Primary
Sources
by Chapter:
The Americans, Reconstruction to the
21st Century
Before:
“It’s a long John”:
Traditional African-American Work Songs
“Run Old Jeremiah”:
Echoes of the Ring Shout
“Trouble So Hard”:
Singing of Slavery and Freedom
Chapter 5: Frontier
Primary Sources:
Cross of Gold
Speech
Political Cartoons Election
1896
Rural
Life
1870s
Rural
life;
People were frugal 1880s
Rural
Life:
Home Remedies
Rural
Life:
Shaken Loose and Moving in the Panic of 93
Wizard of Oz; parable on
Populism
Mark
Twain,
travels by Stagecoach
Murder of
Wild Bill Hickock (newspaper)
Chapter 6:
Railroads,
Management and Labor
Primary Sources: 19th Century Child Labor
Sweatshop
work
Survivor's
accounts
of Triangle Fire
Carnegie:
The
Gospel Of Wealth
Butch Cassidy
And the Sundance Kid Rob a Train
Web Sources: 19th
Century
Child Labor in America
Story
of
a Sweatshop Girl (immigrant to NY)
Conductor
on
a Streetcar
Chicago
Strike;
a teamster
“For the Further Benefit
of Our People”: George Pullman Answers His Strikers
Are Sleeping Cars
Protected by the Constitution? Mr. Dooley on the Pullman Strike
(Coal)
Miner's
Story
The
Triangle
Factory Fire
Henry George:
Progress and Poverty (complete text)
Hobo, 1894 Hard
Times In America
Death of Garfield,
1881
Carnegie Speaks: A
Recording of the Gospel of Wealth
The Gospel According to
Andrew: Carnegie’s Hymn to Wealth
Russell Conwell Explains
Why Diamonds Are a Man’s Best Friend
Chapter 7: Immigration &
Urbanization
Primary Sources: Ethnic
America
Mr.
Paul's
Story of NYC
Leaving
Home for the Promised Land, 1894
Patent
Leather
Shoes
Etiquette
for the Ballroom 1880
Calling Card
Etiquette
“Trust in Poverty”:
Lampooning the Trusts
The Great Chicago Fire
Death of a Child,
1890
(City Life)
Mark Twain satirizes "A
Telephonic Conversation"
Keep Off the Grass!:
Coxey’s Army Invades the Nation’s Capital
Websources:
Dime
Novels and Penny Dreadfulls
Ch 8: Life At The Turn Of The Century
Segregation
Education
Mass Cutlure
WebSource:
Vaudeville
“I Have a Thirst that
Could Sink a Ship!”: Early Vaudeville
“I’m A Gizzard”: The
Vaudeville Comedy of Weber and Fields
Gibson girls.
Corbett Knocks
Out Sullivan, 1892
Health
&
Health Care at the Turn of the Century
America's First
Automobile Race, 1895
19th Century
Social Dances
19th
Century House
Housework
in
late 19th Century
Sidewalk
Manners, 1905
The
language of Flowers, 1907
How to Propose
Marriage, 1880
Memory
of Old Crank Phones and the Operator
"Information
Please"- an account of the first telephones
Birth of the
Hollywood Cowboy, 1911
Sinking of the
Titanic, 1912
“I Seen My Opportunities
and I Took ’Em.”: An Old-Time Pol Preaches Honest Graft
Eye on the East: Labor
Calls for Ban on Chinese Immigration -S.F. building trades council
A Clear and Present
Danger: The Chinese Exclusion Act
The “One Best Way” to
Wash: A Home Economist Explains
Ch 9: The
Progressive Era
One Woman's Encounter
with Reformers
The
Jungle- Whole text, by chapters
Plessy
v.
