1880s and World War II School/Event Fact Boxes

Some social and political issues during these historical timeframes were complex. Students may have questions about the topics below.

In turn, you might want to bring up these topics briefly to promote discussion and further learning.

Gender Roles in the 1880s.

During the 1880s, people thought about men and women very differently than they do today. Women were expected to get married at a young age, run the house, and raise children while men worked and provided for the family. Many people thought women were too delicate and innocent for hard work.

However, only middle or upper-class women could afford to not work. In rural areas and for families with less money, women had to work to provide for their families. A few jobs considered appropriate for women were being a teacher, governess, or maid. Many women on farms worked alongside their husbands and families to perform daily chores and plant and harvest crops in spring and fall. Marriage was as much a practical arrangement to effectively run a homestead as it was a matter of love.

How is this different from our expectations of people today?

Governor Frederick Walter Pitkin

Frederick Pitkin, a Republican, served as Colorado’s second governor from 1879-1883. He had been a lawyer and then an investor in mining, where he had become well-known and well connected enough to win the election for governor. Pitkin ordered action against the Ute tribe, which became known as the Meeker Massacre. Pitkin declared martial law during Leadville’s mining strike. The governor before Pitkin was Routt, and after him, was Grant. A Colorado city, various streets, and a county were named after him.

1 President Rutherford Hayes

Rutherford Hayes was a Republican and the 19th president of the United States. After a controversial and complicated win over Samuel Tilden, Hayes served a single term from 1877-81. During his presidency, he withdrew troops from the Reconstruction states to help re-establish local control and good will—an action that many African Americans interpreted as betrayal. Despite his support of the gold standard, Hayes was president when the Bland-Allison Act passed which allowed the US treasury to resume minting silver coin after a five-year hiatus. The Hayes presidency set the stage for civil service reform that rewarded merit over patronage.

Jobs & The School Year

Back in the 1880s, many people in this area of the country were farmers or ranchers. Farmers grew all sorts of crops for food and ranchers raised cattle for beef or dairy. In towns like Longmont and Boulder people owned stores and restaurants, ran banks, worked on railroads, and taught school. In the Rocky Mountains, many people worked in the mines to extract metals like gold and silver. Are these jobs you would like to do?

The school year was scheduled mostly around farming, so kids could stay home and help on the farm during the busiest times of year. When do you think is the slowest time of year on the farm? Right! Winter. Therefore, most kids went to school in winter. Spring was very busy with planting, and fall was very busy with harvest, and sometimes kids went to school in summer, too and many kids only went to school 60 days a year. Today we go to school about 180 days a year.

The Rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in Germany

After Germany was defeated in World War I (1914-1918), the Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of its colonial holdings, stunted the German military and economy, and required Germany to pay money to affected countries (called reparations). In 1919, Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born soldier in the German army during World War I, moved into German politics as a member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (the Nazi party for short) which steadily gained popularity in the country as Hitler rose through its ranks. One of the main platforms of the Nazi party was the belief that the German (Aryan) race was biologically superior to all other races of people and only Germans deserved civil rights and, ultimately, the right to live.

As the Nazis played on the increasing economic turmoil in Germany, they quickly became the dominant political party by 1932. Once Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, he quickly dissolved the Weimar Republic which had ruled Germany as a parliamentary republic since the end of World War I. He then established a Nazi dictatorship loyal to his will, known as the Third Reich, which held power until its defeat at the end of World War II.

2 Governor Ralph Lawrence Carr

Governor Ralph Lawrence Carr, a Republican, was Colorado’s 29th governor from 1939-43. He was a Colorado native. Carr had been a lawyer and then the state’s Attorney General before running unopposed for governor. He called in the National Guard to settle a strike at the Green Mountain Dam construction site. People wanted him to be vice president, but he turned that down, wanting to be governor of Colorado again instead. Carr was against Japanese Americans being interred in camps during World War II. He was in favor of Colorado housing evacuated Japanese, Italians, and Germans from the West coast.

3 The Holocaust and Concentration Camps

Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany during the 1930s as the leader of the Nazi Party. Once Germany surrendered at the end of World War I, anti-Semitism (hostility to, discrimination, or prejudice against Jews) was on the rise in the country and Nazi propaganda took advantage of the situation. The Nazi party blamed the Jewish people in Europe for the world economic depression and for the defeat of Germany during World War I. The root of Hitler’s anti-Semitism has been widely debated by historians. It likely sprung from several places, including his belief in German (Aryan) biological superiority.

