56 items
Frederick Douglass was one of the first fugitive slaves to speak out publicly against slavery. On the morning of August 12, 1841, he stood up at an anti-slavery meeting on Nantucket Island. With great power and eloquence, he described...
"The Merits of This Fearful Conflict": Douglass on the Causes of the Civil War
In the spring of 1871, Frederick Douglass was worried. Six years after Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Grant was now President of the United States, the Union of northern and southern states was...
Douglass and Lincoln: A Convergence
In 1880, Osborn Oldroyd invited Frederick Douglass to write something for a collection of tributes to Abraham Lincoln, published two years later as The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles . Douglass was uncharacteristically brief, but...
Historical Context: The Post-World War I Red Scare
The end of World War I was accompanied by a panic over political radicalism. Fear of bombs, Communism, and labor unrest produced a “Red Scare.” In Hammond, Indiana, a jury took two minutes to acquit the killer of an immigrant who had...
Generations of Chinese in America, 1880s–1940s/1940s–1990s
Click here to download Unit 1. Click here to download Unit 2.
America's Role in the World: World War I to World War II
Between World War I and World War II the United States emerged on the world stage as a superpower. This ascendancy had military, economic, humanitarian, and cultural dimensions. Some Americans expressed discomfort with this unwelcome...
Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Immigration and Migration: Pairing Text and Visual Materials
Click to download this five-lesson unit.
Historical Context: Movies and Migration
Many of our most memorable images of the past come from movies. Films set in the past provide a vivid record of history: of the "look," the clothing, the atmosphere, and the mood of past eras. Nevertheless, movies remain a...
Historical Context: Post-World War I Labor Tensions
The years following the end of World War I were a period of deep social tensions, aggrevated by high wartime inflation. Food prices more than doubled between 1915 and 1920; clothing costs more than tripled. A steel strike that began...
Historical Context: The Global Effect of World War I
A recent list of the hundred most important news stories of the twentieth century ranked the onset of World War I eighth. This is a great error. Just about everything that happened in the remainder of the century was in one way or...
Historical Context: American Slavery and Abolition through Hollywood
Throughout the twentieth century, many influential Hollywood films, such as Birth of a Nation , Gone with the Wind , Glory , and Amistad , have helped shape the way Americans have thought about slavery and its legacy. Birth of a...
Statistics: Education in America, 1860-1950
Resources Invested in Education Spending on Education Spending Per Child 15-19 Percentage of GNP 1860 $60 $5.33 1.4 1900 $503 $20.53 2.9 Improvements in Education % Illiteracy 10 or older High School Graduates College Enrollment Total...
Statistics: The Changing Lives of American Women
The Changing Family Age of First Marriage Average Household Size Male Female 1790 -- -- 5.79 1890 26.1 22.0 4.93 1900 25.9 21.9 4.76 1910 25.1 21.6 4.54 1920 24.6 21.2 4.34 1930 24.3 21.3 4.11 1940 24.3 21.5 3.77 1950 22.8 20.3 3.52...
Infographic: Industrialization: American Labor
View this infographic as a downloadable PDF. If you would like to learn more about Industrialization, view " Industrialization: Changing Living Standards " and " Industrialization: The Growth of Industry ."
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Statistics: The American Economy during the 1920s
Cars on the Road 1919 6.7 million 1929 23 million Percentage of Households with Radios 1925 19 percent (5,000,000 homes) 1929 35 to 40 percent Sales of Radios 1922 $60 million 1929 $842.6 million Wage Levels and the Price of a Ford...
Alice Paul: Suffragist and Agitator
Background The American women’s suffrage movement has always been identified with its two founders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, whose strong, enthusiastic leadership defined the movement. When they retired from active...
Examining Women’s Roles through Primary Sources and Literature
Essential Question: How were the ever-changing roles of women in American society chronicled? Background Joseph Heller writes in his book The Feminization of Quest-Romance that "American Literature equates the very essence of what it...
The Textile Industry and the Triangle Factory Fire
Overview Dramatic change characterized the rapid industrialization of nineteenth-century America. The economy, politics, society and specifically women were all affected. In the early stages of this economic revolution, manufacturing...
Symbols of the 1920s: New York City Skyscrapers in Photographs and Paintings
Overview The roaring 1920s was an era of dramatic change. Among the most enduring manifestations of this change was the rise of the big city. The centrality of urban growth to the social, political, and economic changes of the 1920s...
The Jungle
Overview The United States was transformed in the last decades of the nineteenth century by the industrial revolution. The rapid growth of cities, increase in immigration, expansion of a struggling working class, and concentration of...
Theodore Roosevelt: A Bully Reformer
Introduction Theodore Roosevelt was the twenty-sixth president of the United States. His presidency would become the symbol of strong leadership, reform, and a square deal for Americans in the new century. When Roosevelt was...
Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation
Overview In the early twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt was a dynamic force in a relatively new movement known as conservationism. During his presidency, Roosevelt made conservation a major part of his administration. As...
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