Fergusen
“Cast Down Your Bucket
Where You Are”: Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech
Oh Dear, What
can the Matter Be? (audio) Suffragists
Black
People's
Day Montage, 1:44 (Real Audio)
Who
Was
Jim Crow? About minstrel 1:36
Missed Manners: Wilson
Lectures a Black Leader 1914
American
Variety Stage
How
the
Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis- a slideshow
Eyewitness:
The
Roosevelts Move Into The White House, 1901
Recollection of a 1902
lynching in Florida
Riding a Rural
Free Delivery Route, 1903
Wright Bros
First Flight, 1903
The Gibson Girl-
(Ideal
Woman of early 1900s)
San Francisco
Earthquake, 1906
Remembering the 1906
Atlanta Race Riot
Henry Ford's
Assembly Line, 1908
Poisonous Occupations in
Illinois- physician on dangerous trades
How Many Socialists Does
It Take To Screw in a Light Bulb?: Finding Humor and Pathos in Class
Struggle 1911
Hear Wilson’s Speech “On
Labor”
Upton Sinclair Hits His
Readers in the Stomach
Hear Taft’s Speech “On
Popular Unrest”
Debs Attacks “the
Monstrous System” of Capitalism
Children At
Work, 1908-1912
One Strike Against Her:
A Store Clerk Dares to Join the Union 1903
Working for the Triangle
Shirtwaist Co
TR on Safari,
1909
Woman strike supporter of
Ludlow Massacre, 1914
Two Bits for a Tragic
Tale: Walter Fink’s The Ludlow Massacre
Eyewitness to Murder:
Recounting the Ludlow Massacre
We are literally slaves,
Early 20th C Black Nanny recalls
Sharecropping: They Drug
Him Through the Streets!
Contraception, "A Less
Reliable Form of Birth Control", 1914
Farm women describe their
work, 1913
Retail worker joins union
and gets fired, 1914
“Experiences of a ’Hired
Girl’”: An Early Twentieth-Century Domestic Worker Speaks Out
Upstairs, Downstairs:
The Science of Service
Mrs. Frederick Teaches
Women How to Wash the Dishes
Apple Pie by the Book:
Fannie Farmer vs. Catherine Beecher
Ch 10: America Claims an Empire
Platform
of
the Anti-Imperialist League, 1899
American
Imperialism
of the Philippines
Rudyard Kippling's "The
White
Man's Burden"
“The Poor Man’s Burden”:
Labor Lampoons Kipling
“The Black Man’s
Burden”: A Response to Kipling
Sen.
Albert
Beveridge on Expansion
US Declares
War On Spain, 1898
Rough
Riders Storm San Juan Hill, 1898
Date With Destiny: The
Gonzales Diary
Manifest Destiny,
Continued: McKinley Defends U.S. Expansionism
Ch 11: WWI
Bolsheviks
Storm the Winter Palace, 1917
The power of pictures.
“Babes on bayonets.”
Execution of
Tsar Nicholas II, 1918
I didn't Raise My Boy To
Be A Soldier, singing against the war
Four Minute Men,
speeches
Cartooning for Victory:
World War I Instructions to Artists
“Cotton Belt Blues”:
Lizzie Miles’s Blues Song Great Migration
Victory on the Menu:
Recipes and Rationing
“Hard Chewing”:
Supporting World War I at the Kitchen Table
Gas Attack,
1916
Assassination of
Archduke Ferdinande, 1914
German Army
Marches Through Brussels, 1914
Beginning
of Air Warfare, 1914
Christmas in
the Trenches, 1914
“His Car Is His Pride”:
Ode to a World War I Ambulance
Gas and Flame in World
War I: The New Weapons of Terror
Sinking of
the Lusitania, 1915
Hot Chocolate: A World
War I “Canteen Girl” Writes Home “Bombed Last Night”:
Singing at the Front in World War I
“No Negroes Allowed”:
Segregation at the Front in World War I
“This Is How It Was”: An
American Nurse in France During World War I Death at the
Battle of the Somme, 1916
Battlefield Debut
of the Tank, 1916
Conclusions and
recomendations by the committee of six disinterested americans-
Haiti occupation, 1915
The people were very
peaceable, Haiti occupation
Bandits or Patriots?
