UNIT 4 | EARLY MODERN: GLOBAL INTERACTIONS
UNIT 7 THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
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UNIT 7 | OVERVIEW, UNIT OBJECTIVES, ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
This unit stretches from the end of the Gilded Age through the end of World War II. During this period, the United States felt the highs and lows of industrial capitalism, gained an empire, and played a significant role in stemming the tide of global fascism. It began the era as a rising global power and ended it as one of two left standing in the aftermath of history’s most costly war. In the lessons that follow we will track these larger processes while maintaining a focus on how all of this played out in the varied experiences of actual Americans.
TIMELINE: 1890 - 1945 INSTRUCTIONAL HOURS: 18
UNIT OBJECTIVES • Analyze the ways in which Americans’ views on the role of government change UNITduring OBJECTIVES the period 1890-1945. • Analyze the impact of individuals and their actions on the successes and failures • ofAnalyze the Progressive the ways in Era. which Americans’ views on the role of government • Examine the lasting inequalities and unequal distribution of progress in America duringchange the during period. the period 1890-1945.
• Analyze the impact of individuals and their actions on the successes and ESSENTIALfailures of the QUESTIONS Progressive Era. • In what ways did the period between 1890 and 1945 shape the political, • Examinesocial, and the culturallasting inequalitiesidentity of theand United States? unequal distribution of progress in • How did the relationship between Americans and their government shift Americaduring the during period? the period.
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1 LESSON 7.1 | THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 99 Read | Reemergence of the KKK 3 Opening | EQ Notebook – Lesson 1 103 Read | Who Killed Black Wall Street? 5 Read | The Progressive Movement 111 Watch | Crash Course US History #33 – 9 Watch | The Progressive Era – The Great Depression Crash Course US History #27 114 Read | The Great Depression Overview 12 Read | The Not-So-Progressive Era 119 Activity | Dust Bowl Primary Sources 17 Read | Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois 127 Watch | Crash Course US History #34 – 21 Read | Journalism and the Problems The New Deal of the Progressive Era 131 Read | Impact of New Deal 28 Watch | Crash Course US History #29 – 138 Closing | EQ Notebook Progressive Presidents 31 Read | Efforts to Reform 140 LESSON 7.3 | WORLD WAR II AND THE BIRTH 35 Watch | Crash Course US History #28 – OF A NEW ORDER American Imperialism 143 Opening | EQ Notebook – Lesson 3 38 Watch | Crash Course US History #30 – 145 Watch | Crash Course US History #35 – America in World War I World War II Part 1 42 Activity | Propaganda in World War I 148 Activity | World War 2 in Documents 50 Read | “Whose War” by John Reed 156 Activity | Compare and Contrast: 55 Watch | Women’s Suffrage Female World War II Pilots 58 Read | Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage & The Tuskegee Airmen 63 Closing | EQ Notebook 165 Read | “The Death of Captain Waskow” by Ernie Pyle 65 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST, & RECOVERY 169 Watch | Crash Course US History #36 – 68 Opening | EQ Notebook – Lesson 2 World War II Part 2 70 Watch | Crash Course US History #32 – 173 Activity | World War II Propaganda The Roaring 20s 179 Read | How American Industry Won World War II 74 Read | Selection from “The New Era” – 185 Read | Japanese Internment Culture of Consumption and Escape 190 Closing | EQ Notebook 82 Activity | The “New Woman” in the “New Era” 89 Read | Harlem Renaissance 93 Read | Marcus Garvey, “The Negro Moses”
3 LESSONUNIT 7 | 7.1 THE | AMERICANTHE PROGRESSIVE EMPIRE ERA
LESSON 7.1.0 | OVERVIEW | The Progressive Era
Coming out of the Gilded Age, the United States was primed to assume its place as a world power. Through the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism, the United States saw unprecedented levels of production and wealth, at least among a select few. However, this success was not without its problems. These problems created the upswell of reformers that came to forge a new era in United States History, a Progressive Era. This unit seeks to guide students through the varied responses to Gilded Age changes in America. From the “trust busting” and “muckraking” to World War I and Women’s Suffrage, this era saw the United States attempt to come to terms with the costs of economic and imperial expansion.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • In what ways did the period between 1890 and 1945 shape the political, social, and cultural identity of the United States? • How did the relationship between Americans and their government shift during the period?
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LESSON 7.1.0 | OVERVIEW | Learning Outcomes, Vocabulary, & Outline
LEARNING OUTCOMES • Identify areas of American society that came out of the Gilded Age in need of reform, such as: • Political corruption • Corporate abuses • Social dislocation of marginalized groups • Environmental degradation • Analyze political, economic, and social effects of Progressive Era reforms. • Describe efforts pursued by the government, journalists, and private reformers to address concerns of Progressive Era. • Evaluate the successes and failures of Progressive reforms in addressing the issues of the time for a variety of Americans.
LESSON ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • What were some of the issues Americans faced as they emerged from the Gilded Age, and in what ways did the Progressive Movement seek to address them? • In what ways can the Progressive Era be viewed as a success? A failure?
LESSON OUTLINE 1 Opening | EQ Notebook - Lesson 1 8 Read | Efforts to Reform 2 Read | The Progressive Movement - PBS’s 9 Watch | Crash Course US History #28 – American Experience American Imperialism 3 Watch | The Progressive Era – 10 Watch | Crash Course US History #30 – Crash Course US History #27 America in World War I 4 Read | The Not-So-Progressive Era 11 Activity | Propaganda in World War I 5 Read | Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois 12 Read | “Whose War” by John Reed 6 Read | Journalism and the Problems 13 Watch | Women’s Suffrage of the Progressive Era 14 Read | Answering Objections 7 Watch | Crash Course US History #29 – to Women’s Suffrage Progressive Presidents 15 Closing | EQ Notebook
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LESSON 7.1.1 | OPENING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE Each unit and lesson of the Crash Course United the Essential Question with evidence they have States History Course (CCUSH) is guided by an gathered throughout the unit. This provides students essential question. The Essential Question Notebook an opportunity to track their learning and to prepare (EQ Notebook) is an informal writing resource for them for future activities. To help students focus on students to track their learning and understanding of the important ideas, this activity asks them to look a concept throughout a unit. Students will be given at the big ideas through the lens of the Essential an Essential Question at the beginning of the unit Question. At this point, students won’t have much and each lesson and asked to provide a response background to bring to bear on the issue just yet. This based on prior knowledge and speculation. Students early exercise helps to bring to the fore what they will then revisit the notebook in order to answer know coming into the unit.
PROCESS During a speech in Milwaukee in 1912, former Example Opening Questions: In what ways President Theodore Roosevelt said: was life made hard by the expansion of Industrial Capitalism in the previous unit? “I am in this cause with my whole heart and What do you think the government’s role soul. I believe that the Progressive movement should be in curbing those hardships? What is making life a little easier for all our people; Americans do you think would be least likely a movement to try to take the burdens off the to be included in this success? They can do men and especially the women and children this in the context of the unit of study, or of this country. I am absorbed in the success relate it to their own lives. of that movement.” ATTACHMENT Ask students to think about this quotation • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet as it relates to the ideas in the Unit 7 and Lesson 7.1 Essential Questions and record their responses in their EQ Notebook Worksheets.
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.1.1, then again in Lesson 7.1.15. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. What were some of the issues Americans faced as they emerged from the Gilded Age, and in what ways did the Progressive Movement seek to address them? 2. In what ways can the Progressive Era be viewed as a success? A failure?
LESSON 7.1.1.
LESSON 7.1.15.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
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LESSON 7.1.2 | READ | The Progressive Movement —PBS American Experience
PURPOSE This article introduces the main ideas of the Progressive Movement.
PROCESS Have students read the article and instruct SOURCE them to pay particular attention to the various • PBS American Experience causes, methods of reform, and peoples of the Progressive Movement. Use the essential ATTACHMENTS questions for the lesson to guide conversations. • “The Progressive Movement”
Potential Questions & Discussion Points: • Who were the Progressives? • What important roles did women play in this movement for reform? • What were some of the prominent issues of the Progressive Era? What solutions developed?
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READING | The Progressive Movement —PBS: American Experience [E]arly 20th century America was the training ground The progressives came from a long tradition of for a transformation of the relationship between middle-class elites possessing a strong sense a democratic government and its people. Perhaps of social duty to the poor. The social hierarchy the best known results of this era are the 18th wherein blue-blooded, native stock was at the and 19th Amendments, Prohibition, and women’s top and the poor along with the “darker-skinned” suffrage respectively. But this legislation really were at the bottom, was accepted by the elite. came at the tail end of the period which has come But inherent in their role as privileged members to be known as the “Age of Reform.” The of society was a certain degree of responsibility amendments were actually the byproducts of for the less fortunate. Growing up in this social an immense social and political upheaval which class, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked, “In that society changed forever the expectations of the role you were kind to the poor, you did not neglect your government would play in American society. philanthropic duties, you assisted the hospitals and did something for the needy.” The Progressive It was during this brief interlude, 1900-1918, that Era is unique in that this impulse spread to foster America was completing its rapid shift from an an all-encompassing mood and effort for reform. agrarian to an urban society. This caused major From farmers to politicians, the need for change anxiety among the country’s predominantly Yankee, and for direct responsibility for the country’s ills Protestant middle-class because it introduced became paramount and spread from social service “disturbing” changes in their society. Large to journalism. During his presidency, Theodore corporations and “trusts,” representing materialism Roosevelt commented on the need: “No hard-and- and greed, were controlling more and more of the fast rule can be laid down as to the way in which country’s finances. Immigrants from southeastern such work [reform] must be done; but most certainly Europe -- “dark-skinned” Italians and peasant every man, whatever his position, should strive to Jews from Russia -- were flocking to major industrial do it in some way and to some degree.” centers, competing for low wages and settling in the ethnic enclaves of tenement slums. Party bosses Applying this sense of duty to all ills of society, manipulated the political ignorance and desperation middle-class reformers attempted to restore of the newcomers to advance their own party democracy by limiting big business, “Americanizing” machines. To the native middle-class, these ills the immigrants, and curbing the political machines. of society seemed to be escalating out of control. Theodore Roosevelt, wanting to ensure free In the name of democratic ideals and social justice, competition, was particularly instrumental in progressives made themselves the arbiters of a curtailing monopolistic business practices during “new” America in which the ideals of the founding his time in the White House. He extended the fathers could find a place within the nation’s powers of the executive branch and the powers of changing landscape.
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the government within the economy, departing from civic reforms. Settlement house work influenced the laissez-faire attitude of previous administrations. woman and child labor laws, welfare benefits, and By supporting labor in the settlement of the Anthracite factory inspection legislation. Coal Strike in 1902, Roosevelt became the first president to assign the government such a direct By helping the immigrants, female reformers hoped role and duty to the people. to curb the influence of the political bosses in the urban slums. Ironically, however, their efforts only The immigrant “problem” was handled for the most added to the bosses’ popularity. Many immigrants part by white, middle-class young women. Many saw the reformers as meddlesome outsiders with of these female reformers had been educated little regard or respect for their ways of life. Such in the new women’s colleges which had sprung nuances as temperance and woman suffrage meant up in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an far less to them than issues of subsistence: securing education yet barred from most professional careers, a vendor’s license for their pushcart or obtaining these women took to “association building” as false birth certificates so that their children could a means to be active in public life. Among these contribute to the family income. The political boss associations were the Women’s Trade Union could provide these services while the reformer only League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, hampered them. the National Consumers’ League, and a vast system of “Americanizing” centers known as Also working to expunge the ills of society were settlement houses. These organizations were progressive, “muckraking” journalists. Jacob meant to “purify” the public sphere of men in which Riisexposed the poor living conditions of the vice and corruption were bred. The WTUL and the tenement slums in How the Other Half Lives (1890) NCL sought to cleanse the largely male-owned and inspired significant tenement reforms. In garment factories in which female workers were The Shame of the Cities (1904), Lincoln Steffens harshly exploited. The Temperance Union sought revealed the political corruption in the party to eliminate the dominantly male immigrant machines of Chicago and New York. Most shocking worker’s drinking habits and with them, saloons to contemporary readers was Upton Sinclair’s The and prostitution. With settlement houses, women Jungle (1906) in which he traced an immigrant such as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald set out family’s exploitation and downward spiral in Chicago’s to uplift the immigrant masses and to teach them meat packing industry. The novel resulted in the “proper” ways of life and moral values. These Pure Food and Drug and the Meat Inspection Acts houses, of which there were 400 in America by 1910, in 1906, the first legislation of its kind. instructed immigrants on everything from proper dancing forms (intentionally steering them away At the outset of the First World War, the progressive from more popular and sexually suggestive dances spirit turned from domestic issues to international like the “cakewalk”) to proper housekeeping and concerns. Extending their democratic sensibilities
7 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY and sense of moral duty to the situation in Europe, the pro-war progressives approached the conflict with the same moralizing impulse. Under Woodrow Wilson’s leadership, America entered WWI in order to extend democracy and spread its ideals beyond its own borders. When this could not be achieved -- the death of the League of Nations and Wilson’s failing health being significant setbacks -- the reforming spirit significantly lessened. The nation was tired of war and it lacked the widespread desire for change to carry on the moralizing crusade.
The window of time that the Progressive Era inhabits is a brief one, but not at all insignificant. Its reforms introduced a new role for government. In dealing with the problems of urbanization and industrialization, the country’s democratic institutions had to address problems on a very local level. This precedent would provide the backbone for the New Deal and would inspire the reforming spirit of the nation’s leaders during the Great Depression.
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LESSON 7.1.3 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #27 The Progressive Era
PREVIEW In which John Green teaches you about the labor, and unions were all on the agenda in the Progressive Era in the United States. In the late Progressive Era. While progress was being made, 19th and early 20th century in America, there and people were becoming more free, these gains was a sense that things could be improved upon. were not equally distributed. Jim Crow laws were A sense that reforms should be enacted. A sense put in place in the south, and immigrant rights were that progress should be made. As a result, we got restricted as well. So once again on Crash Course, the Progressive Era, which has very little to do things aren’t so simple. with automobile insurance, but a little to do with automobiles. All this overlapped with the Gilded PURPOSE Age, and is a little confusing, but here we have In this video, students learn about the elimination it. Basically, people were trying to solve some of corruption within government while spreading of the social problems that came with the benefits social activism. This era witnessed a movement to of industrial capitalism. To oversimplify, there was curb the control of political systems and those a competition between the corporations’ desire who benefitted from those systems. There were to keep wages low and workers’ desire to have also efforts to improve social well-being and the a decent life. Improving food safety, reducing child lives of workers.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask relate to current events? In what ways does students to watch the video before class. our current diversity and complexity still Remind students of John’s fast-talking and give rise to impulses towards progress? play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before students LINK watch the video, instruct them to begin • Crash Course US History #27 – to consider what they learned in the article The Progressive Era about the Progressive Movement. While this movement sought change, how successful Video questions for students to answer during was it? How might ideas from this video their viewing.
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LESSON 7.1.3 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (1:50) What most concerned progressives during SAMPLE ANSWER: Progressives were most this era and what were the problems they were concerned with social problems that revolved concerned with? around industrial capitalist society - needing to keep costs down and profits high in a competitive market.
2. (2:35) What is muckraking? SAMPLE ANSWER: A form of journalism in which reporters could uncover dirt or “muck” about a subject and publish it. Muckraking exposed industrial and political abuses throughout this era.
3. (4:00) What were the results of The Jungle SAMPLE ANSWER: The publishing of The Jungle being published? led to the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 - both of which improved the quality of products and factory conditions throughout the country.
4. (4:35) How many children under the age of 15 SAMPLE ANSWER: More than 2 million workers were working during this time? were under the age of 15.
5. (5:25) Henry Ford’s decision to pay his workers SAMPLE ANSWER: Ford’s annual output rose from fair wages resulted in what? 34,000 cars to 730,000 cars between 1910 and 1916. Additionally, prices of automobiles dropped $400.
6. (6:30) How did Simon W. Patten influence SAMPLE ANSWER: Patten prophesied that progressives? industrialization would bring about a new civilization where everyone would benefit from the abundance and leisure time that labor-saving devices could bring.
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7. (6:45) What new devices could common SAMPLE ANSWER: Americans could purchase Americans purchase in 1915? washing machines, vacuum cleaners, record players, and automobiles.
8. (7:50) What is the “labor problem”? SAMPLE ANSWER: The labor problem was a result of industrialization in which mechanization diminished opportunities for skilled workers and the supervised routine of the factory floor destroyed autonomy.
9. (9:15) What were the results of progressives SAMPLE ANSWER: Cities established public control pushing for social legislation in the cities? over gas and water utilities and raised taxes to pay for transportation and public schools.
10. (10:25) What does the 17th Amendment allow? SAMPLE ANSWER: The 17th Amendment allowed for senators to be elected directly by the people rather than by state legislature.
LESSON 7.1.3 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. According to Eric Foner, the consumer culture of the Progressive Era, “became the foundation for a new understanding of freedom as access to the cornucopia of goods made available by modern capitalism.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
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LESSON 7.1.4 | READ | The Not-So-Progressive Era
PURPOSE This reading gives students a clearer answer to the rise of Jim Crow in the South and the efforts a way in which the Progressive Era failed to better to eliminate the ability of African Americans to the lives of a significant portion of Americans, effectively resist through the ballot. namely African Americans. The article details
PROCESS Students should receive the reading and be ATTACHMENT instructed to think about the following as • The Not-So-Progressive Era they read:
• In what ways did the Progressive • What evidence is provided to illustrate Era seemingly fail to address the that the disenfranchising of African concerns of African Americans in Americans was supported by people the South? in both the North and South? • What do you think are some • In what ways do you think that the consequences of the system put in ideas in this piece will remain relevant place to stifle African Americans beyond the end of this period in during this period? American History?
