Domestic service was the most common category of employment for women before World War II; it was particularly important for black women, who were excluded from most other occupations. By 1920 some 40 percent of all domestic workers were African American--and more than 70 percent of all wage-earning African-American women worked as servants or laundresses. The struggles of domestic workers were sometimes recorded in songs like Hattie Burleson's 1928 "Sadie's Servant Room Blues," a musical version of common complaints of domestic workers about long hours, low pay, and lack of privacy.

The climate of repression established in the name of wartime security during World War I continued after the war as the U.S. government focused on communists, Bolsheviks, and "reds." The Red Scare reached its height in the years between 1919 and 1921. Encouraged by Congress, which had refused to seat the duly elected Wisconsin trade unionist and socialist Victor Berger, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer began a series of showy and well-publicized raids against radicals and leftists. Striking without warning and without warrants, Palmer's men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and Socialist organizations. The Washington Post of May 7, 1919, noted approvingly that a sailor shot a Chicago man merely for failing to rise during the national anthem.

Women participated actively in a variety of ways during the War for Independence; some even traveled with the Patriot army. Sarah Osborn was a servant in a blacksmith's household in Albany, New York, when she met and married Aaron Osborn, a blacksmith and Revolutionary war veteran, in 1780. When he re-enlisted as a commissary sergeant without informing her, Sarah agreed to accompany him. They went first to West Point, and Sarah later traveled with the Continental army for the campaign in the southern colonies, working as a washerwoman and cook. Her vivid description included a meeting with General Washington and memories of the surrender of British forces at Yorktown. This account comes from a deposition she filed in 1837, at the age of eighty-one, as part of a claim under the first pension act for Revolutionary war veterans and their widows.

Sarah Smith Emery, in her nineties when she wrote this memoir, grew up around the turn of the 19th century in the Massachusetts countryside. Her family lived on a farm near the port town of Newburyport, on the Merrimack River. Life on the farm, as she described it, was a series of peaceful routines organized by season, time of day, age, and gender. Emery described the home production of food, such as butter and cheese, and household items, including candles, soap, and clothing. Spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, dressmaking, cooking, preserving food, and housecleaning filled this early nineteenth-century girl's life, while the men in her family farmed, butchered, and chopped wood. Militia training took place twice each year, in spring and fall. At the time that Emery was writing, the United States was rapidly shifting from an agricultural to an urban industrial economy, and nostalgia for rural life thus colored her recollections.

We often like to imagine rural life in the past as timeless, "traditional," and in some way simpler and more authentic. Yet, rural life in the years around World War I, while sometimes recalled as simpler, could often seem very much like life anywhere else. In this interview, conducted by Laurie Mercier in 1982 for the Montana Historical Society, Tom Staff remembers how Montana farmers took other jobs to supplement their incomes. Here he described how the road crew he worked on left camp for dances in town--events which, well after midnight, might turn a little ugly.

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. Novelist John Dos Passos became deeply involved in the case after he visited Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts prisons. In the fall of 1920 he joined the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. Facing the Chair was the committee's official report. In it Dos Passos dissected the complicated legal case, countering the prosecution account and excoriating the miscarriage of justice. In addition to its rhetorical argument, Facing the Chair appealed to readers' humanity with poignant descriptions of the two men's long imprisonment. Dos Passos's bitterly ironic subtitle--"The Americanization of Two Foreign-born Workingmen"--pointed to the nativist sentiment that colored the prosecution.

As U.S. soldiers returned from Europe in the aftermath of World War I, scarce housing and jobs heightened racial and class antagonisms across urban America. African-American soldiers, in particular, came home from the war expecting to enjoy the full rights of citizenship that they had fought to defend overseas. In the spring and summer of 1919, murderous race riots erupted in 22 American cities and towns. Chicago experienced the most severe of these riots. On Sunday, July 27, white bathers attacked several black youths swimming near one of Lake Michigan's white beaches, resulting in the death of an African-American boy. Five days of intense racial violence followed, claiming the lives of 23 black and 15 white Chicagoans, with more than 500 others wounded and thousands of black and white citizens burned out of their homes. A plethora of news reports and editorials offered instant analysis and helped shape local and national attitudes. On July 28, 1919, the Chicago Daily News printed this article by noted poet Carl Sandburg on its front page. Unlike most white reporters, Sandburg relied on black sources in researching his articles. The Chicago Daily News 's reporting on the riot was generally considered the most evenhanded of the city's daily newspapers, yet even it inflamed tensions by printing unsubstantiated stories. For example, the same front page included a "bulletin" that recounted supposed African-American plans to retaliate against white rioters.