Haiti
Avoid the use of the
word Intervention, Wilson on US invation of Mexico
John Reed's What About
Mexico; US & Mexican Revolution, 1911
Better Late Than Never?:
Rickover Clears Spain of the Maine Explosion
UBoat Attack,
1916
America
Declares War on Germany, 1917
Making the world safe
for democracy
Nobody Woudl Eat Kraut,
Lawrence of
Arabia, 1918
Food will win the war, Housewives
in Uniform (Hooverizing)
Please Let Me Put Him in a
Macaroni Box, Spanish Flu, 1918
He'll come home in a box,
flu
Signing the
Versailles Treaty, 1919
Hand of God, Wilson
presents treaty to senate
“Times Is Gettin
Harder”: Blues of the Great Migration
“Don't Have to Mister
Every Little White Boy. . .”: Black Migrants Write Home
Ch 12 &
13: 1920s
The
Scopes Trial, 1925
“Times look pretty dark
to some.” - on 1921 depression
“Shall the
Fundamentalists Win?”: Defending Liberal Protestantism in the 1920s
Eight Hours in the
Forenoon, Eight Hours in the Afternoon; IWW on migrant farm work
Temperance & Prohibition
“Shall We Gather at the
River?”: Aimee Semple McPherson on Prohibition
“Not Rum but
Righteousness”: Billy Sunday Attacks Booze
Lindbergh, PBS
Welcoming Home a Hero:
Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh Speak
Robert Benchley: An
Eminently Safe Citizen; on The Making of a Red
US Intervention in
Nicaragua; Kellogg charges Bolshevist Threat
To Abolish The Monroe
Doctrine, proclamation of Augusto Sandino
Jailed for Freedom: A
Women’s Suffragist Remembers Prison
Starving for Women’s
Suffrage: “I Am Not Strong after These Weeks”
Suffrage on Stage,
parody of the opposition
Suffrage in Print,
spoof of opposition
NAACP official calls for censorship of Birth Of A Nation, 1915
New Middle class
Housekeeping: How I keep house without a Maid
Sadie's Servant Room,
domestic work in song
Automobiles and milady’s
mood.
Model kitchens.
Music and milking time.
radio on the farm
“Teaching old dogs new
tricks.” Flappers
Attorney General A, Mitchell Palmer's "Case Against the Reds"
Emma Goldman on her
deportation in red scare
Kissing Rudy Valentino,
high school student describes movies
Speak Garvey Speak!
follower on a Garvey Rally
DuBois criticizes
Washington
Henrietta Chief recalls
indian boarding school
God Knows More About Tim
than President Wilson, letters against Daylight Saving Time
Chicago Race Riot,
Chicago Daily News- 1919
Chicago Daily Tribune on
race riot- 1919
I witnessed the Steel
Strike, 1919
Save
Sacco and Vanzetti!
They are Dead Now-
eulogy of Sacco & Vanzetti
Last Days Remembered, on
deaths of Sacco & Vanzetti, 1927
One Night When the Levee
Broke, Mississippi flood, 1927
Seven Altogether went down,
family disappears in Mississippi flood
Defending Greenwood,
survivor of Tulsa Race Riot, 1921
An “Un-American Bill”: A
Congressman Denounces Immigration Quotas
“Shut the Door”: A
Senator Speaks for Immigration Restriction
More Work for Mother?
Scientific Management at home
A Man's Thanksgiving;
hymn to the God of Business
The Ancient Days have
Not Departed; Coolidge on spirituality of commerce
White
sheets in Washington, D.C. KKK
Welfare capitalism and
its conceits.
Put on a happy face.
