Explore the Society's online exhibits to uncover unique facets of Wisconsin history. Exhibits are based on past gallery exhibits at the Wisconsin Historical Museum and include curated images, trivia and brief historical essays.

Note that the viewing of the resource does not meet social studies standards. Teachers are encouraged to consider the use of primary source analysis documents such as those from the Library of Congress and the National Archives in order to help students access social studies curricular objectives.

In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California, taking their identifying symbol from an earlier all-black voting rights group in Alabama, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Two years later, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States." Created, in Newton's words, "to serve the needs of the oppressed people in our communities and defend them against their oppressors," the Panthers patrolled black areas of Oakland with visible, loaded firearms--at the time in accordance with the law--to monitor police actions involving blacks. The organization spread throughout Northern California in the form of small neighborhood groups. They came to national prominence in May 1967 when they arrived armed at the California State legislature in Sacramento to protest a bill banning loaded guns in public places. In October 1967, Newton was wounded in a gun battle with police and charged with killing an officer. His three-year incarceration became a cause célèbre for many young African Americans and chapters of the Party rapidly opened throughout the country. The Panthers initiated community social programs, such as free breakfasts for children, issued a newspaper, and trained recruits with guns, lawbooks, and texts advocating world revolution. In the following years, police and FBI agents arrested more than 2,000 members in raids on Panther offices that resulted in a number of deaths. Although the Panthers became involved in electoral politics in the 1970s, the Party died out by the end of the decade due to repression and internal strife. In the following testimony before Congress, a former managing editor of the Party's newspaper discussed the group and debated the meaning of a slogan and a gruesome cartoon.

In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason--by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt's first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation's "common difficulties" concerned "only material things." Please note that the audio is an excerpt from the full address.

In spring 1927 it started raining in the Upper Midwest and, according to one observer, "it just never did stop." Torrential rains quickly filled the Mississippi's dozens of tributaries. On April 21, the supposedly impregnable levee system, maintained since 1879 by the Mississippi River Commission, sprang two leaks, or "crevasses" as they are known. Within days the Mississippi River levee system sustained forty more major crevasses in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, unleashing a natural disaster that had no precedent in the long history of human interaction with the Mississippi River. William Cobb, who, in 1927 was a young boy living on his family's farm near Pendleton, Arkansas, recalled for historian Pete Daniel the crevasse that opened on April 21 in the levee near his family's house, a few miles from the Arkansas River.

The word "tramp" came into common usage in the 1870s as a disparaging description of homeless men thrown out of work by the economic depression and forced to take to the road in search of a job or food. Fears of the "tramp menace" were revived during the even more devastating depression that began in 1893. Many Americans viewed tramps with a combination of fear and disgust. The 1878 work Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives, written by the famous detective Allan Pinkerton, presented a somewhat more mixed portrait of the tramp. In this chapter on "Tramp Printers and Tramp Encampments," Pinkerton expressed some sympathy for the plight of people thrown out of work by the depression, grudgingly admired the audacity of the tramping printers, and argued against treating all tramps as criminals. Still, like other middle-class observers before and since, Pinkerton wanted to separate those he saw as the "deserving" poor from poor people he viewed as undeserving and possibly dangerous.

Their worldly possessions piled on two rundown vehicles, a migrant family paused en route to California in February, 1936. They joined 400,000 people who left western and southwestern agricultural areas for California during the Great Depression, fleeing drought, dust storms, and a dramatic drop in agricultural prices. From 1929 to 1932, wheat prices dropped 50 percent and cotton fell more than two-thirds. The income of many farm families was too low to meet mortgage payments, repay loans, or pay taxes. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their farms. Drought made a bad situation worse, as dust storms tore across the Great Plains, carrying walls of dirt 8,000 feet high and destroying crops, livestock, and a whole way of life.

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Collection contains personal stories and military experiences of Wisconsin veterans of the Spanish-American War through present-day. The more than 2,800 interviews complement the archive and object collections to build a complete description of military service.

Alone, these primary sources do not meet any social studies standards. However, the use of analysis and inquiry will allow students to gain insight into multiple curricular objectives. Teachers are encouraged to use analysis documents such as those from the Library of Congress or the National Archives.

In 1954, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education dramatically changed American society. The Court reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that racially segregated public facilities were not inherently discriminatory. After the 1954 ruling, states could no longer apply "separate but equal" to public schools, in part because of segregation's psychological effects on children. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the Court's decision that the separation of Negro children "from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." In 1955, the Court ordained that desegregation of public schools should proceed "with all deliberate speed." The following investigative report tells the story of one adolescent's ordeal to persevere in the face of mob rioting as his family was forced to comply with consequences of the Court rulings.