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READING | The Not-So-Progressive Era —Jake Thurman At the dawn of what became the Progressive Era, facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional. the furthering of racial division in the South served This decision would echo throughout the next sixty to exclude African Americans from the reforms and years as the southern United States erected a wall benefits of the Progressive Movement. Rather than of segregation between its black and white citizens. advancing through this period, an era dedicated Virtually every aspect of society in the south was to righting the wrongs of the Gilded Age, African divided along these racial lines. The fact of the Americans instead saw their lives hindered by the matter was that while separate ruled the day, equal Jim Crow laws adopted throughout the Southern was nowhere to be found. The repercussions of United States. The acceleration of segregation this would have lasting impacts on the lives of many combined with continued efforts to deny African Americans, black and white. Americans the right to vote to seek to permanently situate the African American in a position of The decision in Plessy reflected sentiments within inferiority. Both segregation and voter suppression American society that separation of races was were causes championed by white southern justified. This decision was born of notions of white leadership at the state level. However, that cause supremacy and would serve to entrench said white was emboldened by the federal government supremacy in the laws of the land. The statutes that through decisions in two landmark Supreme followed the decision saw nearly all aspects of life Court cases. (and even death) regulated. In addition to separation on public transportation, it became illegal for black Segregation and white southerners to dine in restaurants together, In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States to attend school together, to read in the same rendered a decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson libraries, or to even be buried on the same grounds. case. Four years prior, Homer Plessy attempted The laws also reflected a particular obsession with to challenge racial segregation laws by intentionally the interactions of white women and black men. It getting himself jailed for sitting in a train car is commonly known that the state governments of reserved for whites. Plessy was seven-eighths the period forbade interracial marriages (known as white, but the one eighth of his lineage that was anti-miscegenation in the law codes of the time). black rendered him a second-class citizen in his However, several states also passed further laws, native Louisiana. Upon his arrest, Plessy and his seeking to eliminate the interaction of white women lawyers pressed for a ruling to determine if the and black men in public spaces. This was born out rights granted to African Americans in the 14th of heinous stereotypes, reinforced by popular and 15th Amendments were violated by segregation. media like the film The Birth of a Nation, that black The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, men would inevitably prey upon the stereotypical where it was determined that “separate but equal” innocence and fragility of white women. Thus,
13 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY in some states, it became illegal for white female • Never laugh derisively at a white person. nurses to treat black men or for black barbers to cut • Never comment upon the appearance of a the hair of white women or girls. Beyond the law, white female. these ideals bread violence. The sanctity of white • As you can see, these rules serve to engender womanhood often provided the impetus for the a culture of fear and mistrust. When lynchings, the laws that allowed them, and other combined with the legal measures mentioned general instances of racial violence perpetrated above, they served to further cement white against thousands of African American men during supremacy as the framework within which life the period. This violence was not limited to was experienced in the United States. instances of perceived threats to white women, however. As public life was framed by ideals of Voting Rights racial segregation and proper deference by blacks After Plessy, the court further buried hopes for an to white-established societal norms, the opportunities equal application of justice in the south with to run afoul of the system were plenty. For every its decision in Williams v. Mississippi. Mississippi written rule about the segregation of spaces there enacted provisions in its state constitution that were unwritten rules about the ways in which allowed for election officials to administer literacy African Americans were expected to act when in tests and poll taxes and restrict voting for people the presence of white people. American author and convicted of certain crimes. These policies were human rights activist, Stetson Kennedy, wrote Jim directly designed to disenfranchise2 Mississippi’s Crow Guide, a mock guidebook to America, detailing African American voters. In 1898, the Supreme the levels to which black inferiority was taken during Court heard the Williams case, which challenged the period. In the book, Kennedy identifies seven Mississippi’s law. Ultimately, the Court decided to basic rules of etiquette that pervaded the Jim uphold the law as just. The decision stated that Crow South:1 since both white and black Mississippians were • Never assert or even intimate that a white supposed to go through the same process, the law person is lying. was not discriminatory. This failed to account for • Never impute dishonorable intentions to a the substantial obstacles that African Americans white person. faced in jumping through these hoops for their • Never suggest that a white person is from an constitutional right to vote. With the success of inferior class. Mississippi’s policies, other states followed suit and • Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, passed similar legislation. superior knowledge or intelligence. • Never curse a white person.
1 http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm 2 to deprive of the right to vote
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Black southerners were disproportionately impacted southerners. It is important to understand that by these laws. The low literacy rates within these actions did not go unchallenged. Leaders like the African American community, the result of Booker T. Washington in the South and W.E.B. Du generations of slavery restrictions on educating Bois in the North gave voice to ways to challenge African Americans and the broken promises of the continuation of white supremacy and provided Reconstruction, saw significant swathes of the African Americans with paths toward resistance. black community rendered unable to voice their Du Bois would go on to become a founder of the opinions at the polls. Some states even invoked National Association for the Advancement of clauses that allowed people to vote if they could Colored People (NAACP), which would play a key understand what another person read to them. role in providing legal support for resistance for These provisions, employed selectively, allowed decades to come. white voter registration officials to pass illiterate whites through the process. Prior to the passage Additionally, the idea that this was a Southern of these laws, the conflicts at ballot boxes often problem neglects to account for the facts. During resulted in violence and intimidation against black this period, the Great Migration of African voters. While this still occurred, these new Americans from the South to the North, a topic laws saw this public violence (at ballot boxes, not for a later lesson, began. Myths of racism being generally) decrease while its desired results, the a uniquely Southern problem were quickly realized disenfranchisement of African Americans, remained to be false. Politically, the Democratic Party, both unchallenged. The result was to create a situation in the North and South, was complicit in the design in which the voices of black southerners were absent and defense of racist policies. At this time, African from the political process. Naturally, this allowed Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, it policies of white supremacy to proliferate. The being the party of Lincoln and whatnot. This meant effectiveness of these policies in achieving their that it was advantageous for white Democrats aim is clear from the fact that the black vote that in the North to support the proliferation of racial was 130,000 strong in Louisiana in 1896 was segregation and disenfranchisement, as it would reduced to 1,342 by the election of 1904.3 Similar allow the Democrats to hold onto precious, reductions in the black vote occurred throughout fabricated majorities in the South. Illustrating the the South, as by 1908 all of the Southern states had ways that the racial politics of the day were not passed legislation to suppress the black voice. strictly geographical, President Woodrow Wilson, a white northerner and Democrat, replaced African Conclusion Americans in appointed positions at an alarming Much of this reading has been dedicated to rate. He even appointed white ambassadors to what was done to African Americans by white Haiti and Santo Domingo, which were positions
3 http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/white-only-1.html
15 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY traditionally held by African Americans. Some of Wilson’s cabinet officials also set out to segregate their departments. It’s clear that, while the overt establishment of white supremacist ideals was more readily seen in the South, the notion that racism was a geographical anomaly should be considered bogus.
All told, the decisions in Plessy and Williams did not create segregation, voter suppression, white supremacy, or the inordinate amount of violence inflicted upon the minds and bodies of African Americans. What they did do, however, was lend the legal space necessary to thoroughly embed ideals of white supremacy and license to do violence against African Americans into the fabric of experience in the United States. It is important to understand, however, that versions of this experience were most certainly felt beyond the boundaries of the former Confederate States of America. Equally vital to this story is the realization that these injustices occurred during what was otherwise known as the Progressive Era, but their effects echoed well beyond the era and continue to impact America into the present.
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LESSON 7.1.5 | READ | Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois
PURPOSE This activity is designed to illustrate for students the evaluate the merits of both methods of reform. It is differences between the approaches of Booker T. important to also contextualize this within the ideas Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Through these two of the Progressive Era, generally. short excerpts, students will understand the ideas championed by each leader and have a chance to
PROCESS Give students access to the excerpts from the ATTACHMENT works of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. • Washington vs. Du Bois Reading Du Bois. Students should read, annotating the text as they work through the documents. They should then complete the questions at the end of the document.
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READING | The ‘Atlanta Compromise’ Speech —Booker T. Washington (1895) Background Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1856 and race can prosper till it learns that there is as much was nine years old when slavery ended. He became dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. a school designed to teach blacks industrial skills. Washington was a skillful politician and speaker, and To those of the white race who look to the incoming he won the support of whites in the North and South of those of foreign birth and strange tongue who donated money to the school. On September and habits for the prosperity of the South, were 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington made the following I permitted, I would repeat what I have said to speech before a mostly white audience in Atlanta. my own race: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Excerpt Negroes, whose habits you know, whose fidelity Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that and love you have tested… As we have proved in the first years of our freedom we began at the top our loyalty to you in the past… so in the future, instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a or the state legislature was more attractive than devotion that no foreigner can approach… In all starting a dairy farm or garden. things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things A ship lost at sea for many days passed a friendly essential to mutual progress. ship and sent out a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly ship at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed ship, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are”… The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water.
To those of my race I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends with the Southern white man, who is your next-door neighbor. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service… No
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READING | The Souls of Black Folk — W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) Background The most influential public critique of Booker T. pacifying of the South. As a result of this tender Washington came in 1903 when black leader and of the palm-branch,7 what has been the return? intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois published an essay in In these years there have occurred: his book, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois rejected Washington’s message and instead called for 1. The disfranchisement of the Negro; 2. The legal political power, insistence on civil rights, and the creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for higher education of African-American youth. Du Bois the Negro; 3. The steady withdrawal of aid from was born and raised a free man in Massachusetts institutions for the higher training of the Negro. and was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard. Mr. Washington’s doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Excerpt Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand The most striking thing in the history of the American aside as critical spectators; when in fact the burden Negro since 1876 is the rise of Mr. Booker T. belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of Washington. His leadership began at the time when us are clean if we do not all work on righting these Civil War memories and ideals were rapidly passing; great wrongs. a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons. Mr. Washington came at the psychological moment when whites were a little ashamed of having paid so much attention to Negroes [during Reconstruction], and were concentrating their energy on dollars.
Mr. Washington practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. He asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things—first, political power; second, insistence on civil rights; third, higher education of Negro youth— and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the
19 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What is the central idea of Booker T. Washington’s speech?
2. How does Washington envision the relationship between black and white southerners? How might the audience of this speech impact Washington’s message?
3. What about Washington’s ideas do you find compelling? Which ideas might be less convincing?
4. What is Du Bois’s central idea?
5. In what ways does Du Bois critique Washington’s approach? Is his critique effective?
6. What from these documents do you think remains relevant today?
20 LESSON 7.1 | THEPROGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE ERA ERA
LESSON 7.1.6 | ACTIVITY | Primary Source Analysis – Muckrakers
PURPOSE This activity is designed to expose students to a better understanding of both the way change the works of the muckrakers. These journalists was affected during the Progressive Era and the helped to spark progress by reporting on the important role that journalists and journalism play in ways in which American society was in need of our society. reform. Students should come away with both
PROCESS Give students access to the excerpts from ideas in each piece served to expose the works of two prominent muckrakers, a societal ill during the era. However, Upton Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens. Students connecting these ideas to notions about the should read, annotating the text as they work importance of journalism and the ways in through the documents. They should then which fighting corruption and vigilance by complete a Primary Source Analysis Tool citizens are still important to progress today. for each document. Upon completion of the assignment, the class should discuss findings ATTACHMENTS and compare ideas (small groups might be • The Jungle best for this, sharing out when done). This • The Shame of the Cities discussion should center on how the • Primary Source Analysis Tool
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READING | The Jungle —Upton Sinclair (1906) Background Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was a famous twentieth century poet who often experimented with different genres. The Jungle, published in 1906, exposed the harsh conditions of the meatpacking industry in Chicago and other similar industrial cities. Public pressure during the aftermath of the book’s publication led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act, which helps ensure that meat is packaged under sanitary conditions.
As you read the text, take notes on Sinclair’s use of imagery and tone in describing the conditions of the meatpacking industry. performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor Excerpt from The Jungle and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they another working in a sausage factory, the family saved time and increased the capacity of the had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of plant—a machine consisting of a hollow needle Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it the meat and working with his foot, a man could could not be used for anything else, either to can fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the some of them with an odor so bad that a man pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read pump into these the packers had a second and a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor— jest—that they use everything of the pig except a process known to the workers as “giving them the squeal. thirty per cent.” Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken to the bad. Formerly these had been sold out of pickle would often be found sour, and how as “Number Three Grade,” but later on some they would rub it up with soda to take away the ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; now they would extract the bone, about which also of all the miracles of chemistry which they the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole
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a white-hot iron. After this invention there was would put poisoned bread out for them; they would no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade— die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into there was only Number One Grade. The packers the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no were always originating such schemes—they had joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the what they called “boneless hams,” which were all man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and out a rat even when he saw one – there were things “California hams,” which were the shoulders, with that went into the sausage in comparison with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. and fancy “skinned hams,” which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse There was no place for the men to wash their hands that no one would buy them—that is, until they before they ate their dinner, and so they made had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled a practice of washing them in the water that was “head cheese!” to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt- ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels by the two-thousand-revolutions- a-minute flyers, in the cellar and left there. Under the system of and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor rigid economy which the packers enforced, there that ever was in a ham could make any difference. were some jobs that it only paid to do once in There was never the least attention paid to what a long time, and among these was the cleaning out was cut up for sausage; there would come all the of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and way back from Europe old sausage that had been in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would and stale water – and cartload after cartload of it be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers into the hoppers, and made over again for home with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s consumption. breakfast. Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage – but as the smoking took time, and There would be meat that had tumbled out on the was therefore expensive, they would call upon their floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had chemistry department, and preserve it with borax tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it over it, and thousands of rats would race about on “special,” and for this they would charge two cents it. It was too dark in these storage places to see more a pound. well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is in the public domain. of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers
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READING | The Shame of the Cities — Lincoln Steffens (1904) Background Lincoln Steffens was a journalist at the turn of the than we have now, if we want it, which is another 20th century. As a muckraker he sought to illuminate question. But don’t try to reform politics with the the darker side of American prosperity in the hope banker, the lawyer, and the dry-goods merchant, for that attention would lead to reform. In his book The these are business men and there are two great Shame of the Cities, Steffens compiled articles he’d hindrances to their achievement of reform: one is written for McClure’s magazine on his investigations that they are different from, but no better than, of American industrial cities. Below is an excerpt the politicians; the other is that politics is not “their from the introduction to The Shame of the Cities. line.” There are exceptions both ways. Many It illustrates the conclusions Steffens came to politicians have gone out into business and done about the toxic nature of the relationship between well (Tammany ex-mayors, and nearly all the old corruption in business and in politics. bosses of Philadelphia are prominent financiers in their cities), and business men have gone into Excerpt from The Shame of the Cities: politics and done well (Mark Hanna, for example). There is hardly an office from United States Senator They haven’t reformed their adopted trades, down to Alderman in any part of the country however, though they have sometimes sharpened to which the business man has not been elected; them most pointedly. The politician is a business yet politics remains corrupt, government pretty man with a specialty. When a business man of some bad, and the selfish citizen has to hold himself in other line learns the business of politics, he is readiness like the old volunteer firemen to rush a politician, and there is not much reform left in him. forth at any hour, in any weather, to prevent the Consider the United States Senate, and believe me. fire; and he goes out sometimes and he puts out the fire (after the damage is done) and he goes back The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not to the shop sighing for the business man in politics. patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, The business man has failed in politics as he has in not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, citizenship. Why? not principle. “My business is sacred,” says the business man in his heart. “Whatever prospers Because politics is business. That’s what’s the my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders matter with it. That’s what’s the matter with it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, everything—art, literature, religion, journalism, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give law, medicine,—they’re all business, and all— one, not if it is necessary to my business.” as you see them. Make politics a sport, as they “Business is business“ is not a political sentiment, do in England, or a profession, as they do in but our politician has caught it. He takes essentially Germany, and we’ll have—well, something else the same view of the bribe, only he saves his self-
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respect by piling all his contempt upon the bribe- government and he would supply it. That process giver, and he has the great advantage of candor. would take a generation or more to complete, for ”It is wrong, maybe,“ he says, ”but if a rich merchant the politicians now really do not know what good can afford to do business with me for the sake of government is. But it has taken as long to develop a convenience or to increase his already great wealth, bad government, and the politicians know what that I can afford, for the sake of a living, to meet him is. If it would not “go,” they would offer something half way. I make no pretensions to virtue, not even else, and, if the demand were steady, they, being so on Sunday.” And as for giving bad government or commercial, would “deliver the goods.” good, how about the merchant who gives bad goods or good goods, according to the demand? But do the people want good government? Tammany says they don’t. Are the people honest? Are the But there is hope, not alone despair, in the people better than Tammany? Are they better than commercialism of our politics. If our political the merchant and the politician? Isn’t our corrupt leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, government, after all, representative? they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for President Roosevelt has been sneered at for going good government. The bosses have us split up into about the country preaching, as a cure for our parties. To him parties are nothing but means to his American evils, good conduct in the individual, simple corrupt ends. He “bolts” his party, but we must not; honesty, courage, and efficiency. “Platitudes” the the bribe-giver changes his party, from one election sophisticated say. Platitudes? If my observations to another, from one county to another, from one have been true, the literal adoption of Mr. Roosevelt’s city to another, but the honest voter must not. Why? reform scheme would result in a revolution, more Because if the honest voter cared no more for his radical and terrible to existing institutions, from the party than the politician and the grafter, then the Congress to the Church, from the bank to the ward honest vote would govern, and that would be bad— organization, than socialism or even than anarchy. for graft. It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that Why, that would change all of us—not alone our is used to take our sovereignty from us. If we would neighbors, not alone the grafters, but you and me. leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, No, the contemned methods of our despised politics and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, are the master methods of our braggart business, and cities, and States, and nation. If we would vote and the corruption that shocks us in public affairs in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two we practice ourselves in our private concerns. There are equally bad, would throw out the party that is no essential difference between the pull that gets is in, and wait till the next election and then throw your wife into society or for your book a favorable out the other party that is in—then, I say, the review, and that which gets a heeler into office, a thief commercial politician would feel a demand for good out of jail, and a rich man’s son on the board of
25 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY directors of a corporation; none between the bad laws, giving away public property in exchange; corruption of a labor union, a bank, and a political and our good, and often impossible, laws we allow machine; none between a dummy director of to be used for oppression and blackmail. And what a trust and the caucus-bound member of a legislature; can we say? We break our own laws and rob our none between a labor boss like Sam Parks, a boss own government, the lady at the customhouse, the of banks like John D. Rockefeller, a boss of railroads lyncher with his rope, and the captain of industry like J. P. Morgan, and a political boss like Matthew S. with his bribe and his rebate. Quay. The boss is not a political, he is an American institution, the product of a freed people that have The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the not the spirit to be free. American spirit.
And it’s all a moral weakness; a weakness right The Shame of the Cities by Lincoln Steffens where we think we are strongest. Oh, we are is in the public domain. good—on Sunday, and we are “fearfully patriotic” on the Fourth of July. But the bribe we pay to the janitor to prefer our interests to the landlord’s, is the little brother of the bribe passed to the alderman to sell a city street, and the father of the air-brake stock assigned to the president of a railroad to have this life-saving invention adopted on his road. And as for graft, railroad passes, saloon and bawdy- house blackmail, and watered stock, all these belong to the same family. We are pathetically proud of our democratic institutions and our republican form of government, of our grand Constitution and our just laws. We are a free and sovereign people, we govern ourselves and the government is ours. But that is the point. We are responsible, not our leaders, since we follow them. We let them divert our loyalty from the United States to some “party”; we let them boss the party and turn our municipal democracies into autocracies and our republican nation into a plutocracy. We cheat our government and we let our leaders loot it, and we let them wheedle and bribe our sovereignty from us. True, they pass for us strict laws, but we are content to let them pass also
26 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE HANDOUT | Primary Source Analysis Tool TIME
TOPIC: AUTHOR:
SOURCE TITLE: PUBLICATION DATE:
OBSERVE: WHAT WERE THE MAIN IDEAS/THEMES OF THE PIECE? (THIS BOX SHOULD HAVE OBJECTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT WHAT IS IN THE PIECE, NOT WHAT YOU PERSONALLY FEEL ABOUT THE IDEAS IN THE SOURCE.)