Gertie
Refuses a Suitor: Edna Ferber’s “The Frog and the Puddle”
Department Stores, Shopgirls
“No Snuggling!” Sex Talks
to Young Girls
“I Am Only a Piece of
Machinery”: Housewives Analyze Their Problems
The New Woman of the
1920s: Debating Bobbed-Hair
Effie Bauer Turns Down
Gabie Marks: Edna Ferber’s “One of the Old Girls” Shopgirl ponders
career vs marriage
The Secret Life of Shop
Girls: O. Henry’s Short Story “The Trimmed Lamp”
Enemies, A Drama
of Modern Marriage: The Sexual Revolution Enacted
Warning Against the
“Roman Catholic Party”: Catholicism and the 1928 Election
Should a Catholic Be
President?: A Contemporary View of the 1928 Election
“Love and Companionship
Came First”: Floyd Dell on Modern Marriage
“I Am Almost a
Prisoner”: Women Plead for Contraception
“No Gods, No Masters”:
Margaret Sanger on Birth Control
“When the Whistle Blows
. . . I Come Home and Get Supper”: Women and Work in the Interwar Years
Poet William Carlos
Williams Describes the Crowd at the Ballpark
“Do Insects Think?”
Robert Benchley Satirizes Science
“Complete Nudity Is
Never Permitted”: The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930
Oh Yeah?: Herbert
Hoover Predicts Prosperity
Stiff upper lip.
response to suffering
Ch 14 &
15: The Depression & New Deal
To Save Ourselves:
“Anti-Japanese Activities of the Members of the CHLA”
To Save China: “New York
Hand Laundry Alliance Intensifies Anti-Japanese Work”
“The Gigantic Forces of
Depression Are Today in Retreat”: Hoover Insists That Things Are
Getting Better
“Only Thing We Have to
Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address
“One Third of a Nation”:
FDR’s Second Inaugural Address
The Bum as Con Artist: An
Undercover Account of the Great Depression
Lending a Hand: A Woman
Remembers Hoboes of the 1930s
The Vagrant in Fiction:
Emblematic American?
“The Ballad of Bonnie
and Clyde” by Bonnie Parker
“We Have Got a Good Friend
in John Collier”: A Taos Pueblo Tries to Sell the Indian New Deal
“It Had a Lot of
Advantages”Alfred DuBray Praises the Indian Reorganization Act
“It Didn’t Pan Out as We
Thought It Was Going To” Amos Owen on the Indian Reorganization Act
“I’m Going to Fight Like
Hell”Anna Taffler and the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s
The Los Angeles
Dressmakers Strike of 1933: Anita Andrade Castro Becomes a Union
Activist “Organize
among Yourselves”: Mary Gale on Unemployed Organizing in the Great
Depression
“The Depression has
Changed People’s Outlook”: The Beuschers Remember the Great Depression
in Dubuque, Iowa
Losing the Business: The
Donners Recall the Great Depression
“What He Has Done Is
Sickening to Contemplate”: Catholic Liberal John Ryan Denounces Father
Charles Coughlin
“Somebody Must be
Blamed”: Father Coughlin Speaks to the Nation
“An Independent Destiny
for America”: Charles A. Lindbergh on Isolationism
Against Isolationism:
James F. Byrnes Refutes Lindbergh
“Must a Fellow Wait to
Die?”: Workers Write to Frances Perkins diseases; work conditions
“Hearty Big Strong Men
All Died”: The Lasting Impact of the Silicosis “Plague” in the 1930s
Suspicion of Subversion:
Congressional Conservatives Attack the Federal Theater Project
“It Was a Wildly
Exciting Time”: Milton Meltzer Remembers the New Deal’s Federal Theatre
Project
“Art Within Reach”:
Federal Art Project Community Art Centers
The Corn Parade.
Art project murals
Painting the American
Scene: Artists Assess the Federal Art Project
“A Well-Mannered Bandit
and a Killer”: Little Berta Ballard Remembers Billy the Kid
“Right After That They Walked Out”:
Alice Wolfson Recalls the Origins of the CIO
“That Broke Down the
Ethnic Barriers”: A Steelworker Describes the Decline of Ethnic
Hostility in the 1930s
“This Is the Pressure
That They Used”: Genora Dollinger Recalls the Flint Sit-Down Strike
“I Was Able to Make My
Voice Really Ring Out”: The Women’s Emergency Brigade in the Flint
Sit-Down Strike
“Please Help Us Mr.
