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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

When the United Automobile Workers won a six week sit-down strike in 1937 against General Motors, the largest corporation in the United States, a fever of organization and a sense of empowerment spread throughout working-class communities in the Northeast and Midwest. That year, 5 million workers took part in some kind of industrial action, and nearly 3 million joined a union. Denys Wortman's cartoon in the March 25, 1937 New York World-Telegram captures the excitement and sense of power felt by many working men and working women when they participated in militant labor action.

Join Danny Rubin, founder of Rubin, and Craig Peck, a Hollywood producer, as they discuss how students can pursue careers in film/TV. Students and teachers should also make use of the webinar worksheet at https://rubineducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Rubin-Webinar-Worksheet-Q-and-A-about-Film-Industry.docx

The ideology of success--the notion that anyone could make it with enough hard work--was widely promoted in Gilded Age America. One of its most famous proponents was the author Horatio Alger, whose novels showed how poor boys could move from "rags to respectability" through "pluck and luck." Between the late 1860s and his death in 1899, Alger published more than 100 of these formulaic stories about poor boys who made good more often because of fortunate accidents than because of hard work and denial. The tale of Frank Courtney's lucky break in The World Before Him (1880) was typical of these stories. In this selection, young Frank grabs the proverbial golden ring of success less by pluck than by sheer luck.

In this article, written 24 years after the war for the children's magazine St. Nicholas, former Harper's Weekly sketch-artist Theodore R. Davis recollects the hazardous and inventive ways that pictorial journalists reported the Civil War. While photography was still in its infancy--unable yet to capture action or to be cheaply reproduced in periodicals or books--artists' battlefront sketches were the public's primary source of visual news of the war's people, places and events. Davis, who was 21 at the start of the war, was typical of this new type of reporter, recording direct observations or collected stories in rough sketches and notes that were dispatched to newspaper offices in New York where they were made into wood engravings and printed as illustrations in publications such as Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and the New York Illustrated News (the South had no comparable pictorial news resource).

The Appeal to Reason was the most popular radical publication in American history. This socialist newspaper, whose founding in 1895 predated the creation of the Socialist Party in 1901, reached a paid circulation of more than three-quarters of a million people by 1913. During political campaigns and crises, it often sold more than four million individual copies. From its headquarters in Girard, Kansas, the Appeal published an eclectic mix of news (particularly of strikes and political campaigns), essays, poetry, fiction, humor, and cartoons. During and after World War I, the paper declined in circulation because of the deaths and departures of key editorial figures, the declining fortunes of the Socialist Party, and the repression of U.S. radicalism. It ceased publishication in November 1922. These snippets of working-class humor and human drama were compiled for the December 23, 1911, issue.

During World War II, Chinese Americans, who had often been lumped together with other Asians and even called Japs

Angered by the effect of the British naval blockade on cotton prices and British support for Indian attacks against white frontier settlers, farmers in the South and West strongly supported the War of 1812. The war ended two years later with few issues settled between the two nations. The most significant battle took place after the peace treaty was signed in 1814, when General Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee slaveholder, decisively defeated the British forces at New Orleans. This resounding victory made him a national hero and symbol of frontier fighters and earned him the nickname "Old Hickory." Although he secured victory using regular troops armed with artillery power, ten years later Samuel Woodward celebrated the role of sharpshooters armed with Kentucky long rifles in his song "The Hunters of Kentucky." This immensely popular song, filled with images of Old Hickory and his men overwhelming the well-trained army of John Bull (a symbol of Britain), became an effective element in Jackson's successful 1828 campaign for president.