QUOTES: WHAT QUOTES DID YOU FIND TO BE PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT OR INTERESTING?
REFLECTION: WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS MOST COMPELLING OR INTERESTING ABOUT THE SOURCE? WHY IS THIS SOURCE IMPORTANT? WHAT CAN IT TELL US ABOUT THE PERIOD? DO ANY OF ITS IDEAS APPLY TO AMERICA TODAY?
QUESTIONS: WHAT QUESTIONS DO YOU HAVE ABOUT THE SOURCE OR THE TOPIC, GENERALLY?
27 LESSON 7.1 | THEPROGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE ERA ERA
LESSON 7.1.7 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #29 Progressive Presidents PREVIEW PURPOSE In which John Green teaches you about the In this video, students will be introduced to the Progressive Presidents, who are not a super-group presidents of the Progressive Era in more detail. of former presidents who create complicated, They should come to understand who these men symphonic, rock soundscapes that transport you were, what causes and efforts they made that into a fantasy fugue state. The presidents most garnered them the title “Progressive President”, and associated with the Progressive Era are Theodore what successes and failures they met on their Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. quest to better life in the United States. Also of note During the times these guys held office, trusts is the way in which these presidents, particularly were busted, national parks were founded, social Theodore Roosevelt, shaped the perception and programs were enacted, and tariffs were lowered. expectations of the office. It wasn’t all positive though, as their collective tenure also saw Latin America invaded A LOT, a split in the Republican party that resulted in a Bull Moose, all kinds of other international intervention, and the end of the Progressive Era saw the United States involved in World War.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask ways did they require assistance from outside students to watch the video before class. the government? Were they successful? How Remind students of John’s fast-talking and so? If not, why not? play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before students LINK watch the video, remind students that • Crash Course US History #29 – one of the central ideas in this lesson is Progressive Presidents to understand the role of government in effecting change. In what ways were these Video questions for students to answer during presidents promoting “progress”? In what their viewing.
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LESSON 7.1.7 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (2:00) Why is Theodore Roosevelt considered a SAMPLE ANSWER: Roosevelt was engaged in both model of the 20th Century president? domestic and foreign policy, while also setting the political agenda for the whole country.
2. (2:35) In what ways did Roosevelt regulate the SAMPLE ANSWER: Roosevelt prosecuted bad trusts economy by directing the federal government? using the Sherman Act to break up the power of wealthy corporations. Congress also passed the Hepburn Act, which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to regulate railroad rates and the right to examine railroad company books.
3. (4:00) Why did Roosevelt run against his self- SAMPLE ANSWER: Roosevelt was upset that Taft appointed successor in the Election of 1912? was more conservative than most of their fellow progressives, and frustrated that Taft fired Pinchot, who Roosevelt had appointed to head of the United States Forest Service.
4. (5:20) What was Wilson’s progressive program SAMPLE ANSWER: Wilson’s progressive program called and what were its aims? was called the “New Freedom” plan, which aimed to reinvigorate democracy by restoring market competition and preventing big businesses from dominating government.
5. (5:45) What were the aims of the Bull Moose SAMPLE ANSWER: Ford’s annual output rose from platform? 34,000 cars to 730,000 cars between 1910 and 1916. Additionally, prices of automobiles dropped $400.
6. (6:30) How did Simon W. Patten influence SAMPLE ANSWER: Patten prophesied that progressives? industrialization would bring about a new civilization where everyone would benefit from the abundance and leisure time that labor-saving devices could bring.
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7. (8:00) What were the goals of the legislation SAMPLE ANSWER: Wilson sought to reduce passed under the Wilson administration? import taxes while increasing taxes on the richest Americans while protecting the rights of workers. A platform very similar to that of Teddy Roosevelt.
8. (9:40) What characteristics of progressive SAMPLE ANSWER: When it came to big businesses presidents does John point to as an interesting threatening freedom, Roosevelt, Taft, and contradiction? Wilson showed concern and directed legislation to maintain freedom. However, when it came international diplomacy and business dealings in Latin America and the Caribbean, they were less concerned about freedom.
9. (12:20) What did Wilson believe was the best SAMPLE ANSWER: Wilson believed the best way way to share America’s greatness overseas? to share America’s greatness was through the export of American products and goods.
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LESSON 7.1.8 | READ | Progressive President: Teddy Roosevelt
PURPOSE These readings give the students a greater sense of the ways in which Theodore Roosevelt pushed for a progressive agenda.
PROCESS Have students read the excerpts from primary • How does he see the relationship sources by Theodore Roosevelt. Remind between rising industrialization, them that they should be marking up and the population, and how the population annotating the text as they read. They should feels about nature? also answer the questions below. Once all • How is Roosevelt using nationalism of this is complete, allow students time to to justify conservation? share ideas with one another in a short • Which of Roosevelt’s arguments in discussion on both the continued importance favor of conservation did you find most of the topic of environmental conservation compelling and why? and the role of the president in shaping an • What is the overall lesson to be taken agenda for reform in the Progressive Era away from Roosevelt’s “Man in the and today. Arena” speech?
QUESTIONS ATTACHMENT • What does Roosevelt hope • Theodore Roosevelt Primary Sources to accomplish in this meeting of government leaders?
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READING | “Conservation as a National Duty” and “The Man in The Arena” —Speech by President Theodore Roosevelt, 1908
Background The excerpts below illustrate the example of chief material question that confronts us, second Theodore Roosevelt as a Progressive President. only–and second always–to the great fundamental Roosevelt was many things, but his role as a questions of morality... conservationist is important to understand the context of the first document. As President, ...This Conference on the conservation of natural Roosevelt oversaw a massive expansion to the resources is in effect a meeting of the representatives National Parks Service and the conservation of of all the people of the United States called to America’s natural spaces. The first excerpt is from consider the weightiest problem now before the a speech in which Roosevelt declares conservation Nation; and the occasion for the meeting lies in the to be a national responsibility. The second excerpt fact that the natural resources of our country are comes from a longer speech given in 1910. This in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful particular paragraph illustrates Roosevelt’s views methods of exploiting them longer to continue. on one’s duty to stand and fight for causes one believes in. Together these documents help us get With the rise of peoples from savagery to civilization, a sense of what we mean when we use the phrase, and with the consequent growth in the extent and Progressive Presidents. variety of the needs of the average man, there comes a steadily increasing growth of the amount Excerpt of President Roosevelt’s Speech, demanded by this average man from the actual “Conservation as a National Duty” resources of the country. And yet, rather curiously, Governors of the several States; and Gentlemen: at the same time that there comes that increase in what the average man demands from the resources, I welcome you to this Conference at the White he is apt to grow to lose the sense of his dependence House. You have come hither at my request, so that upon nature. He lives in big cities. He deals in we may join together to consider the question of industries that do not bring him in close touch with the conservation and use of the great fundamental nature. He does not realize the demands he is sources of wealth of this Nation. making upon nature. For instance, he finds, as he has found before in many parts of this country, that So vital is this question, that for the first time it is cheaper to build his house of concrete than of in our history the chief executive officers of the wood, learning in this way only that he has allowed States separately, and of the States together the woods to become exhausted. That is happening, forming the Nation, have met to consider it. It is the as you know, in parts of this country at this very time.
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Savages, and very primitive peoples generally, industrial development as has never before been concern themselves only with superficial natural seen. The vast wealth of lumber in our forests, the resources; with those which they obtain from the riches of our soils and mines, the discovery of gold actual surface of the ground. As peoples become and mineral oils, combined with the efficiency of our a little less primitive, their industries, although in transportation, have made the conditions of our life a rude manner, are extended to resources below the unparalleled in comfort and convenience. surface; then, with what we call civilization and the extension of knowledge, more resources come A great many of these things are truisms. Much into use, industries are multiplied, and foresight of what I say is so familiar to us that it seems begins to become a necessary and prominent factor commonplace to repeat it; but familiar though it is, in life. Crops are cultivated; animals are domesticated; I do not think as a nation we understand what its and metals are mastered. real bearing is. It is so familiar that we disregard it.
We can not do any of these things without foresight, The steadily increasing drain on these natural and we can not, when the nation becomes fully resources has promoted to an extraordinary degree civilized and very rich, continue to be civilized and the complexity of our industrial and social life. rich unless the nation shows more foresight than Moreover, this unexampled development has had we are showing at this moment as a nation... a determining effect upon the character and opinions of our people. The demand for efficiency ...Now, I ask you to think what that means; and in the great task has given us vigor, effectiveness, I am speaking with historic literalness. In the decision, and power, and a capacity for achievement development, the use, and therefore the exhaustion which in its own lines has never yet been matched. of certain of the natural resources, the progress So great and so rapid has been our material growth has been more rapid in the past century and a quarter that there has been a tendency to lag behind in than during all preceding time of which we spiritual and moral growth; but that is not the subject have record... upon which I speak to you today.
...Since the days when the Constitution was adopted, Disregarding for the moment the question of moral steam and electricity have revolutionized the purpose, it is safe to say that the prosperity of industrial world. Nowhere has the revolution been our people depends directly on the energy and so great as in our own country. The discovery and intelligence with which our natural resources utilization of mineral fuels and alloys have given us are used. It is equally clear that these resources the lead over all other nations in the production of are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. steel. The discovery and utilization of coal and iron Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources have given us our railways, and have led to such are in the course of rapid exhaustion.
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This Nation began with the belief that its landed national efficiency, the patriotic duty of insuring the possessions were illimitable and capable of safety and continuance of the Nation. When the supporting all the people who might care to make People of the United States consciously undertake our country their home; but already the limit of to raise themselves as citizens, and the Nation unsettled land is in sight, and indeed but little land and the States in their several spheres, to the highest fitted for agriculture now remains unoccupied save pitch of excellence in private, State, and national life, what can be reclaimed by irrigation and drainage– and to do this because it is the first of all the duties a subject with which this Conference is partly to of true patriotism, then and not till then the future deal. We began with an unapproached heritage of of this Nation, in quality and in time, will be assured. forests; more than half of the timber is gone. We began with coal fields more extensive than those “The Man in the Arena” excerpt from of any other nation and with iron ores regarded a 1910 Speech by Teddy Roosevelt as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who the end of both iron and coal is in sight... points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. ...Any right thinking father earnestly desires and The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the strives to leave his son both an untarnished name arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and a reasonable equipment for the struggle of and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who life. So this Nation as a whole should earnestly comes short again and again, because there is no desire and strive to leave to the next generation the effort without error and shortcoming; but who does national honor unstained and the national resources actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great unexhausted. There are signs that both the Nation enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself and the States are waking to a realization of this in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the great truth… end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, ...These decisions reach the root of the idea of so that his place shall never be with those cold and conservation of our resources in the interests of our timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” people.
Finally, let us remember that the conservation of our natural resources, though the gravest problem of today, is yet but part of another and greater problem to which this Nation is not yet awake, but to which it will awake in time, and with which it must hereafter grapple if it is to live–the problem of
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LESSON 7.1.9 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #28 American Imperialism PREVIEW In which John Green teaches you about got to keep Cuba. The US was busy in the Pacific Imperialism. In the late 19th century, the great as well, wresting control of Hawaii from the powers of Europe were running around the world Hawaiians. All this and more in a globe-trotting, obtaining colonial possessions, especially in Africa oppressing episode of Crash Course US History. and Asia. The United States followed along and snapped up some colonies of its own. The US PURPOSE saw that Spain’s hold on its empire was weak, In this video, students will be introduced to events and like some kind of expansionist predator, of American Imperialism at the turn of the 20th it jumped into the Cuban War for Independence Century. Students will become aware of how the and turned it into the Spanish-Cuban-Filipino- rise of imperialism in the United States was both American War, which usually just gets called the a driver and result of the economic highs and lows Spanish-American War. John will tell you how of the period. The video details the expansion of America turned this war into colonial possessions empire through events like the Spanish American like Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and almost War and the resulting debates over empire.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask in the face of growing American industry? students to watch the video before class. How did Americans greet this expansion Remind students of John’s fast-talking and of empire? play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before students LINK watch the video, remind students that • Crash Course US History #28 – one of the central ideas in this lesson is American Imperialism to understand the role of government in effecting change. In what ways was the Video questions for students to answer during creation of an American Empire inevitable their viewing.
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LESSON 7.1.9 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (2:00) What is one of the primary goals (or SAMPLE ANSWER: One of the primary goals of causes) of imperialism? imperialism is economic gain. Governments needing new places to sell products in a competitive market.
2. (2:15) What factors aligned to contribute to the SAMPLE ANSWER: There was an influx of immigrants growth of American imperialism in the 1890s? and the crowded cities added to anxiety and concern over America’s future. There was added panic following the failure of a British bank that caused an economic depression.
3. (3:05) What argument did Captain Alfred Thayer SAMPLE ANSWER: Mahan argued that in order Mahan make in The Influence of Sea Power for America to become a great power like Great Upon History? Britain, it needed to control the seas and dominate international commerce.
4. (3:50) In addition to America’s “new” imperialism, SAMPLE ANSWER: Americans in this era how was nationalism being expressed in new of nationalism began reciting the Pledge ways during the 1890s? of Allegiance and celebrating Flag Day.
5. (5:00) Why was Hawaii such a strategic SAMPLE ANSWER: Since America had opened geographic acquisition? trade with Japan and other Asian markets, Hawaii provided an important Pacific outpost for coal refueling, military presence in the Pacific, and also provided us with goods, namely sugar.
6. (7:30) What reasons did America enter into a war SAMPLE ANSWER: America entered into war with with Spain? What reasons does John debunk? Spain in order to protect American peace of mind and to bring an end to economic uncertainty. America did not enter into war so that it could annex Cuba and gain territory. Nor did it enter war due to the sinking of the USS Maine.
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7. (10:30) What were the results of SAMPLE ANSWER: In the four years of the war, the Philippine War? 4,200 Americans and over 100,000 Filipinos were killed. During the war, Americans committed atrocities that were racially motivated: Filipinos were put into concentration camps, prisoners were tortured, and civilians were raped and executed.
8. (12:45) According to Indiana Senator Albert SAMPLE ANSWER: Beveridge believed America’s Beveridge, where must America focus its commerce must be with Asia. In fact, he stated that commerce? “geography answer the question - China is our natural customer.”
LESSON 7.1.9 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. Is America an imperialistic power today? In what ways is or isn’t it? What examples of recent history can you provide to support claim?
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LESSON 7.1.10 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #30 America in World War I PREVIEW In which John Green teaches you about American front, some of Woodrow Wilson’s XIV Points, and involvement in World War I, which at the time was just how the war ended up expanding the power called the Great War. They didn’t know there was of the government in Americans’ lives. going to be a second one, though they probably should have guessed, ‘cause this one didn’t wrap PURPOSE up very neatly. So, the United States stayed out of In this video, students will be introduced to American World War I at first, because Americans were in involvement in World War I. Students will learn how an isolationist mood in the early 20th century. That the United States joined the war and the debate didn’t last though, as the affronts piled up and drew that raged prior to that decision. Students will also the US into the war. Spoiler alert: the Lusitania was see the ways that US involvement sparked greater sunk two years before we joined the war, so that government involvement in the lives of citizens wasn’t the sole cause for our jumping in. It was part during the war, and the ways that the war impacted of it though, as was the Zimmerman telegram, American society for generations to come. unrestricted submarine warfare, and our affinity for the Brits. You’ll learn the war’s effects on the home
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask out of World War I? How did World War students to watch the video before class. I impact the homefront? How did the war Remind students of John’s fast-talking and fit into the larger ideals of the Progressive play the video with captions. Pause and Movement? rewind when necessary. Before students watch the video, remind students that LINK two of the central ideas in this lesson are • Crash Course US History #30 – to understand the role of government in America in World War I effecting change and to understand the way major events impact the American society. Video questions for students to answer during Why was there a movement to keep the US their viewing.
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LESSON 7.1.10 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (1:30) Why were progressives opposed to U.S. SAMPLE ANSWER: Progressives were worried that involvement in The Great War? American involvement in the war would supercede domestic social reforms. President Wilson even campaigned under the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.”
2. (2:30) Why does John claim the sinking of the SAMPLE ANSWER: America didn’t declare war on Lusitania in May 1915 was not the cause of Germany for nearly two years following the sinking America entering the war? of the Lusitania.
3. (2:40) Why did America decide to declare war SAMPLE ANSWER: America’s war declaration was on Germany? a combination of Germany’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, the interception and publication of the Zimmerman Telegram that stated Germany would help Mexico win back land if they sided with Germany, the fall of the czarist regime in Russia, and other contributing factors like America’s inclination to support Britain.
4. (5:00) What was America’s main contribution to SAMPLE ANSWER: America provided economic the Entente powers? contributions in the form of arms and funds to support the Entente powers. While over one million Americans end up serving in The Great War, most died from the flu, not combat.
5. (5:50) John states that not all progressives SAMPLE ANSWER: Progressives in favor of the were anti-war and that for them, the war war, like Randolph Bourne, believed that war was, offered America what? “the health of the state.” Progressives noted that war offered the possibility of reforming American society, instilling national unity and self sacrifice, while expanding social justice.
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6. (8:20) How did The Great War suppress civil SAMPLE ANSWER: Through the passing of the liberties? Espionage Act of 1917, the government prohibited spying, interfering with the draft, and potentially inhibiting the actions of the military. Additionally, the Sedition Act of 1918 criminalized statements against the government or the interfering of the war effort.
7. (10:00) How did the war affect American SAMPLE ANSWER: Public schools sought to patriotism and relations with immigrants? Americanize immigrant children by implanting the Anglo-Saxon conceptions of righteousness, law and order, and popular government. Cities sponsored Americanization pageants; the 4th of July was renamed “Loyalty Day” and hamburgers became “liberty sandwiches.” IQ tests were introduced in the screening process of army applicants to support the argument that immigrant groups were inferior to white Protestants and could never fully assimilate to the United States.
8. (11:18) What was The Great Migration? SAMPLE ANSWER: The Great Migration was the incentive for African-Americans to move from the south to the north in the search of new employment opportunities in large cities.