President”: Black Americans Write to FDR anti lynch bill
On the road. loss of
farms; off to CA
Migrants.
“We Do Our Part.” NRA
The Spirit of ’32.
effort to raise comodities prices
“We can take it!”
CCC
“He’s a Demagogue,
That’s What He Is”: Hodding Carter on Huey Long
“Huey Long Is a
Superman”: Gerald L. K. Smith Defends the Kingfish
Pure Personal
Government: Roosevelt Goes Too Far in Packing the Court
“Younger and More
Vigorous Blood”: FDR on the Judiciary
FDR versus Nine Old Men:
Schechter v. United States
Hear Joe Louis Knock Out
Max Schmeling: Black Sports Heroes in the Depression Era
“I Will Not Promise the
Moon”: Alf Landon Opposes the Social Security Act, 1936
“Share the Wealth”: Huey
Long Talks to the Nation
“Waitin’ on Roosevelt”:
Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of Roosevelt”
Ch 16 & 17 WWII
“Cutting a New Path”: A
World War II Navy Nurse Fights Sexism in the Military
“I Always Had Pads with
Me”: A G.I. Artist’s Sketchpad, 1943–1944
“A Date Which Will Live
in Infamy”: FDR Asks for a Declaration of War
“This Is No Joke: This
Is War”: A Live Radio Broadcast of the Attack on Pearl Harbor
“80 Rounds in Our Pants
Pockets”: Orville Quick Remembers Pearl Harbor
The “Man in the Street”
Reacts to Pearl Harbor
“The World Will Note”:
President Truman Announces the Atom Bomb
“Why Did We Have to Win
It Twice?”: A Physicist Remembers His Work on the First Atomic Bomb
“I Saw The Walking Dead”:
A Black Sergeant Remembers Buchenwald
“We Need to Exterminate
Them”: A Marine Describes the Battle of Guam “Hello, You Fighting
Orphans”: “Tokyo Rose” Woos U.S. Sailors and Marines Japanese radio
propaganda
Scottsboro defense.
Didactic Dramas: Antiwar
Plays of the 1930s
A Japanese Soldier
Describes the Horrors of Guadalcanal
The War Labor Board
Insists on Equal Pay for Black Workers
Equal Pay for Equal
Work: The War Labor Board on Gender Inequality
Roll Hitler Out and Roll
the Union In: The No-Strike Pledge
“Obey Your Air Raid
Warden”: Big Band as Public Service Announcement
Executive Order 9066:
The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation
Schoolchildren at
Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho, 1940s
May K. Sasaki Describes
the Minidoka, Idaho, Incarceration Camp
Bob Fuchigami Describes
Conditions at the Merced Assembly Center, California
Bob Fuchigami Remembers
the Makeshift School at the Amache, Colorado, Incarceration Camp
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
Describes Preparing for ’Evacuation’ To an Incarceration Camp
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
Recalls Caring for her Baby in the Manzanar Incarceration Camp
Kenge Kobayashi Recalls
the Loyalty Questionnaires and Conditions at Tule Lake Segregation
Center
Mits Koshiyama Recalls
Japanese American Resistance to Incarceration
Masao Takahashi
Describes Incarceration at the Missoula, Montana, Department of Justice
Detention Center
“Jap Trap,” World War II
Propaganda Poster
Kay Matsuoka Describes
the Journey to Gila River, Arizona, Incarceration Camp Tosh
Yasutake and Mitsuye May Yamada Discuss Tosh’s Decision to Join U.S.