This collection uses primary sources to explore The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 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.

School District of Marshfield Long Range Library Plan. Board Approved 4.14.22
The School District of Marshfield is located in Wood County.

Marshfield High School was constructed in 1968, with additions and remodeling done to the building in 1994 and 2006. The area (square feet) of the building is 297,985 with a designed capacity of 1,400 students. The high school features 79 classrooms, an auditorium (seating capacity 642), field house and auxiliary gymnasium (seating capacity 3,400), cafeteria (seating capacity 350), library (seating capacity 180), and multi-media room (seating capacity 205). The total acreage at the Senior High School is 60 acres.

Marshfield Middle School was constructed in 1939 with additions and remodeling in 1968, and again in 1993. There are 19.41 acres of land at the Middle School. The area (square feet) of the middle school is 115,740 with a designed capacity of 900 students. Facilities included 34 classrooms, two gymnasiums (combined seating capacity 1,200), and a multi-media center (seating capacity 284).

Grant Elementary School was constructed in 1992. Total square feet is 81,600 with a designed capacity of 850 students, which is the largest student capacity of all elementary schools in the School District of Marshfield. Grant Elementary features 33 classrooms, cafeteria/commons area (seating capacity 216), and a multi-purpose room/gym (seating capacity 900). Grant Elementary's land plot is 24.6 acres.

Lincoln Elementary was constructed in 1957, with additions and remodeling in 1968 and 2006. Additions and remodeling in 2006 transformed the school into an energy-efficient building. The area (square feet) is 43,108 with a designed student capacity of 500. The total acreage is 9 acres. Lincoln contains 25 classrooms and a multi-purpose room (seating capacity 600).

Madison Elementary School was constructed in 2006 and features a more energy-efficient building design. The total area (square feet) is 50,134 with a designed capacity of 500 students. The building contains 25 classrooms and a multi-purpose room (seating capacity 600). Madison Elementary sits on 17 acres of land.

Nasonville Elementary School was constructed in 2001. Total square feet of 40,205 with a designed capacity of 475 students. Nasonville features 19 classrooms and a multi-purpose room (seating capacity 600). The total acreage at Nasonville Elementary is 10 acres.

Washington Elementary School was constructed in 2006, and it also features an energy-efficient building design. The plot of Washington Elementary contains 11.43 acres of land. The school contains 25 classrooms and a multi-purpose room (seating capacity 600).

This collection uses primary sources to explore the 1925 Scopes Trial. 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.

When nine young black males, one as young as 12, were falsely accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931, their case became an international cause celebre largely due to the activism of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Here, the Daily Worker, the CPUSA's newspaper, announces one of the many demonstrations sponsored by the Party in support of the Scottsboro defendants. Despite the efforts of first the CPUSA and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a more mainstream civil rights organization, eight of the so called Scottsboro Boys" were convicted and sentenced to death following a trial based on questionable evidence and riddled with prejudice and procedural error. Eventually the death sentences were overturned

By the time Abraham Lincoln took office as president, seven southern states had seceded. Although Lincoln promised not to attack slavery where it existed, he did promise to halt its expansion. For southerners who viewed expansion necessary for the survival of slavery, this was unacceptable. The crisis came to a head at Fort Sumter, a U.S. post in Charleston Harbor. When Lincoln chose to reinforce the garrison in April 1861, Confederate forces demanded the fort's surrender, and opened fire when their demand was refused. Residents of Charleston watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter from the city's rooftops on April 12, 1861, knowing the attack meant war.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the secession of southern states from the US Government prior to the Civil War. 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.

Father Charles Coughlin occupied both a strange and a familiar place in American politics during the 1930s. Politically radical, a passionate democrat, he nevertheless was a bigot who freely vented angry, irrational charges and assertions. A Catholic priest, he broadcast weekly radio sermons that by 1930 drew as many as forty-five million listeners. By the mid-1930s, Coughlin's growing extremism, his increasing determination to cast political problems in terms of free-floating conspiracy, and his persistent attacks on a popular president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made many of his fellow Catholics nervous. John Ryan, a fellow Catholic priest, had long been active as a social reformer and university educator. In a September 1936 radio speech, he denounced Coughlin for his attacks on FDR. Ryan's address provoked a host of letters; these three typical letters to Ryan reflected the character of Coughlin's devoted support and the capitulation to hatred that characterized Coughlin's movement in the late 1930s.