9. (12:15) Did America achieve the goal of SAMPLE ANSWER: No. Most of Wilson’s aims spreading progressive ideas throughout the rest fell short, especially America’s decision to not of the world by entering The Great War? join the League of Nations due to Congress’s willingness to give up sovereign power to declare war. Disappointment over the outcome of the war slipped America into isolationism.
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LESSON 7.1.10 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. Randolph Bourne stated, “War is the health of state.” Do you believe this to be true? Why or why not?
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LESSON 7.1.11 | ACTIVITY | World War I Propaganda
PURPOSE This activity is designed to give students a sense of demonstrate the power of imagery in inspiring the role of propaganda in building nationalism and sentimental and patriotic feelings toward the war. a sustainable war effort for World War I. This will Among the ideas that students should see being be accomplished through an analysis of the lyrics to conveyed are notions of patriotism, duty, fear, guilt, “Over There” and this selection of five propaganda ideas of femininity and masculinity, and the depiction posters from the war. The song and the posters of the brutality of the “other”.
PROCESS For this assignment students will be reading a current event. This could be even be the lyrics from the patriotic ballad, “Over something local like becoming involved There” and viewing propaganda posters within their own school. Whatever their from World War I. Students should use topic, students should strive to mimic the these sources to complete the World War building blocks of propaganda that are I Propaganda Analysis Chart. When they apparent in the sources and described are done, they should be instructed to simply in this quote from World War II era think about what the component parts of a propaganda scholar Ralph D. Casey in his successful piece of propaganda might be. pamphlet, What is Propaganda?: They should then set out to create their own piece of propaganda in the form of either “Whether the propagandist works in a a song or a poster. Their propaganda can be peacetime or wartime situation, he uses related to American involvement in World certain tools to mobilize opinions and War I or something to influence opinion on attitudes. What are these tools?
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An important one is suggestion. Another How does the propagandist use this tool? word for it is stimulation. By making broad and positive statements. By presenting his statements in simple and The propagandist tries to stimulate others to familiar language. By refusing to admit, or accept without challenge his own assertions, even suggest, that there is another side to or to act as he wants them to do. The idea the question.” of using suggestion or stimulation as a propaganda device is that it will lead a public ATTACHMENT to accept a proposition even though there • Lyrics to “Over There” are not logical grounds for accepting it. The • WWI Propaganda Posters propagandist usually tries to side-step critical • World War I Propaganda Analysis Chart reactions from his audience, and therefore suggestion is one of his most important tools.
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READING | Lyrics to “Over There”—George M. Cohan (1917)
Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming Take it on the run, on the run, on the run The drums rum-tumming everywhere Hear them calling you and me So prepare, say a prayer Every son of liberty Send the word, send the word to beware Hurry right away, no delay, go today We’ll be over, we’re coming over Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad And we won’t come back till it’s over over there. Tell your sweetheart not to pine Over there. To be proud her boy’s in line. *The lyrics to “Over There” are in the Public Domain. CHORUS (repeated twice): Over there, over there Send the word, send the word over there That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming The drums rum-tumming everywhere So prepare, say a prayer Send the word, send the word to beware We’ll be over, we’re coming over And we won’t come back till it’s over over there. Over there.
Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun Johnnie show the Hun you’re a son of a gun Hoist the flag and let her fly Yankee Doodle do or die Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit Yankees to the ranks from the towns and the tanks Make your mother proud of you And the old Red White and Blue.
CHORUS (repeated twice): Over there, over there Send the word, send the word over there
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HANDOUT | World War I Propaganda1
1 *all posters are in public domain
45 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
HANDOUT | World War I Propaganda1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War I Propaganda1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War I Propaganda1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War I Propaganda Analysis Chart
SOURCE WHAT ARE YOUR GENERAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE SOURCE? WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN THAT ADDRESS ANY OF THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS LESSON OR UNIT?
“OVER THERE”
POSTER #1
POSTER #2
POSTER #3
POSTER #4
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LESSON 7.1.12 | READ | “Whose War?” – John Reed
PURPOSE Opposition to United States involvement in was Eugene V. Debs, which was mentioned in the World War I was discussed in Crash Course #30. video. Another of these important voices came from This primary source provides a criticism of US journalist John Reed. This article allows students a involvement from the far left. The Communist Party perspective that questions the actions of the US in was alive and well in the United States during the the lead up to its involvement in World War I. Progressive Era. One of its most prominent voices
PROCESS Students should be given the article, “Whose and challenging authority and popular War” by John Reed. As they read, they will narratives. After students read, they should gain a sense of why the communists in the reflect on the reading by answering the United States opposed US intervention in questions at the end of the document. World War I. Reed provides yet another example of the ways in which journalists ATTACHMENT pushed controversy and conversation during • “Whose War” the Progressive Era by constantly questioning
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READING | “Whose War?”1—John Reed for The Masses, April 1917
About the Author George M. Cohan-Irving Berlin variety, playing John Reed (born Oct. 22, 1887, Portland, Ore., U.S.— the national anthem, and flashing the flag and the died Oct. 19, 1920, Moscow), was a member of the portrait of long-suffering Lincoln—while the tired U.S. Communist Party and reported extensively suburbanite who has just been scalped by a ticket- on foreign affairs and labor issues. He was most speculator goes into hysterics. Exclusive ladies famous for his work on the Mexican and Russian whose husbands own banks are rolling bandages for Revolutions. As a communist and opponent of the wounded, just like they do in Europe; a million- American involvement in World War I, he was dollar fund for ice in field-hospitals has been started; targeted by the US Government’s crackdown on and the Boston Budget for Conveying Virgins perceived threats. A victim of this Red Scare, Reed Inland has grown enormously. The directors of the was charged with treason and lived in exile in the British, French and Belgian Permanent Blind Relief Soviet Union, where he died of typhus in 1920.2 His Fund have added “American” to the name of the experience as a radical American journalist was the organization, in gruesome anticipation. Our soldier subject of the film Reds, which won three Academy boys, guarding the aqueducts and bridges, are Awards in 1982.3 shooting each other by mistake for Teutonic spies. There is talk of “conscription,” “war-brides,” and Document “On to Berlin. ...” “The current ebullition of patriotism is wonderful.” -Rev. Dr. Parkhurst. I know what war means. I have been with the armies of all the belligerents except one, and I have By the time this goes to press the United States seen men die, and go mad, and lie in hospitals may be at war. The day the German note4 arrived, suffering hell; but there is a worse thing than that. Wall Street flung the American flag to the breeze, War means an ugly mob-madness, crucifying the the brokers on the floor of the Stock Exchange sang truth-tellers, choking the artists, side-tracking reforms, “The Star Spangled Banner” with tears rolling down revolutions, and the working of social forces. their cheeks, and the stock market went up. In the Already in America those citizens who oppose the theaters they are singing “patriotic” ballads of the entrance of their country into the European melee
1 Accessed: https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1917/masses02.htm 2 https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Reed 3 http://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1982 4 The “German note” here was the Zimmerman Telegram, which was a 1917 note from Germany to Mexico encouraging the Mexican government to join an alliance with Germany against the United States should the US join World War I against the Germans.
51 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY are called “traitors,” and those who protest against are savage—and then we’ll fight and die for them. the curtailing of our meagre rights of free speech I am one of a vast number of ordinary people who are spoken of as “dangerous lunatics.” We have read the daily papers, and occasionally The New had a forecast of the censorship—when the naval Republic, and want to be fair. We don’t know much authorities in charge of the Sayville wireless cut about international politics; but we want our country off American news from Germany, and only the to keep off the necks of little nations, to refuse wildest fictions reached Berlin via London, creating to back up American beasts of prey who invest a perilous situation....The press is howling for war. abroad and get their fingers burned, and to stay The church is howling for war. Lawyers, politicians, out of quarrels not our own. We’ve got an idea that stock-brokers, social leaders are all howling for war. international law is the crystallized common-sense Roosevelt is again recruiting his thrice-thwarted of nations, distilled from their experiences with each family regiment. other, and that it holds good for all of them, and can be understood by anybody. But whether it comes to actual hostilities or not, some damage has been done. The militarists have We are simple folk. Prussian militarism seemed to proved their point. I know of at least two valuable us insufferable; we thought the invasion of Belgium social movements that have suspended functioning a crime; German atrocities horrified us, and also because no one cares. For many years this country the idea of German submarines exploding ships is going to be a worse place for free men to live in; full of peaceful people without warning. But then less tolerant, less hospitable. Maybe it is too late, we began to hear about England and France jailing, but I want to put down what I think about it all. fining, exiling and even shooting men who refused to go out and kill; the Allied armies invaded and Whose war is this? Not mine. I know that hundreds seized a part of neutral Greece, and a French of thousands of American workingmen employed admiral forced upon her an ultimatum as shameful by our great financial “patriots” are not paid a living as Austria’s to Serbia; Russian atrocities were wage. I have seen poor men sent to jail for long shown to be more dreadful than German; and terms without trial, and even without any charge. hidden mines sown by England in the open Peaceful strikers, and their wives and children, sea exploded ships full of peaceful people have been shot to death, burned to death, by private without warning. detectives and militiamen. The rich have steadily become richer, and the cost of living higher, and the Other things disturbed us. For instance, why was workers proportionally poorer· These toilers don’t it a violation of international law for the Germans want war—not even civil war. But the speculators, to establish a “war-zone” around the British the employers, the plutocracy—they want it, just Isles, and perfectly legal for England to close the as they did in Germany and in England; and with lies North Sea? Why is it we submitted to the British and sophistries they will whip up our blood until we order forbidding the shipment of non-contraband
52 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY to Germany, and insisted upon our right to ship answer the German note5 as he did—but if we had contraband to the Allies? If our “national honor” been neutral, that note wouldn’t have been sent. The was smirched by Germany’s refusal to allow President didn’t ask us; he won’t ask us if we want war materials to be shipped to the Allies, what war or not. The fault is not ours. It is not our war. happened to our national honor when England refused to let us ship non-contraband food and even Red Cross hospital supplies to Germany? Why is England allowed to attempt the avowed starvation of German civilians, in violation of international law, when the Germans cannot attempt the same thing without our horrified protest? How is it that the British can arbitrarily regulate our commerce with neutral nations, while we raise a howl whenever the Germans “threaten to restrict our merchant ships going about their business?” Why does our Government insist that Americans should not be molested while traveling on Allied ships armed against submarines?
We have shipped and are shipping vast quantities of war materials to the Allies, we have floated the Allied loans. We have been strictly neutral toward the Teutonic powers only. Hence the inevitable desperation of the last German note. Hence this war we are on the brink of.
Those of us who voted for Woodrow Wilson did so because we felt his mind and his eyes were open, because he had kept us out of the mad-dogfight of Europe, and because the plutocracy opposed him. We had learned enough about the war to lose some of our illusions, and we wanted to be neutral. We grant that the President, considering the position he’d got himself into, couldn’t do anything else but
5 Zimmerman Telegram again. See note 3.
53 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. Why is Reed opposed to US involvement in World War I?
2. Who does Reed think will benefit from US involvement?
3. What instances of hypocrisy does Reed find in the way the US is conducting itself?
4. Why might a communist or labor activist in the United States oppose involvement in the war in Europe?
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LESSON 7.1.13 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #31 Women’s Suffrage
PREVIEW In which John Green teaches you about American widely available. You’ll learn about famous women in the Progressive Era and, well, the reformers and activists like Alice Paul, Margaret progress they made. So the big deal is, of course, Sanger, and Emma Goldman, among others. the right to vote women gained when the 19th amendment was passed and ratified. But women PURPOSE made a lot of other gains in the 30 years between In this video, students will be introduced to why 1890 and 1920. More women joined the workforce, some historians refer to the period between 1890- they acquired lots of other legal rights related to 1920 as The Women’s Era. The role of women property, and they became key consumers in the in reform movements and the influence women industrial economy. Women also continued to play wielded in American society during the Progressive a vital role in reform movements. The field of Era is detailed here. Important women in a variety social work emerged as women like Jane Addams of movements are discussed. In order to understand created settlement houses to assist immigrants how the Progressive Movement functioned, in their integration into the United States and understanding the substantial role women played women also began to work to make birth control in its largest movements is essential.
PROCESS In this video, students will be introduced understanding the substantial role women to why some historians refer to the period played in its largest movements is essential. between 1890-1920 as The Women’s Era. The role of women in reform movements and the LINK influence women wielded in American society • Crash Course US History #31 – during the Progressive Era is detailed here. Women’s Suffrage Important women in a variety of movements are discussed. In order to understand how the Video questions for students to answer during Progressive Movement functioned, their viewing.
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LESSON 7.1.13 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (1:10) Why are the thirty years between 1890 SAMPLE ANSWER: It was during this time that and 1920 called the “women’s era” by some women started to have greater economic and historians? political opportunities. Women were also witnessing legal changes like getting the right to own property, control their wages, and make contracts and wills.
2. (3:15) What types of products were specifically SAMPLE ANSWER: During America’s second wave aimed at women during the second wave of of industrialization, labor-saving devices like washing industrialization? machines and vacuum cleaners were specifically marketed at women.
3. (4:10) How did the Progressive Era witness a shift SAMPLE ANSWER: More and more women were in gender roles? beginning to work outside of the home. However, this was generally cut across racial lines as white women tended to find work in offices, while African- American and immigrant women worked primarily as domestic servants, in agriculture, or as low-paid workers in factories.
4. (6:30) What was radical about the beliefs of birth SAMPLE ANSWER: Birth control advocates such as control advocates Margaret Sanger and Emma Sanger and Goldman argued that women should Goldman? be able to enjoy sex without having children, which was seen as a radical idea that led to changes in sexual behavior and rights of women.
5. (7:10) Why was the fight over birth control SAMPLE ANSWER: Birth control is a public health important? issue which was brought to the forefront of American public life and women during the Progressive Era brought about changes in public health endeavors, like leading the crusade against tuberculosis and other diseases.
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6. (8:00) What is the settlement house movement SAMPLE ANSWER: Settlement houses became and who was a key figure in the movement? incubators in the new field of social work, which targeted mostly immigrant communities and providing them with social resources and education. Jane Addams of Hull House in Chicago was one of America’s most important spokespeople for progressive ideas.
7. (11:10) Despite achieving a huge victory with SAMPLE ANSWER: Women like Alice Paul and the the passage of the 19th Amendment, why did National Women’s Party continued to struggle for women continue to struggle for equal rights? equal rights mostly by encountering other women’s groups who opposed their beliefs out of fear that equal rights would mean an unravelling of hard-won benefits like mother’s pensions and laws limiting hours of labor.
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LESSON 7.1.14 | READ | Women in the Progressive Era
PURPOSE This primary source reading includes popular how, like many civil rights struggles, combatted arguments against women’s suffrage and a series of ignorance and general fear of change. Through counterpoints by suffragist, Alice Stone Blackwell. her reasoned retorts, Alice Stone Blackwell gives This source gives students a sense of the opposition readers a concise breakdown of the positions that suffragists faced during the Progressive Era. around which suffragists rallied and ultimately It also allows them the opportunity to see the succeeded in transforming into law.
PROCESS Students should be given the primary source by reversing their claims. After students excerpt, “Answering Objections to Women’s read, they should reflect on the reading Suffrage” by Alice Stone Blackwell. As they by answering the questions at the end of read, students should mark up the text and the document. analyze the arguments made by the author, paying particular attention to how Stone ATTACHMENT Blackwell combats the ignorance of those • Answering Objections to Women’s who would deny women the right to vote Suffrage – Alice Stone Blackwell
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READING | Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage—Alice Stone Blackwell (1917)
Why Should Women Vote? The Question of Chivalry The reasons why women should vote are the same It will destroy chivalry. as the reasons why men should vote are the same as the reasons for having a republic rather than Justice would be worth more to women than a monarchy. It is fair and right that the people who chivalry, if they could not have both. A working girl must obey the laws should have a voice in choosing put the case in a nutshell when she said: “I would the law-makers, and that those who must pay the gladly stand for twenty minutes in the street car taxes should have a voice as to the amount of the going home if by doing so I could get the same pay tax, and the way in which the money shall be spent. that a man would have had for doing my day’s work.” But women do not have to stand in the street cars Roughly stated, the fundamental principle of half as often in Denver as in Boston or in New York. a republic is this: In deciding what is to be done, Justice and chivalry are not in the least incompatible. we take everybody’s opinion, and then go according Women have more freedom and equality in America to the wish of the majority. As we cannot suit than in Europe, yet American men are the most everybody, we do what will suit the greatest number. chivalrous in the world... That seems to be, on the whole, the fairest way. A vote is simply a written expression of opinion. Too Emotional Women are too emotional and sentimental In thus taking a vote to get at the wish of the to be trusted with the ballot. majority, certain classes of persons are passed over, whose opinions for one reason or another are Mrs. E. T. Brown, at a meeting of the Georgia State thought not to be worth counting. In most of our Federation of Women’s Clubs, read a paper, in which states, these classes are children, aliens, idiots, she said: lunatics, criminals and women. There are good and obvious reasons for making all these exceptions but “You tell us that women are not fitted for dealing the last. Of course no account ought to be taken of with the problems of government, being too the opinions of children, insane persons, or criminals. visionary and too much controlled by sentiment. Is there any equally good reason why no account should be taken of the opinions of women? Let us “Now it is very true of women that they are largely consider the reasons commonly given, and see if controlled by sentiment, and, as a matter of fact, they are sound... men are largely controlled by sentiment also, in spite of their protesting blushes. Was it logic that swept like a wave over this country and sent our
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army to protect the Cubans when their suffering Scotland, Canada, Yucatan, Ireland, Australia, New grew too intense to be endured even in the hearing? Zealand, the Scandinavian countries and our own Is it shrewd business calculation that sends equal suffrage States are not perceptibly different thousands of dollars out of this country to feed in looks or manners from women elsewhere, a starving people during the ever-recurring although they have been voting for years... famines in unhappy India? Was it hard common sense that sent thousands of American soldiers Suffrage and Feminism into what looked like the death-trap of China in the Suffrage is a branch of Feminism and Feminism almost baseless hope of rescuing a few hundred includes free love. American citizens? Do not men like Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Lee live in the hearts of Feminism merely means the general movement American men, not alone for what they did, but still for woman’s rights. The word is used in this sense more for what they dreamed of? The man who in England and Europe, and is coming into use in is not controlled by sentiment betrays his friends, America. There is no more authority for saying that sells his vote, is a traitor to his country, or wrecks Feminism means free love than that the woman’s himself, body and soul, with immoralities; for nothing rights movement means free love—an accusation but sentiment prevents any of these things. The often made against it without warrant. Mrs. Beatrice sense of honor is pure sentiment. The sentiment Forbes Robertson Hale (a strong opponent of free of loyalty is the only thing that makes truth love) says in her book, “What Women Want”: ’ and honesty desirable, or a vote a non-salable commodity. “Feminism is that part of the progress of democratic freedom which applies to women. It is a century- “Government would be a poor affair without old struggle conducted by large groups of people sentiment, and is not likely to be damaged by in different parts of the world to bring about a slightly increased supply.”... the removal of all artificial barriers to the physical, mental, moral and economic development of the Would Unsex Women female half of the race.” It will turn women into men. In this sense the woman suffrage movement, The differences between men and women are of course, is a part of it. natural; they are not the result of disfranchisement. The fact that all men have equal rights before the law does not wipe out natural differences of character and temperament between man and man. Why should it wipe out the natural differences between men and women? The women of England,
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Suffrage and Marriage Suffragists and Feminists are the enemies of marriage and the home.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association at its annual convention in Washington in December, 1915, passed the following resolution by a unanimous vote:
“That we believe the home is the foundation of the State; we believe in the sanctity of the marriage relation; and, furthermore, we believe that woman’s ballot will strengthen the power of the home, and sustain the dignity and sacredness of marriage; and we denounce as a gross slander the charges made by opponents of equal suffrage that its advocates as a class entertain opinions to the contrary.”