The first German concentration camps were established in 1933 to hold political opponents and others deemed “dangerous” to the new government. Jews in Germany felt the effects of over 400 decrees that restricted every aspect of their public and private lives.

By 1939, World War II had begun, and Nazi Germany began conquering other European countries. This is when the Holocaust (the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime) truly began. Nazis established concentration camps to hold Jews, political opponents, and any other groups the government declared inferior to the German race. These concentration camps became labor camps, working the prisoners to death in horrific conditions. The Nazi regime also began to build gas chambers at many concentration camps during this time.

From 1941 to 1944, the Nazi regime deported millions of Jews from Germany, and the conquered countries of Europe, to forced labor camps and extermination camps. In these “killing” camps, Jewish people were led into gas chambers which released toxic gases, killing those who were locked inside.

By the last years of World War II, Nazi Germany began losing ground to the Allied powers who began liberating concentration camps and freeing the prisoners. Once the Nazi regime surrendered in 1945, the Holocaust ended.

One of our Cultural History volunteers went to a one-room school in Iowa during World War II. About the Holocaust he said, “We knew nothing about German concentration camps.” About the leaders of the Axis countries, he commented, “With lots of propaganda posters around, we kids knew what Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini looked like.”

The Changing Pledge of Allegiance

Before WWII, it was customary to begin the pledge of allegiance with your right hand over your heart and then, after uttering, “to the flag,” to raise it in a salute. However, during WWII, this salute was deemed too similar to the Nazi salute and was abandoned. Then, as now, people held their hand over their heart for the entire pledge of allegiance. The pledge of the 1940s did not yet include “under God.” Congress added “under God” to the pledge of allegiance in 1954, during Eisenhower’s presidency. This addition was a reaction to the anti-religious fervor of Communism. The addition was thought to embody America’s inherent morality and to be inclusive of various religions.

4 President Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to the presidency as a Democrat in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. He enacted an aggressive recovery program called the New Deal, which bolstered business and agriculture and gave support to the unemployed. He later engaged in a battle with the Supreme Court, which he lost, but that set the stage for governmental regulation of the economy. One component of the New Deal was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was responsible for much of the improvement of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Roosevelt did all he could to support his European allies without actually entering the war, but eventually Pearl Harbor compelled him to engage. Roosevelt continued in the office of president until his death in 1945. He was president for many years. After Roosevelt’s presidency, term limits to the office were introduced. Now someone can be president for only two terms, or eight years.

President Roosevelt was in a wheelchair by the time of his presidency because of polio. Very few people, except those closest to him, knew he was in a wheelchair. Much of the news then was by radio or in newsreels, which were short news programs shown before movies. Public figures weren’t seen as much as they are nowadays. The president’s assistants could prop him up and make it look as though he was standing. It was thought that if the American people and others knew the president was in a wheelchair, he and the country might be thought of as weak. Our volunteer who grew up during this time says “We and most citizens knew nothing really about FDR being handicapped. Later after his death and the onset of the polio epidemic, we learned.”

United States Armed Forces

The United States is protected by our military or armed forces which include four branches: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. These first three groups were created in 1775 right before the American Revolution, but the Air Force was not created until 1947 after World War II had ended. Each group of the armed forces protects American citizens in different ways. The Army focuses on threats over land; the Navy on threats by water, the Air Force concentrates on aerial and space warfare, and the Marine Corps on threats from outside the country.

5 Japanese Internment

On December 7th, 1941, Japan bombed the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Japan was already at war with China because they wanted to control all of Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Japan wanted to control Hawaii as well. American citizens feared another attack from Japan and panic took hold of the country. Due to this fear, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942 ordering some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S. to be removed from their homes and placed into internment camps. The government justified this order with the fear that those of Japanese descent could be spies for the Japanese government.

These internment camps, mostly in the western United States, made life for Japanese Americans very difficult. Most had not been allowed to pack more than a few items and had to leave their homes quickly. The camps themselves provided little privacy. People lived in barracks and used communal spaces for washing, laundry, and eating while military guards patrolled the camps.

Our farm boy volunteer comments, “We knew nothing…[about] Japanese internment camps. A friend 6 years older than I, growing up in southeast Colorado knew about the Japanese camps because one existed outside of town.”

In January 1945, Public Proclamation #21 went into effect allowing internees to return to their homes. The United States Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which gave all surviving internees $20,000 as an apology for their internment.

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