The Secret Annex Online is the virtual version of the building where Anne Frank went into hiding during WWII. In this three-dimensional online environment visitors can explore the main part of the building and the Secret Annex as they were during the period in hiding.

Department stores not only became a major source of employment for young urban white women beginning in the late 19th century; they also offered a new focus for stories and novels about life in America's burgeoning cities. Writers as diverse as Theodore Dreiser, Edna Ferber, and O. Henry often used the world of department stores and the shop girls who worked there to create a modern fiction (including a brand new form--the short story) that allowed readers to feel the texture of urban life. In "The Trimmed Lamp" (1906), O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) offered a sentimental and moralistic portrait of the after-hours lives of young New York working women. While Porter's stories often focused on shop girls' predicaments (he was considered, in the words of fellow writer Vachel Lindsay, "the little shop girls' knight"), they were typically bathed in a sentimental glow.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 sought to restore tribal self-determination. In the early 1950s, Congress passed legislation to limit this Act, terminating some American Indian reservations and cutting economic support for others. From 1950 to 1970, more than 100 American Indian tribes lost reservation lands, and the percentage of American Indians living on reservations dropped from 87% to 45%. These changes forced young American Indians to look for work in urban areas. In 1968, young urban-based American Indians in Minnesota formed the American Indian Movement (AIM) to fight mistreatment of American Indians by police and to improve prospects for jobs, education, and housing. In the early 1970s, AIM pressured the Federal government to honor 19th-century treaties that had established Indian peoples as sovereign entities. In 1972, AIM initiated "The Trail of Broken Treaties," an intertribal caravan to reservations and subsequent march to Washington. In 1973, more than 2,000 American Indians came to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, following a courthouse disturbance. At this historic site where a massacre of Indians by U.S. cavalry soldiers in 1890 ended years of armed conflict, the demand for hearings on sovereignty rights was met with a siege by FBI forces, Federal marshals, and BIA police. The 71-day stand-off ended with assurances that the White House would seriously review the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty that had recognized sovereignty of the Lakota nation and their rights to valuable lands. That promise failed to materialize, and in the next few years more than 60 AIM members were killed at Pine Ridge. By the end of the decade, plagued by repression and internal disputes, AIM declined as a leading militant organization, although one faction remains. The following foundational documents were submitted to a Congressional committee by undercover FBI informant Doug Durham, who served for a time as AIM's Director of Security.

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. Not all Americans, however, bought into this ideology of success. This 1884 editorial in the Firemen's Magazine, the journal of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, challenged the equation of success with wealth and raised broader questions about the meaning of success.

In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act (also known as the Immigration Act of 1924), which restricted immigration from many European nations and denied even a token quota to most Asians. The law barred all immigrants who were ineligible for citizenship, and all south and east Asians (including Indians, Japanese, and Chinese) had been deemed ineligible on racial grounds by a 1922 Supreme Court decision. Japan reacted particularly strongly to what it regarded as the insulting treatment of the Japanese under the new law. The Japanese organized consumer boycotts against American goods and demonstrated against American cultural practices like dancing. This Japan Times & Mail editorial, entitled "The Senate's Declaration of War," denounced the 1924 immigration law and speculated on the reasons for the decision. The paper suggested that the Senate "deliberately" sought to "insult" the Japanese.

Many ordinary Americans entered into political debates in the revolutionary era and its republican aftermath. While the innovative political ideas that appeared during the constitutional debates in Philadelphia are well known, creative thinking at the grassroots level is harder to locate. William Manning, a farmer, revolutionary foot soldier, and political theorist, became agitated during the postwar political debates and economic crisis. In 1798, he completed a treatise called "The Key of Liberty." Manning hoped to take advantage of the growing availability of newspapers and pamphlets during the post-revolutionary period to distribute his ideas. "The Key of Liberty" outlined a plan for a national association of American laboring men and their political allies, and also offered a broader historical commentary on the social origins of American politics. The Billerica, Massachusetts, farmer wrote several drafts but failed in his efforts at publication. Family members later deposited his papers in the Harvard University library.