61 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. According to the author, why do women deserve the right to vote?
2. What were some of the major obstacles to women’s equality during the Progressive Era?
3. What stereotypes of women (outlined in italics under the different section titles) do most of the counterarguments rely upon?
4. Which of the arguments did you find to be most effectively refuted by the author?
5. How does the author define feminism? In what ways do feminist movements today seem to battle some similar misunderstandings?
62 LESSON 7.1 | THEPROGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE ERA ERA
LESSON 7.1.15 | CLOSING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE At the start of the lesson, students looked at the specific passages and evidence from the content in essential questions without much to go on. Now the unit that provided insights into answering the that the lesson is over, students should revisit the driving questions. essential questions. This time, students should cite
1. PROCESS At the start of this lesson on the Progressive Ask students to think about these questions Era, students were given two Unit 7 Essential and respond on their EQ Notebook Questions and two Lesson 7.1 Essential Worksheets. Questions. As a reminder, here they are again: Now that students have spent some time Unit 7 Essential Questions: with the material of this unit, they should • In what ways did the period between 1890 look back over the content covered as well and 1945 shape the political, social, and as any additional information they have cultural identity of the United States? come across, and write down any quotes • How did the relationship between or evidence that provide new insights into Americans and their government shift the essential questions assigned for this during the period? lesson. Once they’ve finished, they should think about how this new information has Lesson 7.1 Essential Questions: impacted their thinking about the unit • What were some of the issues Americans essential question, and write down their faced as they emerged from the Gilded thoughts in their EQ Notebook. Age, and in what ways did the Progressive Movement seek to address them? ATTACHMENT • In what ways can the Progressive Era be • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet viewed as a success? A failure?
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.1.1, then again in Lesson 7.1.15. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. What were some of the issues Americans faced as they emerged from the Gilded Age, and in what ways did the Progressive Movement seek to address them? 2. In what ways can the Progressive Era be viewed as a success? A failure?
LESSON 7.1.1.
LESSON 7.1.15.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
64 LESSONUNIT 7 | 7.2 THE | AMERICANBOOM, BUST EMPIRE & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.0 | OVERVIEW | Boom, Bust, & Recovery
The Progressive Era created both an increase in government intervention in economic and social issues and the development of a broader American imperialism. The 1920s on the other hand, saw the United States reject many of the methods and ideologies of Progressivism in favor of less government intervention and regulation. The result was an economic boom, driven by consumer spending and the might of American industry. This boom eventually led to bust, as the end of the decade saw the birth of the Great Depression. The response to the Great Depression would pave the way for the creation of a stronger federal response to economic crises and the birth of the welfare state in America.
Additionally, important events of the period shaped the social and cultural landscape of the United States. The late 20s saw Babe Ruth and the Yankees reassert baseball’s place as America’s Pastime and the rise of Hollywood’s golden age. The Harlem Renaissance served as a rebirth of African American culture and influence. The advent of jazz, the works of black literary giants, and activists like Marcus Garvey
65 LESSONUNIT 7 | 7.2 THE | AMERICANBOOM, BUST EMPIRE & RECOVERY
helped to usher in the era of the “New Negro.” Similarly, modernity would see the “New Woman” emerge as more independent and, armed with the vote, better able to claim her place in post World War I America. The cultural highs of the 20s would be tempered by the impact of the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains combined with ongoing Great Migration of African Americans from the South to cities of the North to see population shifts and hybridization of regional cultures, particularly in the growing cities of the West and Midwest. All told, this period was one marked with triumph and tragedy and would lay the foundation for the modern America.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • In what ways did the period between 1890 and 1945 shape the political, social, and cultural identity of the United States? • How did the relationship between Americans and their government shift during the period?
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LESSON 7.2.0 | OVERVIEW | Learning Outcomes, Vocabulary, & Outline
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Describe political, economic, and cultural developments that took place in the United States during the 1920s and 30s. • Identify reasons why the Great Depression began. • Analyze the ways in which the period constitutes a distinct era in US History. • Understand the why this period is viewed as a new era for both women and African Americans. • Analyze shifts in the role of the government in the lives of Americans during the period.
Lesson Essention Questions
• In what ways can the 1920s be seen as both the dawn of a “New Era” in US History, and what were some of the reactions to a changing culture? • What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
LESSON OUTLINE
1 Opening | EQ Notebook – Lesson 2 8 Read | Who Killed Black Wall Street? 2 Watch | Crash Course US History #32 – 9 Watch | Crash Course US History #33 – The Roaring 20s The Great Depression 3 Read | Selection from “The New Era” – 10 Read | The Great Depression Overview Culture of Consumption and Escape 11 Activity | Dust Bowl Primary Sources 4 Activity | The “New Woman” in the “New Era” 12 Watch | Crash Course US History #34 – Primary Source Analysis The New Deal 5 Read | Harlem Renaissance 13 Read | Impact of New Deal 6 Read | Marcus Garvey, “The Negro Moses” 14 Closing | EQ Notebook 7 Read | Reemergence of the KKK
67 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.1 | OPENING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE Each unit and lesson of the Crash Course United gathered throughout the unit. This provides students States History Course (CCUSH) is guided by an an opportunity to track their learning and to prepare essential question. The Essential Question Notebook them for future activities. To help students focus on (EQ Notebook) is an informal writing resource for the important ideas, this activity asks them to look students to track their learning and understanding at the big ideas through the lens of the Essential of a concept throughout a unit. Students will be Question. At this point, students won’t have much given an Essential Question at the beginning of the background to bring to bear on the issue just yet. This unit and each lesson and asked to provide a response early exercise helps to bring to the fore what they based on prior knowledge and speculation. Students know coming into the unit. will then revisit the notebook in order to answer the Essential Question with evidence they have
PROCESS Just as in the last unit, students will have questions and focus their thinking toward Essential Questions to guide their learning those topics. To begin the unit, they should during this unit. Our unit essential Questions record the new questions in their notebooks remain the same, but there are two new and jot down any initial ideas they may have questions specific to this lesson over the related to the topics discussed. 1920s and 30s. Students should think of these as guides to what it is they should ATTACHMENT focus on for the bulk of the unit. Remind • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet them that if they ever find themselves unsure of what it is they’re supposed to be learning in a given activity, instruct them to review the
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.2.1, then again in Lesson 7.2.14. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. In what ways can the 1920s be seen as both the dawn of a “New Era” in US History, and what were some of the reactions to a changing culture? 2. What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
LESSON 7.2.1.
LESSON 7.2.14.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
69 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.2 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #32 The Roaring Twenties
PREVIEW PURPOSE In which John Green teaches you about the United In this video, students will be introduced to the States in the 1920s. They were known as the roaring major events of the 1920s. Through this video, they 20s, but not because there were lions running around will come to understand the shifts in the American everywhere. In the 1920s, America’s economy economy and society during the 1920s. The video was booming, and all kinds of social changes were lays the groundwork for understanding how the in progress. Hollywood, flappers, jazz, there was decade shaped modern America, a notion that will all kinds of stuff going on in the 20s. But as usual be expanded upon in future readings and activities. with Crash Course, things were about to take a turn for the worse. John will teach you about the Charleston, the many Republican presidents of the 1920s, laissez-faire capitalism, jazz, consumer credit, the resurgent Klan, and more.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask LINK students to watch the video before class. • Crash Course US History #32 – Remind students of John’s fast-talking and The Roaring Twenties play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before students Video questions for students to answer during watch the video, remind them of the central their viewing. ideas in the lesson’s essential questions: • In what ways can the 1920s be seen as both the dawn of a “New Era” in US History, and what were some of the reactions to a changing culture? • What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
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LESSON 7.2.2 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (1:15) What is laissez-faire capitalism? SAMPLE ANSWER: Laissez-faire capitalism is the growth of business through the government not regulating it.
2. (1:25) How were pro-business views assisted SAMPLE ANSWER: The federal government in the government during the 1920s? championed policies that favored business lobbyists and lowered taxes on personal income and business profits while also weakening the power of unions. President Harding shifted the country away from economic regulation that had been favored during the Progressive Era.
3. (2:20) In what ways did the economy and SAMPLE ANSWER: Manufacturing productivity manufacturing grow during this time? increased because industries adopted Henry Ford’s assembly line techniques and those industries provided Americans with new products and jobs. By 1929, half of all American families owned a car, the country was producing 85% of the world’s cars and 40% of the manufactured goods, and the dollar replaced the pound as the most important currency for trade in the world.
4. (3:30) How did labor-saving devices change SAMPLE ANSWER: With the invention and low American culture? costs of labor-saving devices like washing machines, Americans had more time for leisure activities: vacations, sporting events, and attending movies.
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5. (4:30) During the 1920s, what was considered SAMPLE ANSWER: Consumer debt. It was the American “standard of living”? perfectly common and acceptable to use credit and layaway buying plans, which meant that it was acceptable to go into debt in order to maintain a lifestyle.
6. (4:50) While opera singer Enrico Caruso is often SAMPLE ANSWER: Charles Lindbergh, who flew called the first modern celebrity, who is probably solo across the Atlantic Ocean, the first to do so. the biggest figure during the 1920s?
7. (5:25) What area became the capital of black SAMPLE ANSWER: Harlem (New York City) became America during this era? the capital of black America during this time of great migration of African-Americans from the south to manufacturing centers of northern cities.
8. (9:30) Despite increased free speech, “torches SAMPLE ANSWER: Spurred by the hyper patriotism of liberty” and the Harlem Renaissance, why that followed World War I, the Ku Klux Klan saw were the 1920s considered a reactionary period a resurgence during this decade, which came to in American history? denounce immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as less than 100% American.
9. (10:20) What did immigration restriction bills do? SAMPLE ANSWER: Immigration restriction bills limited the number of immigrants from Europe to 357,000 total. In the years that followed this first bill, new laws continued to decrease that number and established quotas based on national origin, including immigration of Asians, except Filipinos, which was totally forbidden.
10. (11:20) Why did the 1920s see an increase in SAMPLE ANSWER: In 1925, John Scopes of tension between science education and religious Tennessee stood trial for breaking the law beliefs? against teaching evolution, which he had been encouraged to do by the ACLU as a test case for freedom of speech.
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LESSON 7.2.2 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. How were the 1920s a period of contradictions? What examples can you provide to support your claim?
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LESSON 7.2.3 | READ | Selection from “The New Era” – Culture of Consumption and Escape PURPOSE This selection, from the Open Source textbook The of the various factors that influenced the daily lives American Yawp, provides students with an overview of Americans during the decade and provides further of how ideas around consumption and escapism depth for topics discussed in the CCUSH video over shaped the 1920s. This reading gives students a sense the Roaring Twenties.
PROCESS Print or share the reading with the students. ATTACHMENT Remind students that they should read • Selection from “The New Era” actively, marking the text as they go. This will allow them to be better prepared to discuss the reading in class. After completing the reading, students should be sure to answer the questions at the end of the document.
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READING | Selection from “The New Era” —The American Yawp1
III. Culture of Consumption “Change is in the very air Americans breathe, and contemporaries feared supply had outpaced consumer changes are the very bricks out of demand and that the nation would soon face which we are building our new kind of civilization,” the devastating financial consequences of announced marketing expert and home economist overproduction. American businessmen attempted Christine Frederick in her influential 1929 monograph, to avoid this catastrophe by developing new Selling Mrs. Consumer. The book, which was based merchandising and marketing strategies that on one of the earliest surveys of American buying transformed distribution and stimulated a new habits, advised manufacturers and advertisers culture of consumer desire.3 how to capture the purchasing power of women, who, according to Frederick, accounted for 90% The department store stood at the center of this of household expenditures. Aside from granting early consumer revolution. By the 1880s, several large advertisers insight into the psychology of the dry goods houses blossomed into modern retail “average” consumer, Frederick’s text captured the department stores. These emporiums concentrated tremendous social and economic transformations a broad array of goods under a single roof, allowing that had been wrought over the course of her lifetime.2 customers to purchase shirtwaists and gloves alongside toy trains and washbasins. To attract Indeed, the America of Frederick’s birth looked very customers, department stores relied on more different from the one she confronted in 1929. than variety. They also employed innovations in The consumer change she studied had resulted from service—such as access to restaurants, writing the industrial expansion of the late-nineteenth rooms, and babysitting—and spectacle—such and early-twentieth centuries. With the discovery as elaborately decorated store windows, fashion of new energy sources and manufacturing shows, and interior merchandise displays. Marshall technologies, industrial output flooded the market Field & Co. was among the most successful of with a range of consumer products such as ready- these ventures. Located on State Street in Chicago, to-wear clothing to convenience foods to home the company pioneered many of these strategies, appliances. By the end of the nineteenth century, including establishing a tearoom that provided output had risen so dramatically that many refreshment to the well-heeled women shoppers
1 Original: http://www.americanyawp.com/text/22-the-twenties/ 2 Christine Frederick, Selling Mrs. Consumer, (New York: The Business Bourse, 1929), 29. 3 T.J. Jackson Lears, From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930, in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980, edited by Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 1-38.
75 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY that comprised the store’s clientele. Reflecting on In the late 1920s, eighty percent of the world’s cars the success of Field’s marketing techniques, Thomas drove on American roads. W. Goodspeed, an early trustee of the University of Chicago wrote, “Perhaps the most notable of IV. Culture of Escape Mr. Field’s innovations was that he made a store As transformative as steam and iron had been in in which it was a joy to buy.”4 the previous century, gasoline and electricity— embodied most dramatically for many Americans The joy of buying infected a growing number of in automobiles, film, and radio—propelled not Americans in the early twentieth century as the rise only consumption, but also the famed popular of mail-order catalogs, mass-circulation magazines, culture in the 1920s. “We wish to escape,” wrote and national branding further stoked consumer desire. Edgar Burroughs, author of the Tarzan series. The automobile industry also fostered the new “The restrictions of manmade laws, and the inhibitions culture of consumption by promoting the use of that society has placed upon us.” Burroughs authored credit. By 1927, more than sixty percent of American a new Tarzan story nearly every year from 1914 until automobiles were sold on credit, and installment 1939. “We would each like to be Tarzan,” he said. purchasing was made available for nearly every “At least I would; I admit it.” Like many Americans other large consumer purchase. Spurred by in the 1920s, Burroughs sought to challenge and access to easy credit, consumer expenditures for escape the constraints of a society that seemed household appliances, for example, grew by more more industrialized with each passing day.5 than 120 percent between 1919 and 1929. Henry Ford’s assembly line, which advanced production Just like Burroughs, Americans escaped with strategies practiced within countless industries, great speed. Whether through the automobile, brought automobiles within the reach of middle- Hollywood’s latest films, jazz records produced income Americans and fruther drove the spirit of on Tin Pan Alley, or the hours spent listening to consumerism. By 1925, Ford’s factories were turning radio broadcasts of Jack Dempsey’s prizefights, out a Model-T every 10 seconds. The number of the public wrapped itself in popular culture. One registered cars ballooned from just over nine million observer estimated that Americans belted out in 1920 to nearly twenty-seven million by the the silly musical hit “Yes, We Have No Bananas” decade’s end. Americans owned more cars than more than “The Star Spangled Banner” and all Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy combined. the hymns in all the hymnals combined.6
4 Thomas W. Goodspeed, “Marshall Field,” University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. III (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), 48. 5 LeRoy Ashby, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 177. 6 Ibid., 183.