Army and Visiting Their Father at a U.S. Department of Justice
Incarceration Camp
Norman I. Hirose
Remembers Entertainment at the Topaz, Utah, Incarceration Camp
Milton Eisenhower
Justifies the Internment of Japanese Americans
Korematsu v. United
States: The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Internment
“Evacuation Was a
Mistake”: Anger at Being Interned
“Shaping Mental and
Moral Forces”: Memo on Propaganda “This Is No Time for You
to Take a Rest”: Hollywood Goes to War
Fibber McGee and Molly
on Mileage Rationing
Pachucos in the
Making": Roots of the Zoot
“Aluminum for Defense”:
Rationing at Home during World War II
Read an Issue of Yank,
The Army Weekly
“Belles of the Ball
Game”: Women’s Professional Baseball League Thrives in the 1940s
Ch 18 &
19 Cold War & Post War Boom
GM Rejects Reuther’s
Call to “Open the Books”: The Post-WWII Strike Wave
“A Youngster Needs a
Knowledge of the Present”: A Popular Magazine Urges Tolerance for the
Distractions of Youth
“Violent Death in Every
Form Imaginable”: A Senate Committee Report Assesses “Crime and Horror”
Comic Books
“Good Shall Triumph over
Evil”: The Comic Book Code of 1954
“A Make-Believe World”:
Contestants Testify to Deceptive Quiz Show Practices
“Every Effort Was Made
to Control the Shows”: A Television Producer Details and Defends
Deceptive Quiz Show Practices
“The Shadow of Incipient
Censorship”: The Creation of the Television Code of 1952
“A Sop to the Public at
Large”: Contestant Herbert Stempel Exposes Contrivances in a 1950s
Television Quiz Show
“The Truth Is the Only
Thing with Which a Man Can Live”: Quiz Show Contestant Charles Van
Doren Publicly Confesses to Deceiving His Television Audience
Leon Sverdlove On the
Taft-Hartley Act
“You Are the
Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”: Paul Robeson
Appears Before HUAC
“They Want to Muzzle
Public Opinion”: John Howard Lawson’s Warning to the American Public
“I Cannot and Will Not
Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions”: Lillian Hellman Refuses
to Name Names “The
World Was at Stake”: Three “Friendly” HUAC Hollywood Witnesses Assess
Pro-Soviet Wartime Films
“Enemies from Within”:
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s Accusations of Disloyalty
"Damage": Collier’s
Assesses the Army-McCarthy Hearings
“Have You No Sense of
Decency”: The Army-McCarthy Hearings
“The Ordeal of Bobby
Cain”: Racial Confrontation at a Newly Integrated Southern High School
“What I Tell My Child
About Color”: Black and White Fathers in Atlanta Try to Explain Race
Relations to Their Sons
“Supreme Court Decisions
Just Are Not Enough”: The Need for Federal Legislation to Desegregate
the South
“No Heat, No Water . . .
and a Large Sign Reading ’Colored’”: Inequality in “Separate but Equal”
Railroad Accommodations
“The Negro Voter: Can He
Elect a President?”
“Mob Rule Cannot Be
Allowed to Override the Decisions of Our Courts”: President Dwight D.
Eisenhower"s 1957 Address on Little Rock, Arkansas
“We Can Control Our
Affairs Pretty Well”: Southern Senators Protest Proposed Antilynching
Legislation
“Get on the Ground and
We Will Kick Your Head In”: A Reporter Tells of Terrorism in Alabama
"The Negro in America
Today": South African Novelist Alan Paton Dissects the Racial Situation
in the South in the Year of Brown v. Board of Education
“And We Shall Overcome”:
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Special Message to Congress
“The First Freedom
Ride:” Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE
“I Didn’t Know Anything
About Voting:” Fannie Lou Hamer On The Mississippi Voter Registration
Campaign
“And This Happened in
Los Angeles:” Malcolm X Describes Police Brutality Against Members of
the Nation of Islam
“The A-Bomb Won’t Do
What You Think!”: An Argument Against Reliance on Nuclear Weapons
“I’m Not Afraid of the
A-Bomb”: An Army Captain Tries to Dispel Fears about Radioactivity
“The Utopian Promise of
the Peacetime Atom”: Predictions and Hopes for Atomic Energy
“Let’s Have a Meeting:”
Cathy Wilkerson on SDS Organizing
“It Was All Men
Talking:” Cathy Wilkerson on 1960s Campus Organizing
Ch 21
Websource: American
RadioWorks,
Remembering Segregation