In 1840, Unitarian minister George Ripley wrote to the Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson in an (unsuccessful) effort to convince him to join, or at least invest in, his planned utopian community, Brook Farm. Founders of antebellum utopian communities attempted to withdraw from what they saw as the hypocrisies and excesses of partisan politics, the inequities inherent in marriage and factory work, the evils of the slave system, and the corruption of cities and to create, in small scale, a more perfect place. Brook Farm began operations in 1841 in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Brook farmers lived and dined communally, and divided their time between farm work and artistic and scholarly pursuits. Although other utopian communities, such as Oneida in upstate New York, and Amana, in Iowa, achieved self-sufficiency, Brook Farm ultimately failed. The community never recovered from a devastating fire in 1846, and it closed its doors in 1847.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held hearings in 1947 on Communist activity in Hollywood. Ten writers and directors were held in contempt when they refused to answer questions regarding their political affiliations or beliefs. They later served prison terms after the Supreme Court in April 1950 turned down their appeal that such questioning violated their First Amendment rights. Hearings began again in March 1951, While almost half of those testifying from the entertainment industry informed on their colleagues, others like playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. This route insured that they would not be hired for future work in the industry. In the following letter to HUAC's chairman, Hellman offered to testify as to her own activities if she would not be forced to inform on others. When the Committee refused her request, she took the Fifth and was blacklisted.

By 1915, Americans began debating the need for military and economic preparations for war. Strong opposition to "preparedness" came from isolationists, socialists, pacifists, many Protestant ministers, German Americans, and Irish Americans (who were hostile to Britain). One of the hit songs of 1915, "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier," by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi, captured widespread American skepticism about joining in the European war. Meanwhile, interventionists and militarists like former president Theodore Roosevelt beat the drums for preparedness. Roosevelt's retort to the popularity of the antiwar song was that it should be accompanied by the tune "I Didn't Raise My Girl to Be a Mother." He suggested that the place for women who opposed war was "in China--or by preference in a harem--and not in the United States."

In the early nineteenth century a woman in the emerging middle class was often dependent on her father or husband's position. Many women, however, chose or were forced to seek independence and autonomy in their work and family lives. Anne Carson was one such person. With an alcoholic father and a timid mother, her middle status in port city Philadelphia was always shaky. She attended one of the first coeducational academies in the new nation but her unemployed father forced the 15-year-old to marry a 41-year-old ship captain. Her husband's frequent abuse and absences left her without financial support, and Anne worked as a seamstress and opened a china shop to support her parents, siblings, and four children. She achieved modest success, but economic distress after the War of 1812 and her involvement in a murder case sent her spiraling into Philadelphia's underclass. In an effort to earn money she published her autobiography, where she recorded the variety of work available to women in the commercial cities of the early Republic.

During the Cold War era, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) interrogated more than 3,000 government officials, labor union leaders, teachers, journalists, entertainers, and others. They wanted to purge Communists, former Communists, and "fellow travelers" who refused to renounce their past and inform on associates from positions of influence within American society. Among the Committee's targets were performers at events held in support of suspect organizations. Pete Seeger acquired a love of American folk music while traveling through the South in the 1930s with his father, a musicologist and classical composer, and as an employee in the Library of Congress' Archive of American Folk Song. As a folksinger motivated by concerns for social justice, cross-cultural communication, and international peace, Seeger performed songs from diverse sources to many kinds of audiences, and in 1948 campaigned for Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace as part of the folk music organization People's Songs. In the following testimony before HUAC, Seeger refused to invoke the Fifth Amendment, protecting citizens from self-incrimination. Instead he insisted that the Committee had no right to question him regarding his political beliefs or associations. This strategy resulted in prison terms for contempt of Congress for the Hollywood Ten in 1947. Seeger himself was sentenced to a year in prison for contempt, but the verdict was reversed in 1962. Nevertheless, Seeger remained on a network television blacklist until the late 1960s.

Immigrants and African Americans decisively shaped a multiethnic urban popular culture in the late 19th century, built in large measure on the emergence of vaudeville. Vaudeville blended slapstick comedy, blackface minstrelsy, and sentimental songs into a rich and highly popular cultural stew. Among the most successful vaudeville practitioners were two Jewish singers and comics from the mean streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side, Joe Weber and Lew Fields. Weber and Fields' routines usually featured broad stereotypes of German immigrants: Fields played "Meyer," the shrewd German slickster who wanted to "put one over" on Weber's "Mike," the dumb "Dutch" newcomer. At the peak of their popularity in 1904, Weber and Fields recorded this popular routine, "The Drinking Scene," for commercial sale. Ironically, just a few months after recording this routine, the Weber and Fields team broke up, ending nearly three decades of public performances, the longest of any team in American popular theater.