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As the automobile became more popular and more produced films that portrayed American values of reliable, more people traveled more frequently and opportunity, democracy, and freedom. attempted greater distances. Women increasingly drove themselves to their own activities as well Not content with distributing thirty-minute films as those of their children. Vacationing Americans in nickelodeons, film moguls produced longer, higher- sped to Florida to escape northern winters. Young quality films and showed them in palatial theaters men and women fled the supervision of courtship, that attracted those who had previously shunned exchanging the staid parlor couch for sexual the film industry. But as filmmakers captured exploration in the backseat of a sedan. In order to the middle and upper classes, they maintained serve and capture the growing number of drivers, working-class moviegoers by blending traditional Americans erected gas stations, diners, motels, and modern values. Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 epic and billboards along the roadside. Automobiles The Ten Commandments depicted orgiastic revelry, themselves became objects of entertainment: for instance, while still managing to celebrate nearly one hundred thousand people gathered a biblical story. But what good was a silver screen to watch drivers compete for the $50,000 prize in a dingy theater? Moguls and entrepreneurs soon of the Indianapolis 500. constructed picture palaces. Samuel Rothafel’s Roxy Theater in New York held more than six Meanwhile, the United States dominated the global thousand patrons who could be escorted by film industry. By 1930, as movie-making became a uniformed usher past gardens and statues to their more expensive, a handful of film companies took cushioned seat. In order to show The Jazz Singer control of the industry. Immigrants, mostly of (1927), the first movie with synchronized words and Jewish heritage from Central and Eastern Europe, pictures, the Warners spent half a million to equip originally “invented Hollywood” because most two theaters. “Sound is a passing fancy,” one MGM turn-of-the-century middle and upper class Americans producer told his wife, but Warner Bros.’ assets, viewed cinema as lower-class entertainment. which increased from just $5,000,000 in 1925 to $230,000,000 in 1930, tell a different story.7 After their parents emigrated from Poland in 1876, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner (who were Americans fell in love with the movies. Whether given the name when an Ellis Island official could it was the surroundings, the sound, or the production not understand their surname) founded Warner Bros. budgets, weekly movie attendance skyrocketed from in 1918. Universal, Paramount, Columbia, and MGM sixteen million in 1912 to forty million in the early were all founded by or led by Jewish executives. 1920s. Hungarian immigrant William Fox, founder Aware of their social status as outsiders, these of Fox Film Corporation, declared that “the motion immigrants (or sons of immigrants) purposefully picture is a distinctly American institution”
7 Ibid., 216.
77 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY because “the rich rub elbows with the poor” in Radio exposed Americans to a broad array of movie theaters. With no seating restriction, the music. Jazz, a uniquely American musical style one-price admission was accessible for nearly all popularized by the African-American community Americans (African Americans, however, were in New Orleans, spread primarily through radio either excluded or segregated). Women represented stations and records. The New York Times had more than sixty percent of moviegoers, packing ridiculed jazz as “savage” because of its racial theaters to see Mary Pickford, nicknamed “America’s heritage, but the music represented cultural Sweetheart,” who was earning one million dollars independence to others. As Harlem-based musician a year by 1920 through a combination of film and William Dixon put it, “It did seem, to a little boy, endorsements contracts. Pickford and other female that . . . white people really owned everything stars popularized the “flapper,” a woman who .But that wasn’t entirely true. They didn’t own favored short skirts, makeup, and cigarettes. the music that I played.” The fast-paced and spontaneity-laced tunes invited the listener As Americans went to the movies more and more, at to dance along. “When a good orchestra plays home they had the radio. Italian scientist Guglielmo a ‘rag,’” dance instructor Vernon Castle recalled, Marconi transmitted the first transatlantic wireless “One has simply got to move.” Jazz became (radio) message in 1901, but radios in the home did a national sensation, played and heard by whites not become available until around 1920, when and blacks both. Jewish Lithuanian-born singer they boomed across the country. Around half of Al Jolson—whose biography inspired The Jazz American homes contained a radio by 1930. Radio Singer and who played the film’s titular character— stations brought entertainment directly into the became the most popular singer in America.8 living room through the sale of advertisements and sponsorships, from The Maxwell House Hour The 1920s also witnessed the maturation of to the Lucky Strike Orchestra. Soap companies professional sports. Play-by-play radio broadcasts sponsored daytime dramas so frequently of major collegiate and professional sporting that an entire genre—“soap operas”—was born, events marked a new era for sports, despite the providing housewives with audio adventures institutionalization of racial segregation in most. that stood in stark contrast to common chores. Suddenly, Jack Dempsey’s left crosses and right Though radio stations were often under the uppercuts could almost be felt in homes across the control of corporations like the National Broadcasting United States. Dempsey, who held the heavyweight Company (NBC) or the Columbia Broadcasting championship for most of the decade, drew million- System (CBS), radio programs were less constrained dollar gates and inaugurated “Dempseymania” in by traditional boundaries in order to capture as wide newspapers across the country. Red Grange, an audience as possible, spreading popular culture who carried the football with a similar recklessness, on a national level. helped to popularize professional football, which
8 Ibid., 210.
78 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY was then in the shadow of the college game. Lindbergh the “hero of the decade,” not only for Grange left the University of Illinois before his transatlantic journey, but because he helped to graduating to join the Chicago Bears in 1925. “There restore the faith of many Americans in individual had never been such evidence of public interest effort and technological advancement. Devastated since our professional league began,” recalled Bears in war by machine guns, submarines, and chemical owner George Halas of Grange’s arrival.9 weapons, Lindbergh’s flight demonstrated that technology could inspire and accomplish great things. Perhaps no sports figure left a bigger mark than did Outlook Magazine called Lindbergh “the heir of all Babe Ruth. Born George Herman Ruth, the “Sultan that we like to think is best in America.”10 of Swat” grew up in an orphanage in Baltimore’s slums. Ruth’s emergence onto the national scene The decade’s popular culture seemed to revolve was much needed, as the baseball world had been around escape. Coney Island in New York marked rocked by the so-called black Sox scandal in which new amusements for young and old. Americans eight players allegedly agreed to throw the 1919 drove their sedans to massive theaters to enjoy major World Series. Ruth hit fifty-four home runs in 1920, motion pictures. Radio towers broadcasted the bold which was more than any other team combined. new sound of jazz, the adventure of soap operas, Baseball writers called Ruth a superman, and more and the feats of amazing athletes. Dempsey and Americans could recognize Ruth than they could Grange seemed bigger, stronger, and faster than any then-president Warren G. Harding. who dared to challenge them. Babe Ruth smashed home runs out of ball parks across the country. And After an era of destruction and doubt brought Lindbergh escaped earth’s gravity and crossed entire about by the First World War, Americans craved ocean. Neither Dempsey nor Ruth nor Lindbergh heroes that seemed to defy convention and made Americans forget the horrors of the First World break boundaries. Dempsey, Grange, and Ruth War and the chaos that followed, but they made it dominated their respective sport, but only Charles seem as if the future would be that much brighter. Lindbergh conquered the sky. On May 21, 1927, Lindbergh concluded the first ever non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris. Armed with only a few sandwiches, some bottles of water, paper maps, and a flashlight, Lindbergh successfully navigated over the Atlantic Ocean in thirty-three hours. Some historians have dubbed
9 Ibid., 181. 10 John W. Ward, “The Meaning of Lindbergh’s Flight, in Studies in American Culture: Dominant Ideas and Images, edited by Joseph J. Kwiat and Mary C. Turpie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1960), 33.
79 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
Culture of Consumption 1. In what ways did the 1920s bring about a consumer revolution?
2. What was the role of the department store in American consumer culture during the period?
3. The advent of what financial instrument led to a drastic increase in American automobile ownership?
80 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
Culture of Escape 1. How did industrialization breed both the desire for and ability to escape for Americans?
2. Describe the rise of Hollywood during the period. Why were films so popular with Americans?
3. What role did the radio play in American consumerism and entertainment?
4. Who were the heroes of the day? What are some similarities and differences between the types of celebrities popular in the 1920s and those that are popular today?
81 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.4 | ACTIVITY | Primary Source Analysis – The “New Woman” in the “New Era” PURPOSE This activity is designed to give students a sense of to generation. Finally, the advertisement from The the ways in which women experienced the 1920s. Madame C.J. Walker Co. illustrates the ways in The initial pictures and documents focus on the way which women were impacting and taking advantage the “New Woman” was depicted and viewed. The of the expanding consumer economy, as well as written pieces compare two perspectives on the the ways in which African American businesses New Woman and illustrate a bit of the controversy were able to offer a boost to both their community’s surrounding the perceived changes from generation economy and self image.
PROCESS Students should download the documents ATTACHMENTS and the analysis tool. As they analyze • Primary Source Analysis Tool the documents they should fill in a chart • The “New Woman” for each source. Upon completion of the in the “New Era” Docs charts, the class should engage one another with a discussion about what they found compelling in the documents.completion of the reading.
82 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
HANDOUT | Document 1 – Gibson Girl1 vs. Flapper
Image 1 | Gibson Girls as depicted in “Picturesque America, anywhere in the mountains” by Charles Dana Gibson 2
Image 2 | Flapper as depicted in “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” by Russell Patterson3
1 “Gibson Girls” - Ideal of female fashion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name comes from the artist, Charles Dana Gibson. 2 https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010716157/ 3 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009616115/
83 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
READING | Document 2 - Quote from Congresswoman Alice Robertson of Oklahoma in 1922
As quoted in The Evening World on February 3, 1922.
“The flapper flaps because her mother flaps. You or bridge game daughter goes out flapping in an can blame the flapper’s mother every time. As the auto. It’s only natural. Let the mothers stay at home, mothers flap, so flap the youngsters. Mother sets then they would find that their daughters would the pace and her daughter follows. While mother is come flapping home, flap into an apron and spend flapping around at an afternoon tea or at a reception their out-of-school hours in a thoroughly wholesome.”
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READING | Document 3 - Excerpt from “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” by Ellen Welles Page
Originally published in Outlook Magazine on December 6, 1922
If one judge by appearances, I suppose I am a and remain a successful flapper? Indeed it does! flapper. I am within the age limit. I wear bobbed hair, It requires an enormous amount of cleverness the badge of flapperhood. (And, oh, what a comfort and energy to keep going at the proper pace. It it is!), I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and requires self- knowledge and self-analysis. We bright-colored sweaters, and scarfs, and waists with must know our capabilities and limitations. We Peter Pan collars, and low- heeled “finale hopper” must be constantly on the alert. Attainment of shoes. I adore to dance. I spend a large amount flapperhood is a big and serious undertaking! of time in automobiles. I attend hops, and proms, and ball-games, and crew races, and other affairs “Brains?” you repeat, skeptically.”Then why aren’t at men’s colleges. But none the less some of the they used to better advantage?” That is exactly it! most thoroughbred superflappers might blush to And do you know who is largely responsible for all claim sistership or even remote relationship with this energy’s being spent in the wrong directions? such as I. I don’t use rouge, or lipstick, or pluck my You! You parents,and grandparents, and friends, eyebrows. I don’t smoke (I’ve tried it, and don’t like and teachers, and preachers--all of you! “The war!” it), or drink, or tell “peppy stories.” I don’t pet. you cry. “It is the effect of the war!” And then you And, most unpardonable infringement of all the rules blame prohibition. Yes! Yet it is you who set and regulations of Flapperdom, I haven’t a line! But the example there! But this is my point: Instead of then--there are many degrees of flapper. There is helping us work out our problems with constructive, the semi-flapper; the flapper; the superflapper. sympathetic thinking and acting, you have muddled Each of these three main general divisions has its them for us more hopelessly with destructive public degrees of variation. I might possibly be placed condemnation and denunciation. somewhere in the middle of the first class... Think back to the time when you were struggling I want to beg all you parents, and grandparents, through the teens. Remember how spontaneous and and friends, and teachers, and preachers--you deep were the joys, how serious and penetrating who constitute the “older generation”--to overlook the sorrows. Most of us, under the present system our shortcomings, at least for the present, and to of modern education, are further advanced and appreciate our virtues. I wonder if it ever occurred more thoroughly developed mentally, physically, and to any of you that it required brains to become vocationally than were our parents at our age. We
85 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY hold the infinite possibilities of the myriads of new inventions within our grasp. We have learned to take for granted conveniences, and many luxuries, which not so many years ago were as yet undreamed of. We are in touch with the whole universe. We have a tremendous problem on our hands. You must help us. Give us confidence--not distrust. Give us practical aid and advice--not criticism. Praise us when praise is merited. Be patient and understanding when we make mistakes…
86 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
HANDOUT | Document 4 – Advertisement for beauty products of The Madam C.J. Walker Mfg. Co. Inc. 1
1 From Indiana Historical Society; Published in: Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975
87 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE HANDOUT | Primary Source Analysis Tool TIME
TOPIC: AUTHOR:
SOURCE TITLE: PUBLICATION DATE:
OBSERVE: WHAT WERE THE MAIN IDEAS/THEMES OF THE PIECE? (THIS BOX SHOULD HAVE OBJECTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT WHAT IS IN THE PIECE, NOT WHAT YOU PERSONALLY FEEL ABOUT THE IDEAS IN THE SOURCE.)
QUOTES: WHAT QUOTES DID YOU FIND TO BE PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT OR INTERESTING?
REFLECTION: WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS MOST COMPELLING OR INTERESTING ABOUT THE SOURCE? WHY IS THIS SOURCE IMPORTANT? WHAT CAN IT TELL US ABOUT THE PERIOD? DO ANY OF ITS IDEAS APPLY TO AMERICA TODAY?
QUESTIONS: WHAT QUESTIONS DO YOU HAVE ABOUT THE SOURCE OR THE TOPIC, GENERALLY?
88 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.5 | READ | “The Harlem Renaissance”
PURPOSE The Harlem Renaissance was an outcome of specifically, the African American community. the Great Migration mentioned in the Crash Students should be asked to engage with the Course video over the Roaring Twenties. In this Harlem Renaissance in a way that gets them to article, students will come to understand what think more deeply about the ways in which art and the ‘Renaissance’ was and how it impacted expression are essential parts of experience. the American experience generally and, more
PROCESS Students will read the attached article ATTACHMENT on the Harlem Renaissance by Jessica • Harlem Renaissance McBirney. They should be asked to read actively, underlining important names, places, events, and/or passages. After finishing the reading, students should answer the questions at the end of the document.
89 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
READING | The Harlem Renaissance —Jessica McBirney1
Background The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and middle class population, but in 1910 a group of African cultural explosion among African Americans living American realtors purchased several blocks in the in Harlem, New York in the 1920s. It produced area, and opened the neighborhood to the new some of the greatest American artists, musicians, black migrants from the south. Not only did African and writers of all time, and expanded the identity Americans settle there, but dark-skinned immigrants and culture of a group that had been marginalized from the Caribbean also came to seek a better life. for hundreds of years. These immigrants, often former slaves as well, also faced discrimination and oppression in their Why Harlem? home countries. After the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished in 1865, many African Americans Art Confronting Racism remained in southern states where their families Even though the north did not have as much overt had once been slaves on plantations. Most and institutionalized racism as the south, African found jobs as farm laborers – doing essentially Americans still faced some level of discrimination the same work they had done as slaves, but and encountered stereotypes about their people now for a meager wage. Over the next few decades, and culture. One of the most common stereotypes even though the federal government made some was that they were primitive, wild people still attempts to give African Americans a decent life, closely connected to the “jungle roots” of their segregation, as well as racist attitudes and racial origins in Africa. violence, kept freed slaves and their families from improving their own circumstances. The The first major cultural event of the Harlem governments of southern states often ignored Renaissance, a 1917 theater production called the hardships faced by African Americans. “Three Plays for a Negro Theater,” tore down these stereotypes for its viewers. It was written In the early 1900s African Americans began moving by the white playwright Ridgely Torrence and north where they could find better paid jobs working cast African Americans to portray complex human in city factories instead of on farms. This movement events and emotions. Two years later poet Claude was known as The Great Migration. Neighborhoods McKay published the sonnet “If We Must Die.” that were mostly black popped up in cities all over Although the poem never addressed race directly, the North, including Harlem, a neighborhood in New African-American readers found its message of York City. It was originally built for a white, upper defiance inspiring as they continued to hear about
1 https://www.commonlit.org/texts/the-harlem-renaissance
90 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY racially motivated violence around the country. all African Americans would embrace, one of Literature in the Harlem Renaissance portrayed assertiveness and a refusal to submit to the old African Americans as complex human beings with racial prejudice and segregation that had plagued intelligence and emotions, just like any other person. them for so long. It provided insight into the everyday life of African Americans. These ideas were revolutionary for many Music became another central component in Harlem. white spectators because they countered the typical, As jazz continued to grow in popularity everywhere stereotypical depictions of African Americans in during the 1920s, musicians in Harlem put their own popular culture. spin on the music: the Harlem Stride Style. They added piano to the brass instruments of jazz. Many The Harlem Renaissance did not promote a specific famous jazz musicians rose to stardom during this political viewpoint or artistic style. Rather, it was period, including Duke Ellington. Music in Harlem a chance for a variety of African American artists also included elements from old black spiritual songs to use their own form of art to express racial pride and the blues. White artists began to take notice and identity. Artists held the belief that through of black musicians, and they incorporated some of intellect, literature, art, and music, their work could this new culture into their own music. challenge racism and enable African Americans to better integrate into American society as a whole. A Deep and Lasting Impact Not only did the Harlem Renaissance produce new Literature & Music and exciting art and music, it also helped to define Literature dominated the Harlem Renaissance a new part of the African American identity. Since and was one of the most powerful tools African African Americans had been enslaved and oppressed Americans used to develop their own culture. for so long, it was important to create a cultural The most famous writer to emerge from the period heritage of which they could be proud. It also made was Langston Hughes, a poet who decided to the larger American culture take African Americans ignore many of the conventional rules for poetry more seriously, and it laid important groundwork for in favor of a more rhythmic approach, drawn the Civil Rights movement that would come several from traditional and new African American music decades later. like spirituals and the blues. He wrote about the many struggles African Americans faced, but a theme of hope and overcoming hardship ran through many of his books.
Writers at the time popularized the concept of the “New Negro.” This was an identity they hoped
91 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What were some of the reasons why the Harlem Renaissance came about?
2. What were some of the different forms the Renaissance took? What was the impact of such diversity in expression?
3. What do you think the Harlem Renaissance can tell us about the importance of art in the 1920s? About the power of art, generally?
92 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.6 | READ | “The Negro Moses”—Robert A. Hill
PURPOSE Marcus Garvey was an important figure in the society. This article gives a biography of Garvey’s shaping of the “New Negro” during the 1920s. impact and provides a look at how his success Garvey’s Pan-African movement inspired many in and popularity increased the size of the target on places like Harlem to reconsider how they saw his back. This article will help students answer themselves in the context of early 20th century the first essential questions of Lesson 7.2. American and global politics, economics, and
PROCESS Students will read the attached article ATTACHMENT on Marcus Garvey by Robert A. Hill. They • Marcus Garvey, “The Negro Moses” should be asked to read actively, underlining important names, places, events, and/ or passages. After finishing the reading, students should answer the questions at the end of the document and be prepared to share their findings with the class.