The Communist-led Unemployed Councils were the first and the most active of the radical movements that sought to mobilize the jobless during the Great Depression. In this interview, which is taken from the radio series "Grandma Was an Activist," relief worker Mary Gale, who was sympathetic to radicals and the jobless, described how she worked behind the scenes to encourage her clients to organize and demand better treatment. The jobless and the poor had few advocates for them, and radicals like Gale not only became their champions but also pushed them to organize themselves.

In the early 20th century, German Americans remained the largest immigrant group, as well as one of the most highly regarded. Thus the vicious nativist attack on the loyalty of German Americans that emerged before and during World War I was particularly remarkable. When the German government began submarine warfare, resulting in American deaths, the intensity of attacks increased. Bishop William A. Quayle, a prominent Methodist clergyman, did not directly attack German Americans but insisted that America's fight was directly with the German people and not just their leaders. In an essay in the Northwestern Christian Advocate, Quale provided lurid (and vastly exaggerated) stories of German atrocities. Such stories heightened the suspicion directed at German Americans.

In 1898 the United States acquired Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, after victory in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. After an initial military occupation, the United States granted Puerto Rico limited local autonomy. In 1917, the U.S. responded to local pressure for independence by declaring Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States--a "gift" that many Puerto Ricans resented. Large, corporate-financed sugar plantations transformed Puerto Rico's agricultural economy and displaced thousands of subsistence farmers from their own land, forcing them into the rural wage labor force. These dramatic changes in the rural economy in the years before World War I pushed unemployment levels in Puerto Rico to crisis proportions. At the same time, American entry into the war created labor shortages in many industries on the mainland. This Labor Department bulletin from May 1918 set out plans for bringing more than 10,000 Puerto Rican laborers to the U.S. to work on war-related projects.

With the annexation of Texas in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Tejanos--Texans of Mexican descent--lost property rights and political power in a society dominated by Anglos. Through discriminatory practices and violent force, Tejanos were kept at the bottom of the new political and socio-cultural order. From 1900-1930, as an influx of immigrants from Mexico came north to meet a growing demand for cheap labor in the developing commercial agriculture industries, Tejanos experienced continued discrimination in employment, housing, public facilities, the judicial system, and educational institutions. In addition, Texas joined the other former Confederate states in 1902, legislating a poll tax requirement that, with the implementation of all-white primaries in 1904, effectively disenfranchised African Americans and many Tejano citizens. The struggle of Mexican Americans to end discriminatory practices accelerated following World War II. In 1948, the American G.I. Forum was formed as an advocacy group by Mexican American veterans. In 1949 and 1950, they began local "pay your poll tax" drives to register Tejano voters. Although they failed in repeated efforts to repeal the tax, a 1955-56 drive in the Rio Grande Valley resulted in the first majority Mexican American electorate in the area. In 1960, Viva Kennedy Clubs, administered by the Forum and others, contributed to the future president's narrow victory in Texas that helped win the national election. Ratification of the 24th Amendment finally abolished the poll tax requirement for Federal elections in 1964. In 1966, the tax was eliminated in all state and local elections by a Supreme Court ruling. In the following interview, Ed Idar, of the Forum, related incidents in the persistent drive by the organization and its leader, Dr. Hector P. Garcia, to increase the number of registered Mexican American voters.

By President Andrew Jackson's election in 1828, the only large concentrations of Indian tribes remaining on the east coast were located in the South. The Cherokee had adopted the settled way of life of the surrounding--and encroaching--white society. They were consequently known, along with the Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes." "Civilization," however, was not enough, and the Jackson administration forced most of these tribes west during the first half of the 1830s, clearing southern territory for the use of whites. Chief John Ross was the principal chief of the Cherokee in Georgia; in this 1836 letter addressed to "the Senate and House of Representatives," Ross protested as fraudulent the Treaty of New Etocha that forced the Cherokee out of Georgia. In 1838, federal troops forcibly displaced the last of the Cherokee from their homes; their trip to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) is known as the "Trail of Tears."

Anti-Asian agitation characterized politics in the American West, particularly labor politics, in the late-19th century. Labor leaders like Denis Kearney and H. L. Knight of California's Workingmen's Party often resorted to popular racist arguments to justify the exclusion of Chinese immigrants. In this 1878 address, Kearney and Knight described the Chinese as a race of "cheap working slaves" who undercut American living standards and thus should be banished from America's shores. While rare, some in the labor movement challenged the racist appeals of leaders like Kearney and Knight.

