: women were "likely to get stranded" if they waited too long to get married, but it was "never too late" for men.

The best-known image of America's 1898 war with Spain is that of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback charging with his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba. While the Rough Riders fired the first shot in the war and were the first to raise the U.S. flag in Cuba, their exploits were greatly mythologized. Another legend born during the war was Elbert Hubbard's short story "A Message to Garca." Published as a book in 1898, 40 million copies had been printed by 1913. Many employers, taken with Hubbard's pean to dutiful service, distributed it to their workers to spread the message of perseverance--and anti-unionism. Hubbard's story described the activities of U.S. Army Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, dispatched on a secret mission to Cuban General Calixto Garca to arrange for military cooperation between Cuban and American armies. Hubbard's mythmaking distorted the story of the war by erasing the contribution of the Cubans from the history of their own war for independence. By 1898, Cubans had already been waging an armed struggle for independence from Spain for three years.

Metacom or King Philip, leader of the Wampanoags near Plymouth colony, led many other Indians into a widespread revolt against the colonists of southern New England in 1675. The conflict had been brewing for some time over a set of longstanding grievances between Europeans and Indians. In that tense atmosphere, John Easton, Attorney General of the Rhode Island colony, met Philip in June of 1675 in an effort to negotiate a settlement. Easton recorded Philip's complaints, including the steady loss of Wampanoag land to the Europeans; the English colonists' growing herds of cattle and their destruction of Indian crops; and the unequal justice Indians received in the English courts. This meeting between Easton and Metacom proved futile, however, and the war (which became the bloodiest in U.S. history relative to the size of the population) began late that month.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Bracero Program. 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 1910 to 1929, one-tenth of Mexico’s population (about one million people) moved to the United States. This historic wave of migration came to a halt in the 1930s, and in the new decade, more Mexicans left the U.S. than entered. In this lesson, students examine congressional testimony, photographs, industry correspondence, and state legislation to answer the question: Why did Mexican migration to the U.S. drastically change in the 1930s?

Not all farm families who became migrants during the Great Depression did so because of drought, and not all went to California. Many families lost their land when agricultural prices dropped, and the mechanization of agriculture left many agricultural laborers without work. These members of a South Texas family, photographed by the Farm Security Administration's Dorothea Lange in August 1936, were traveling to the Arkansas Delta to pick cotton.

This webpage is maintained by Mildred Fish Harnack's great-niece (granddaughter of Mildred's sister Marion). She offers personal family artifacts and letters, as well as newspaper clippings and other primary sources.

Standards alignment suggested here is only if the primary sources are used in analysis that aligns to the standards - for example, they are used to consider cause & effect, the context of the situation, or the primary reason the author wrote the text.