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READING | Marcus Garvey, “The Negro Moses” — Robert A. Hill – University of California, Los Angeles1
Marcus Garvey is regarded as the leader of the state in Africa or an international black economy, largest organized mass movement in black history he was responsible for putting forward ideas that and the progenitor of the modern Black Is Beautiful helped to advance the political consciousness revival that reached its apogee2 in the 1960s and of blacks worldwide. The important psychological 1970s in the United States. Hailed by his followers liberation from the bondage of racial inferiority in the 1920s as a kind of political redeemer and that Garvey helped to break (and that Bob Marley dubbed “the Negro Moses,” Garvey has continued sings about in his music) stands as a living, to fascinate writers and commentators as well as breathing testament to the breadth and depth of scholars and researchers. the movement he created and its lasting historical significance. Although there is today of plethora of scholarly research for students to draw upon, the problem Early Days and Travels of interpreting Garvey and his movement is still Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 17, as challenging as it ever was. And yet simply 1887, in the tiny seaside town of St. Ann’s Bay collecting more and more data might not on the north coast of Jamaica. As a young man provide answers to the questions that people he was apprenticed to a printer and learned have always asked. Was Garvey sincere? Did the skill of a compositor. He left school at fourteen Garvey, in his espousal of the repatriation and eventually moved to the capital of Kingston, of blacks to Africa, forsake the rights of African where he worked as a printer; at the same time, he Americans in America? Were his ventures, such patiently acquired the skills of public speaking and as the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories participated in debating and elocution contests. Corporation, honest? Perhaps it is the way the He left Jamaica in 1910 for Central America, questions have been framed that constitutes a major settling first in the coastal town of Limón, Costa part of the problem. It is time to start asking Rica, where he published a small newspaper. He a different set of questions and stop looking for would also spend time in Honduras and Belize answers to old questions. and published another small paper in Panama. After returning to Jamaica briefly in 1912, he again left Although Garvey obviously failed to realize many in 1913 when he moved to England and worked of his objectives, such as the creation of an African with the enigmatic Sudanese-Egyptian nationalist empire or the establishment of a sovereign black Dusé Mohamed Ali, in London, on the staff of Ali’s
1 Original Source: http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-garvey.html 2 highest point
94 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY influential pan-African journal, The African Times monument to Washington’s memory. If Garvey and Orient Review. went to Tuskegee to pay his respect to the great Washington, who had been such an inspiration, While living in England, Garvey visited a number as well as to pay homage to the beacon of black of European countries, all the while expanding his progress and achievement that was Tuskegee education and acquiring a new consciousness of Institute, the visit also marked, in historical terms, the system of imperial and aristocratic power as it a changing of the guard. Garvey’s whole reached its climax. It was an auspicious as well as political outlook was about to undergo a radical fraught time, for within a month or two of returning transformation as a result of what he would to Jamaica, the impending cataclysm that was the encounter in America. Up to that point, he had First World War broke out. What is now referred to been a follower of Washington in espousing as Europe’s long nineteenth century came crashing racial accommodation as well as the eschewal to an end; Garvey was swept up, like so many others, of politics. Arriving totally unheralded and in the dramatic and far-reaching changes that the unknown in America, Garvey was about to become war would usher in on a global scale. his own man. He would take the black world by storm, and it would never be the same afterward. On his return to Jamaica in 1914, Garvey was content at first to preach accommodation to the Garvey came to the United States at the dawn system of colonial rule. He aspired to open an of the militant “New Negro” era. Black discontent, industrial and agricultural training school modeled punctuated by East St. Louis’s bloody race riots on Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. in 1917 and intensified by postwar disillusionment, Garvey was not unique in this, however, since other reached record heights by 1919 with the Red blacks, in particular mission-educated blacks in Summer of nationwide racial disturbances. Not long West Africa and South Africa, were attempting after his arrival, Garvey quietly organized a chapter to do the same thing under the influence of of the Universal Negro Improvement Association Washington’s Tuskegee. After writing to acquaint (UNIA), which functioned as a benevolent fraternal Washington with his efforts in Jamaica, Garvey organization. Within a few years of this humble was invited by Washington to come to the United beginning, Garvey rose rapidly to become the best- States. Washington died in 1915, however, before known, most controversial, and for millions, the most Garvey could leave Jamaica. attractive and compelling of a new generation of black leaders. Garveyism Upon his arrival in America in the spring of 1916, Drawing on a gift for electrifying oratory, Garvey Garvey still made a pilgrimage to the world-famous melded Jamaican peasant aspirations for economic Tuskegee school in Alabama to see firsthand the and cultural independence with the American
95 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY gospel of success to create a new gospel of racial 1920s, however, the movement had begun to unravel pride. “Garveyism” evolved into a religion of success, under the strain of internal dissension, opposition inspiring millions of blacks worldwide who sought from black critics, and government harassment. relief from racial dispossession and colonial Fiscal irregularities in the shipping line gave the U.S. domination. The UNIA gave this doctrine of racial government — spurred on by the young FBI director enterprise a tangible symbol that captured J. Edgar Hoover — the basis for an indictment black imaginations when it launched the Black that sent Garvey to prison. The government later Star shipping line. commuted Garvey’s sentence, only to deport him to Jamaica in November 1927. A Worldwide Movement By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of divisions Back in Jamaica, Garvey reconstituted the UNIA and worldwide. It hosted elaborate international held conventions there and in Canada, but the heart conventions and published the Negro World, of his movement stumbled on in the United States a widely disseminated weekly that was soon without him. While dabbling in Jamaican politics, he banned in many parts of Africa and the Caribbean. remained a keen observer of world events, writing The movement’s dynamic core was Harlem, voluminously in a series of his own periodicals. His which Garvey and the UNIA helped make the final move was to London, where he settled in 1935. cultural capital of the black world. During the In his last years he slid into isolation, suffering the 1920s the six-block radius surrounding 135th Street final indignity of reading his own obituaries a month and Lenox Avenue contained the UNIA’s before his death on June 10, 1940. international headquarters as well as the cradle of the movement, Liberty Hall, and the offices Redemption of all major UNIA affiliated enterprises. UNIA African Redemption, the political program of the restaurants, shops, and storefront factories UNIA, encompassed the territorial redemption of spread throughout Harlem, and Garvey and many Africa from colonial rule and the spiritual redemption UNIA officers lived there. During the annual UNIA of the black race. Garvey saw Africa as having fallen international conventions, the streets boasted from a past greatness that had to be restored for colorful parades led by a regal Garvey, poised in an peoples of African descent to resume their rightful open car and wearing the plumed hat that became place in the world. Such redemption could only be his indelible trademark. achieved by black peoples themselves.
Nearly one thousand UNIA divisions formed The impact of Garveyism in Africa was considerable. throughout North and Central America, the Caribbean, Garvey himself never set foot in Africa, but for Africa and Britain, as well as a lone division in many budding nationalist leaders, it was he who Australia. Many divisions still met as late as the first implanted notions of black self-sufficiency 1950s; a few remain active even today. By the late
96 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY and independence. Garveyism had a special tie Garvey’s memory has attained the status of with Liberia, the black-ruled country created by a folk myth. He is daily celebrated and recreated free and freed African Americans in the early as a hero through the storytelling faculty of the nineteenth century and the primary objective of black oral tradition. As the embodiment of that Garvey’s Back to Africa campaign. A few Garveyites oral tradition transmuted into musical performance, independently immigrated to Liberia, but the grand Jamaica’s reggae music exhibits an amazing UNIA colonization schemes all collapsed in the fixation with the memory of Garvey. Re-evoking end. Garveyism also flourished in the Caribbean. spiritual exile and the historic experience of black More than any other early-twentieth-century dispossession, the music of such performers as Bob political phenomenon, it gave expression to a pan- Marley, Peter Tosh, and Burning Spear presents Caribbean consciousness that crossed insular and a Garvey who speaks from the past directly to the political boundaries. Garvey’s teachings functioned present. The result today is that the legend of as a powerful catalyst for diverse religious Garvey functions as an icon of universal black pride interpretations deriving from the notion of black and affirmation. divinity as the spiritual mirror of racial sovereignty. The UNIA program of African Redemption was continuously communicated through the biblical prophecy: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God” (Ps 68:31).
At the August 1924 UNIA convention, Bishop George Alexander McGuire, founder of the African Orthodox Church, enunciated the doctrine of a black God and unveiled the black Madonna in Liberty Hall. Various sects proliferated and expanded on the fringes of the Garvey movement or arose from within its fold, such as Black Islam and Rastafarianism, and a major part of Garvey’s legacy was transplanted to the religious sphere.
Garvey’s Legacy Garvey’s legacy has also been manifest in the careers of leaders ranging from Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to Malcolm X in the United States. Borne along on the tide of black popular culture,
97 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What were some of Marcus Garvey’s objectives?
2. What were some things he was actually able to accomplish?
3. In what ways was Garvey shaped by his early experiences?
4. How did Garvey and the UNIA impact Harlem?
5. Even though Garvey himself may not have succeeded, why was his movement still important?
98 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.7 | READ | The Reemergence of the KKK—Robert A. Hill
PURPOSE The first essential question asks students to look terrorism by adding increased targeting of Catholics, at the ways in which the changes of the Roaring Jews, and immigrants to its continued torment of the Twenties were resisted by some Americans. African American community. This article provides One form that resistance to America’s shifting students with a brief overview of the group and its demographics took was the Klu Klux Klan. The resurgence in the 1920s. Klan continued to build upon its legacy of hatred and
PROCESS Students will read the attached article on ATTACHMENT The KKK from The Khan Academy. They • The Reemergence of the KKK should be asked to read actively, underlining important names, places, events, and/ or passages. After finishing the reading, students should answer the questions at the end of the document and be prepared to share their findings with the class.
99 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
READING | The Reemergence of the KKK
Disbanded after Reconstruction, the KKK returned The first Ku Klux Klan declined in the 1870s, to national prominence in the 1920s to direct its partly due to the passage of federal legislation hatred against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, aimed at prosecuting the crimes of Klansmen, and immigrants. though some local cells continued to operate. The institutionalization of Jim Crow segregation Overview in the South, moreover, meant that the KKK’s • The Ku Klux Klan first arose in the South during desire to maintain the antebellum racial hierarchy the Reconstruction Era, but experienced had been fulfilled. a resurgence in the period immediately following the end of the First World War. The Revival of the KKK • The KKK was a viciously racist organization Although the KKK had reemerged in the South that employed violence and acts of terror in 1915, it wasn’t until after the end of World War in order to assert white supremacy and I that the organization experienced a national maintain a strict racial hierarchy. resurgence. Membership in the KKK skyrocketed • Although most of the KKK’s savagery was from a few thousand to over 100,000 in a mere aimed at African Americans, their hatred ten months. Local chapters of the KKK sprang extended to immigrants, Catholics, Jews, up all over the country, and by the 1920s, it liberals, and progressives. had become a truly national organization, with • The revival of the KKK in the 1920s was a formidable presence not just in the South, but demonstrative of a society coping with the in New England, the Midwest, and all across the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and northern United States. immigration. The members of the Ku Klux Klan were mostly A Brief History of the KKK white Protestant middle-class men, and they The Ku Klux Klan was a viciously racist white framed their crusade in moral and religious terms. supremacist organization that first arose in the They saw themselves as vigilantes restoring justice, South after the end of the Civil War. Its members and they used intimidation, threats of violence, opposed the dismantling of slavery and sought and actual violence to prevent African Americans, to keep African Americans in a permanent state immigrants, Catholics, Jews, liberals, and of subjugation to whites. During Reconstruction, progressives from attaining wealth, social status, the Klan employed violence and terror in the hopes and political power. of overthrowing Republican state governments in the South and maintaining the antebellum racial KKK members wore elaborate costumes with hierarchy. distinctive white hoods to mask their identities,
100 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
and held nocturnal rallies to plot acts of terror of Colored People (NAACP) was at the forefront and foment hatred against people deemed not of efforts to educate the public about the threat “truly” American—basically, anyone who was not posed by the KKK. Such anti-Klan activism was white and Protestant. The activities of Klansmen highly effective, and the organization’s membership ranged from issuing threats and burning crosses to declined dramatically in the late 1920s. outright violence and atrocities such as tarring and feathering, beating, lynching, and assassination. The Ku Klux Klan would experience another revival in the South during the Civil Rights Movement of The revival of the KKK in the early twentieth the 1950s and 1960s. century reflected a society struggling with the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Klan chapters in major urban areas expanded as many white Americans became bitter and resentful about immigration from Asia and Eastern Europe. Klansmen complained that these immigrants were taking jobs away from whites and diluting the imagined “racial purity” of American society. Given that the country had been populated by immigrants from the beginning, such ideas of racial purity were complete myths.
Propaganda and Protest D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, was a sympathetic portrayal of the Klan, and was hugely popular with American audiences. President Woodrow Wilson even arranged for a private screening of the film at the White House.
Many influential people and organizations came out in opposition to the KKK. Religious and civic groups launched campaigns to educate American society about the crimes and atrocities committed by Klansmen. Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, and Jewish rabbis stepped forward The film The Birth of a Nation portrayed the KKK as a heroic to condemn the organization in no uncertain terms. organization and led to a resurgence in membership. Image The National Association for the Advancement courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
101 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What were the goals of the Ku Klux Klan? What sorts of tactics did they use to achieve those goals?
2. Why do you think the KKK experienced a resurgence in the 1920s?
3. How do you explain the rise and fall of the Klan in different periods of US history?
102 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.8 | READ | Who Killed Black Wall Street? —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
PURPOSE The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 serves as a major that today it’s rarely discussed and remembered example of the ways in which white communities outside of Tulsa’s black community is a tragedy for resented and prevented prosperity in African the rest of us to consider. American communities. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides students with an in depth In the article, he invokes a comparison to the events look at the race riot, its causes, and its effects. surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin. Though The complete story is one of great tragedy for a very minor part of the article, it may be a topic the African Americans of Tulsa in 1921. The fact that the students need further information on.
PROCESS Find the attached article on the Tulsa Race include a reflection on how this article Riot of 1921 by Professor Henry Louis helps them answer the first of the essential Gates, Jr. As always, instruct students to questions of this lesson. read actively, underlining important names, places, events, and/or passages as they ATTACHMENT go. After finishing the reading, they will • Who Killed Black Wall Street? write a brief one page reflection on what they found to be the most essential parts of the piece. Their short write up should
103 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY
READING | Who Killed Black Wallstreet?1 – Henry Louis Gates Jr.
‘Nab Negro’ he wondered why it had never “occurred to the In a city of 100,000 people, high on oil, “The Drexel citizens of Tulsa that any sane person attempting Building was the only place downtown where we criminally to assault a woman would have picked were allowed to use the restroom,” Robert Fairchild any place in the world rather than an open elevator Sr. recalled, according to the Tulsa Reparations in a public building with scores of people within Coalition. That was why 19-year-old Dick Rowland calling distance.” But it was too late for cooler heads, was there. His boss at the white shoeshine parlor or even facts, to prevail. “The story of the alleged on Main Street had arranged for black employees assault was published Tuesday afternoon [a day like Dick Rowland to use the “colored restroom” after the incident] by the Tulsa Tribune, one of on the top floor of the Drexel. “I shined shoes with the two local newspapers,” White added, and its Dick Rowland,” Fairchild said. “He was an orphan headline and text were vicious. and had quit school to take care of himself.” “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” the page- On Monday, May 30, 1921, Rowland entered the one story ran. In it, the Tribune claimed Rowland Drexel Building and took a chance violating one of had gone by the nickname “Diamond Dick” and that the unwritten rules of Jim Crow: He rode an elevator he’d “attacked [Page], scratching her hands and with a white girl — alone. Really, what choice did face and tearing her clothes.” More menacing, the he have? Seventeen-year-old Sarah Page was the paper let the people of Tulsa know exactly Drexel Building’s elevator operator. No one knows where Dick Rowland was after being “charged with how the two greeted each other, or if they’d met attempting to assault the 17-year-old white before, except that minutes later, someone did hear elevator girl … He will be tried in municipal court a scream — a woman’s scream. Rowland ran. this afternoon on a state charge.”
Perhaps he should’ve waited for a crowd to get No wonder one black Tulsan remembered the onto the lift with him, because in the aftermath headline differently: “To Lynch a Negro Tonight,” Page claimed Rowland had assaulted her. Not true, as an op-ed in the Tulsa Tribune was titled. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, Accusations about black men raping white women was quick to clarify in a piece he wrote for The had long been used to justify lynching, an idea Nation magazine June 29, 1921: “It was found called the “old thread-bare lie” by activist Ida B. afterwards that the boy had stepped by accident Well-Barnett in her 1892 book, Southern Horror: on her foot.” To White, it was obvious — and so Lynch Law in all Its Phases. The same lie received
1 http://www.theroot.com/who-killed-black-wall-street-1790897586
104 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY a higher profile in 1915 with the release of D.W. help in protecting Rowland. The police refused their Griffith’s silent film The Birth of a Nation, which offer, just as they had whites’ demands to release featured white actors in blackface attacking white Rowland to their brand of ask-no-questions justice. women. On Memorial Day 1921, Dick Rowland had On the roof, police riflemen stood at the ready. stepped into more than just an elevator, and more Below, “cries of ‘Let us have the nigger’ could be than one scream would follow. heard echoing off the walls” (quoted from Scott Ellsworth’s, “The Tulsa Race Riot,” included in Tulsa The First Shot Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission Blacks made up 12 percent of Tulsa’s population. to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921). Most resided north of the city in Greenwood, sometimes called the “Negro Wall Street of Even though the black visitors returned to their cars, America” because of the number of prominent whites in the mob were enraged by their audacity citizens (including at least three millionaires, and rushed home to get their guns. Others made an according to Walter White) who had seen their unsuccessful attempt to supply themselves with fortunes rise as a result of the oil boom. Unwelcome ammunition from the National Guard Armory. By downtown, except when working, Greenwood 9:30 p.m., there were 2,000 whites crowding the blacks had established their own newspapers, courthouse, from “curiosity seekers” to “would-be theaters, cafes, stores and professional offices. lynchers,” according to Ellsworth.
Those in Tulsa who paid attention to the news were Back in Greenwood, black Tulsans canceled regular well-aware that a white man had been lynched activities, while another round of men, this time out of the county jail a year earlier, the same year about 75, decided it was time to head down to the that in Oklahoma City, young African-American courthouse. With their guns at the ready, they male Claude Chandler had been hanged from a tree wanted to make one thing clear: There was not after being dragged out of jail on charges of killing going to be any lynching in Tulsa that night. a police officer. Greenwood blacks feared Rowland would be next, and so they gathered at the black- “Then it happened,” Scott Ellsworth writes. “As the owned Tulsa Star to figure out what to do. black men were leaving the courthouse for the second time, a white man approached a tall African- Twenty-five or so black men, including veterans American World War I veteran who was carrying of World War I (which had just ended three an army-issue revolver. ‘Nigger,’ the white man said, years before), took the ride to Tulsa’s downtown, ‘What are you doing with that pistol?’ ‘I’m going to where, encountering a growing white mob, they use it if I need to,’ replied the black veteran. ‘No, you formed a line and marched, with arms, up the give it to me.’ ‘Like hell I will.’ The white man tried courthouse steps to offer the white police force to take the gun away from the veteran, and a shot
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rang out. America’s worst race riot had begun.” in the projector’s glow, he was shot in the head. Dick Rowland was now almost incidental — in fact, Still another was shot on West Fourth and knifed he was about to be in one of the safest places to the point where a white doctor, seeing him in the city: jail. “writhing,” realized “it was an impossible situation to control, that I could be of no help,” reports The Riot Ellsworth. In the Nation, Walter White tried to It would be impossible, in this limited space, convey the terror that swept north to Greenwood to recount every horror inflicted on black Tulsans into the next morning, June 1: through the long night — their businesses, their properties, their civic and cultural centers, [T]he [white] mob, now numbering more than 10,000, their lives. For those seeking to know more, made a mass attack on Little Africa. Machine-guns I strongly encourage you to read the findings were brought into use; eight aeroplanes were of the government-sponsored 1921 Tulsa Race employed to spy on the movements of the Negroes Riot Commission, released in a 188 page-report and according to some were used in bombing the in February 2001. Other indispensable books colored section. All that was lacking to make the include Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land: scene a replica of modern ‘Christian’ warfare was The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and Alfred Brophy’s poison gas. The colored men and women fought Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of gamely in defense of their homes, but the odds 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation. were too great. According to the statements of onlookers, men in uniform, either home guards or There would be no reconciliation the night of May ex-service men or both, carried cans of oil into Little 31 in Tulsa. After the courthouse gunfight, a dozen Africa, and, after looting the homes, set fire to them. black and white men were dead or wounded. Outnumbered (it wasn’t even close), the blacks One incident White recounted involved a black who’d driven down from Greenwood retreated doctor, A.C. Jackson: through the streets while scores of whites were deputized on the spot by the Tulsa Police Department, Dr. Jackson was worth $100,000; had been described which now perceived the event as “a Negro uprising.” by the Mayo brothers ‘the most able Negro surgeon Even one white who was turned away, a bricklayer in America’; was respected by white and colored named Laurel Buck, was told, “Get a gun, and get people alike, and was in every sense a good citizen. busy and try to get a nigger,” according to Ellsworth. A mob attacked Dr. Jackson’s home. He fought in defense of it, his wife and children and himself. An A black Tulsan was gunned down running out of officer of the home guards who knew Dr. Jackson an alley near Younkman’s drugstore. Another was came up at that time and assured him that if he chased into a white movie theater, where, spotted would surrender he would be protected. This Dr.