President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future. The Commission's 1968 report, informally known as the Kerner Report, concluded that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." Unless conditions were remedied, the Commission warned, the country faced a "system of 'apartheid'" in its major cities. The Kerner report delivered an indictment of "white society" for isolating and neglecting African Americans and urged legislation to promote racial integration and to enrich slums--primarily through the creation of jobs, job training programs, and decent housing. President Johnson, however, rejected the recommendations. In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. In the following excerpts from the Kerner Report summary, the Commission analyzed patterns in the riots and offered explanations for the disturbances. In 1998, 30 years after the issuance of the Report, former Senator and Commission member Fred R. Harris co-authored a study that found the racial divide had grown in the ensuing years with inner-city unemployment at crisis levels. Opposing voices argued that the Commission's prediction of separate societies had failed to materialize due to a marked increase in the number of African Americans living in suburbs.

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, Representative Margaret M. Heckler argued that passage of the ERA was necessary to halt sex discrimination and present women with the full measure of rights and responsibilities equally attendant to all Americans. Heckler later served the Reagan administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Founded in 1948 as an advocacy group for Mexican American veterans of World War II, the American G.I. Forum evolved into one of the leading civil rights organizations of the postwar era. Led by a medical doctor from Corpus Christi, Texas, Dr. Hector P. Garcia (1914-1996), the group attained national recognition in 1949 when they organized protests against a funeral home that would not allow chapel services for a Mexican American soldier, Felix Longoria, who was killed in combat four years earlier in the Philippines. With the intervention of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Longoria was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Patriotic in intent and constituted of locally-run units, the Forum sought to work from the "bottom up" to involve ordinary citizens in public life and to put an end to discriminatory practices that affected veterans and their families. Working in the communities and the courts, the Forum led poll tax drives and campaigned against segregated schools, for adequate health care, and to improve the lot of migrant workers. In 1958, the Forum became a national organization. With an earlier civil rights group that also originated in Texas, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Forum campaigned in 1960 in Viva Kennedy clubs, contributing to the future president's narrow victory in Texas that helped win the national election. Forum members worked with the Johnson administration to implement Great Society programs in Mexican American communities, and in 1967, Vicente Ximenes, a former national chairman, became the head of the Inter-Agency Cabinet Committee on Mexican American Affairs and EEOC commissioner. In the following interview, Ed Idar, a long-time colleague of Dr. Garcia, related the dedicated efforts of group leaders to organize throughout the state.

Planters in early seventeenth-century Virginia had bountiful amounts of land and a profitable crop in tobacco, but they needed labor to till their fields. They faced resistance from the local Indian people and were unable to enslave them, so they recruited poor English adults as servants. These young men and women signed indentures, or contracts, for four to seven year terms of work in exchange for their passage to North America. Richard Frethorne came to Jamestown colony in 1623 as an indentured servant. In this letter dated March 20, 1623, written just three months after his entry into the colony, he described the death and disease all around him. Two thirds of his fellow shipmates had died since their arrival. Those without capital suffered particularly precarious situations with the lack of supplies and loss of leaders. Frethorne pleaded with his parents to redeem (buy out) his indenture.

Socialism, although less important in the African-American community than growing concepts of racial militancy, was one of the many ideologies debated by black Americans in the 1920s. A. Philip Randolph, who in 1925 organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was perhaps the leading black proponent of socialism as the only remedy for the plight of African Americans. In this March 1919 editorial in the Messenger, the radical newspaper that would later become the voice of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph rejected the "leadership" of organizations such as the NAACP. Instead, he urged black and white workers to unite, form unions, and embrace socialism in order to win political gains and economic advancement.

In 1892, Homestead, Pennsylvania, was the site of one of the most dramatic strikes in U.S. history. The Carnegie Steel Company's ultimate victory resulted in the destruction of a once-powerful union of skilled iron and steel workers. By 1907, almost 7,000 workers toiled at the Homestead plant for the U.S. Steel Corporation. In 1907-1908, the Russell Sage Foundation undertook an intensive study that attempted to understand the dramatic changes that had reshaped Homestead and other industrial communities. The resulting six-volume report, written by progressive social reformers, included Margaret Byington's Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, first published in 1910. This excerpt from Byington's study depicted work and home life for the immigrant women of Homestead. Byington's account, while sympathetic to the immigrants who comprised the bulk of the steel town's labor force, was written from the perspective of an outsider. She emphasized women's limited participation in the paid labor force in steel mill towns like Homestead, yet she provided repeated testimony regarding the multiple economic and social roles of women in Homestead as managers of family finances and family relationships.