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Jackson did. The officer sent him under guard to First, the armed whites broke into the black homes Convention Hall, where colored people were being and businesses, forcing the occupants out into placed for protection. En route to the hall, disarmed, the street, where they were led away at gunpoint Dr. Jackson was shot and killed in cold blood. The to one of a growing number of internment centers. officer who had assured Dr. Jackson of protection Anyone who resisted was shot. Moreover, African- stated to me, ‘Dr. Jackson was an able, clean-cut American men in homes where firearms were man. He did only what any red-blooded man would discovered met the same fate. Next, the whites have done under similar circumstances in looted the homes and businesses, pocketing small defending his home. Dr. Jackson was murdered items, and hauling away larger items either on by white ruffians.’ foot or by car or truck. Finally, the white rioters then set the homes and other buildings on fire, Reading these passages, it’s impossible not to recall using torches and oil-soaked rags. House by house, President Obama’s remarks about Trayvon Martin: block by block, the wall of flame crept northward, It “could’ve been me” — it could have been us. Really, engulfing the city’s black neighborhood. it could’ve been anyone during the Tulsa Race Riot, because at one point, according to Ellsworth, “[a]t The Aftermath least one white man in an automobile was killed The last shots in the Tulsa Race Riot were fired by a group of whites, who had mistaken him to be sometime after noon on Tuesday, June 1. In the black.” In the fog of a riot, as in war, no one is safe aftermath, there were 26 African Americans and 10 from being profiled. whites reported dead, but many who’d lived through it found the official count dubiously low. Eighty It continued when the Tulsa police and National years later, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission report Guard troops arrived in Greenwood on the morning determined that some 1,256 homes were burned of June 1 and imposed martial law. Still convinced in Greenwood, and while an exact count of those blacks were to blame for the riot, the troops focused killed could not be established, even the best their efforts on detaining Greenwood’s residents evidence pointed to between 75 and 300 killed, with instead of shielding them from the terror. Estimates a ratio of three or four blacks to every one white, are that close to 4,000 to 6,000 Greenwood but really it’s hard to be precise when so many of residents (almost half the population) were arrested the black victims were buried without dignity — and relocated to holding centers throughout the or even in a pine box. Then there are the families city, leaving their homes and businesses even more that fled. Aaron Myers, in his entry on Tulsa in vulnerable to attack. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (a reference book The “deadly pattern” was set, Scott Ellsworth I co-edited with Kwame Anthony Appiah), puts that writes: number at more than 700 — 700 families displaced by what followed from an elevator ride gone bad.
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So many more questions remained — most of all, whites’ fury at the number of black families moving why? into their cities, blacks’ willingness to push back against the excesses of Jim Crow and the visible Visiting Tulsa in the immediate aftermath, Walter public presence of black World War I veterans White pointed to three general causes: poor in uniform. and working-class whites’ resentment of blacks prospering in Tulsa’s oil economy; blacks’ Justice determination to “emancipat[e] themselves from Shortly after the Tulsa Riot, a grand jury was the old system”; and “rotten political conditions,” convened to examine the incident. Its findings were where “in a county of approximately 100,000 summed up in a headline published in the Tulsa population, six out of every one hundred citizens World: “Grand Jury Blames Negroes for Inciting were under indictment for some sort of crime, with Race Rioting; Whites Clearly Exonerated,” according little likelihood of trial in any of them.” to Brophy. Outside the courthouse, blacks knew different. One, B.F. Johnson, later had this to say, Whites in Tulsa had their own narrative. At least according to the Tulsa Reparations Coalition: “There one, Amy Comstock, in her piece for Survey in seemed [to] be on the part [of] many white people a July 1921, agreed that general lawlessness was sort of joy in having unrestrained priveleges [sic] in a problem in Tulsa, but she located it in Greenwood: shooting the negroes … [W]hat these boys and men “It was in the sordid and neglected ‘Niggertown’ did was because they had hell in their harts [sic].” that the crooks found their best hiding place … There, for months past, the bad ‘niggers,’ the silk- Whatever was lurking in Sarah Page’s heart, in shirted parasites of society, had been collecting September 1921, the most consequential elevator guns and munitions. Tulsa was living on a Vesuvius operator in Tulsa history was a no-show against Dick that was ready to vomit fire at any time.” Rowland in court — and so his case was tossed. In an amazing turn of events, Rowland had survived the The truth was the United States during and after riot in jail and now was a free man once again. To World War I was suffering an epidemic, not this day, his life — and death — remain a mystery, of influenza, but of race riots. Among the most so, too, his face, as illustrated by an ongoing debate notorious were the East St. Louis Riot of 1917 about whether “that’s him” in the 1921 Booker T. and the Red Summer Riots of 1919 in Chicago, Washington school yearbook. From what I can tell, which, over four days, claimed the lives of two Dick Rowland was last known to have relocated dozen blacks with hundreds more injured. Scholars, to Kansas City, where, in my fantasy, he was among including Cameron McWhirter, author of Red the first to see the young Charlie Parker play the Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening saxophone. of Black America, have offered many theories about the causes of these race riots: conflicts over jobs,
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The Rebuilding As compelling as their case was, however, Despite initial promises from Tulsa officials to a U.S. district court judge granted the defendants’ rebuild Greenwood, blacks who had lost everything motion to dismiss because the underlying facts found no redress from the city or the courts. Of fell outside the statute of limitations. the more than 100 suits filed in the years after the riot, only two went to trial, Brophy reports, and Ogletree’s team pressed on to the 10th Circuit U.S. both plaintiffs lost. Those who sought to rebuild Court of Appeals. “The lawyers in Brown v. Board found their progress slowed by a lack of funds of Education had to fight a lot of battles and and new zoning ordinances, while even those home- suffer a lot of losses before they could win,” he and business-owners who had insurance learned told the Harvard Crimson in March 2004. “We’re their policies contained “riot exclusion” clauses. prepared to fight equally long.” Unfortunately, a few Because of the slow pace of progress, a thousand months later, justice in Alexander v. Oklahoma survivors spent the winter of 1921-1922 living was denied again, despite the plaintiffs’ argument in tents. The hurricane that had displaced them that the clock should have started with the Tulsa was hate. Race Riot Commission’s findings in 2001, not with the whitewashing that had occurred in the 1920s. The Long Memory of Tulsa The court disagreed, stating that even if vital In 1997, the Oklahoma Commission to Study information to the case had been concealed in the the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was formed by riot’s immediate aftermath, those seeking redress a resolution in the Oklahoma State Legislature. could have pursued it after federal civil rights It was tasked with researching the facts legislation had been passed in the 1960s or when and making recommendations about possible Scott Ellison wrote his history of the riot in 1982. reparations. Based on the commission’s As a result, those like Otis Clark who remembered findings, the legislature did apologize for the living through the riot would not live to see their Tulsa Race Riot but stopped short of providing day in court. more than limited funds for the community. As a result, in 2003, several hundred victims Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. and descendants of the Tulsa Riot (including 100 year-old Otis Clark) filed a lawsuit against the The Vigil state, the city and the police department. Charles One tangible result of the commission’s findings was Ogletree, my friend and colleague at the Harvard the creation of John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, Law School, led the reparations team with what dedicated in 2010 in honor of the greatest African- contributor Alfred Brophy described as “immense American historian of his generation, a Tulsa native, humanity,” a “rigorous legal mind” and a fierce a member of the commission and my dear late friend, determination to pursue “justice on behalf of whose father, Buck Colbert Franklin, had performed those who cannot fight for themselves” (pdf). heroic service as a lawyer in the immediate
109 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY aftermath of the riot. Designed to continue “the American tradition of erecting memorials based on tragic events by giving voice to the untold story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the important role African Americans played in building Oklahoma,” Reconciliation Park served as an important gathering place for the community on the evening of July 16, 2013, after it was announced that a Florida jury had found Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, not guilty.
President Obama had yet to deliver his remarks from the White House pressroom on the “set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” but already Tulsans were there at Reconciliation Park to remember the souls of the long — and recently — departed. In the words of one attendee, Geoff Woodson, “This is something we should do, anyway. We still have [Interstate] 244 that divides us. We still have people that don’t want to talk about the 1921 [Tulsa] Race Riot. We need to come together. It’s the only way healing can take place.”
My intention, in presenting the Colfax Massacre and the Tulsa Riot the past two weeks, has been to aid that healing from a place of truth. None of us but God will ever know what Trayvon Martin was thinking in his final moments of struggle, or what those who were marched out of Colfax to their slaughter said to their butchers or how Dick Rowland felt when Sarah Page screamed and he was alone, but we do have a “set of experiences and a history” of facts with which to contend, and while the work ahead will be hard, it is necessary if we are going to change the way people feel when someone who “fits a profile” steps on an elevator and isn’t accompanied by the Secret Service.
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LESSON 7.2.9 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #33 The Great Depression
PREVIEW PURPOSE In which John Green teaches you about the Great In this video, students will be introduced to the Great Depression. So, everybody knows that the Great Depression, its causes, and its impacts. Through this Depression started with the stock market crash in video, students will come to understand the shifts 1929, right? Not exactly. The Depression happened in the American economy that led to the rise of the after the stock market crash, but wasn’t caused Depression and dispel some myths along the way. by the crash. John will teach you about how the The video lays the groundwork for understanding depression started, what Herbert Hoover tried to do how the Depression shaped a generation and added to fix it, and why those efforts failed. to the continued shift in the role of the Government in the lives of the citizens of the United States, a notion that will be expanded upon in future readings and activities.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask students to watch the video before class. LINK Remind students of John’s fast-talking and • Crash Course US History #33 – play the video with captions. Pause and The Great Depression rewind when necessary. Before they watch the video, remind them of the central ideas Video questions for students to answer during of the second of this lesson’s essential their viewing. questions:
What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
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LESSON 7.2.9 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (:50) What’s a common misconception SAMPLE ANSWER: A common misconception is of the Great Depression? that the Great Depression began with the stock market crash in October of 1929. The groundwork to the depression had been laid years before and farmers had already long suffered by the time of the market crash.
2. (1:30) Why did farm prices drop throughout SAMPLE ANSWER: American farms had expanded the 1920s? enormously during World War I to provide food for troops and this expansion led many farmers to mechanize their operations. In order to finance this expansion, farmers went into debt while a surplus of crops remained unused.
3. (2:45) America had experienced depressions SAMPLE ANSWER: The Great Depression was prior to the 1920s-30s. According to John, a phenomenon due to the massive unemployment what made the Great Depression the Great and accompanying hardship that followed the large Depression? unemployment.
4. (5:30) According to Herbert Hoover, what was SAMPLE ANSWER:Hoover believed that the the primary cause of the Great Depression? primary cause of the Great Depression was World War I, due to debts and reparations that the war created. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay $33 billion in war reparations, which it couldn’t pay without support of American banks. Once American credit dried up following the stock market crash and bank failures, the economies in Europe began to plunge.
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5. (7:00) Why didn’t Hoover’s moratorium on SAMPLE ANSWER: Hoover’s idea was to devalue intergovernmental debt payments proposal the currencies of nations while pumping money into succeed? the economies, but central bankers in Europe and America refused to surrender the gold standard.
6. (8:45) According to Hoover, what was the SAMPLE ANSWER: Hoover believed that the best best course of action to take on the Great course of action was to “use the powers of Depression? government to cushion the situation.” He persuaded a large number of industrialists to agree to maintain wage rates and got congressional approval for millions of dollars to be spent on public works programs. These actions were simply not enough.
7. (10:00) After policies and initiatives failed SAMPLE ANSWER: Facing a dire situation, the bring an end to the Great Depression, Hoover employed the radical move of creating what radical move did Hoover turn to in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, January 1932? which was basically a federal bailout program that borrowed money to provide emergency loans to banks, building and loan societies, railroads and agricultural corporations. The problem was that bailing out the banks wasn’t enough with well over 10 million people out of work - 20% of the labor force.
LESSON 7.2.9 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. Artists and writers like Meridel Le Sueur, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and John Steinbeck captured the struggles of the working class during the Great Depression. What hardships in your life have been captured by writers, musicians, and artists? What aspect of life do they try to capture in their message?
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LESSON 7.2.10 | READ | The Great Depression—Mike Kubic
PURPOSE In Crash Course US History #33, John explained Depression, its impacts on societies around the the significance of the Great Depression to world, and the ways in which the government set students. This article adds to that understanding about stemming its effects. with additional information on the causes of the
PROCESS Students will read the attached article on ATTACHMENT The Great Depression by Mike Kubic. They • The Great Depression should be asked to read actively, underlining and highlighting as they go. Students should also create an outline of the article in their notes, making sure to record important names, places, events, and/or passages.
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READING | The Great Depression1 – Mike Kubic
The Great Depression, one of the major disasters of After the stock market crash came a banking crisis. the modern era, is easy to describe: it was the worst With unemployment rising and investment plunging, economic catastrophe in history. It was harrowing thousands of investors lost confidence in their banks to experience: people were starving, even in our land and in the fall of 1930 began withdrawing their of plenty. It triggered political upheavals in Europe deposits. That forced banks to liquidate loans, and that had devastating consequences. And it was within two years, thousands of banks went out so persistent that it only yielded to another global of business. tragedy, the Second World War. As factories closed doors, one in four Americans But in the United States, it was not without lost their jobs. With no bank loans to tie them a silver lining: it inspired President Franklin Delano over, farmers left their crops in the fields while in Roosevelt to launch economic and social reforms towns, people starved. Bread lines, soup kitchens, that still benefit the living standards and quality of and homeless college graduates selling apples in life for many Americans today. the streets became part of the American scene.
The Great Depression started in 1929 with an As housing construction stopped and factories unexceptional development: American shoppers closed their doors, U.S. production of goods and spent less than usual on consumer goods, which services – the country’s gross domestic product, triggered a familiar phenomenon – a recession. or GDP – was cut in half, and foreign trade shrank But what happened next was out of the ordinary: 70 percent. In short order, the global impact although production, consumption, and companies’ of America’s economic downturn bore out the profits were sinking, investors kept buying more complaint of millions of Europeans that “When stock, and pushing their prices to unrealistic heights. America sneezes, we catch pneumonia.”
On October 24, a day remembered as “Black Thursday,” The Global Impact enough investors decided to cash in on the boom The pain caused by the Great Depression was felt to start a massive sell-off that pricked the stock as far as Australia, where in 1932 unemployment market bubble. Within a week, prices on Wall reached a record high of 29 percent, and civil Street hit new lows and panicky investors dumped unrest became common. In France, the depression 29 million shares, giving the American economy triggered street riots and strained the nation’s a shock equivalent to the fire sale of thousands of social fabric by strengthening both socialists and businesses and factories. their far-right opponents.
1 https://www.commonlit.org/texts/the-great-depression
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In Great Britain, industrial production collapsed, pay all government workers. Hundreds of thousands shipbuilding dropped 90 percent and in some towns of Americans had lost their homes and lived in unemployment reached 70 percent. In 1934, tents and shacks of shantytowns derisively called a “National Hunger March” of jobless workers turned “Hoovervilles.” into several days of street fighting in London in which 75 people were seriously injured. It was a classic setting for a political upheaval, and it came – just like in Europe – in 1932. But Worst of all were the effects in Germany. Unable unlike in Europe, American voters in the November to get loans from American banks, the Weimar presidential elections voted for democracy. The republic in 1932 cancelled 90 percent of its reparation Communists, the only extremists in the race, won payments to the victors of WWI. The same year, a paltry ¼ of 1 percent of the vote. the rise of unemployment to nearly 30 percent destroyed all confidence in the centrist party Norman Thomas, a democratic socialist, won over and divided most of the electorate between the 2 percent. Hoover’s Republicans came in second with extreme Right and Left. Although Adolf Hitler less than 40 percent of the vote. And the winner, in lost the elections to the incumbent president von a landslide, was Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hindenburg, the Nazis and the Communists won with over 57 percent of the electorate. the majority in Germany’s parliament. FDR’s Reforms In the U.S., the gathering clouds of global upheaval Roosevelt – FDR, as he became known – was one failed to change the assurances from President of the towering statesmen and political leaders Herbert Hoover that the crisis, if left alone, would of the 20th Century. Born in New York in a wealthy run its course just like had the recessions in the patrician family, he went to Harvard and rose past. A Republican and businessman, Hoover believed rapidly in Democratic politics until the age of 29, that government should not directly intervene in the when he came down with polio that left him economy, and that it did not have the responsibility paralyzed from the waist down. for creating jobs or providing economic relief for its citizens. He eventually did try stem the economic He refused to let the setback crush him. With slide with two laws to spur new home construction indomitable optimism and willpower, he fought and public works programs, but they were too little the disease, returned to politics, and in 1929 was and too late. elected the governor of the State of New York. In March, 1933, when he was sworn in as the 32nd The runs on banks continued and by the fall of 1932 President of the United States, he was ready businesses and families defaulted on record to lead. Bareheaded and unsmiling, he focused numbers of loans, more than 5,000 banks had failed, his inaugural address on the parlous situation of and the U.S. Treasury didn’t have enough cash to the country, and pledged to restore it to health:
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“This great Nation will endure, as it has endured, will Another stellar success was the Civilian Conservation revive and will prosper,” FDR assured the crowd Corps that provided three million young men below the Capitol, adding, “So, first of all, let me with shelter, clothing, food and a wage of $30 ($25 assert my firm belief that the only thing we have of which they had to send to their parents) for to fear is fear itself....We must act and act quickly.” working in national parks and on other conservation projects. An imaginative Federal Project Number And that’s what he did throughout his 12 years in One employed hundreds of jobless musicians, artists, office. As the leader of the Democratic Party, he writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, built a coalition of labor unions, big city machines, media, and literacy projects. white ethnics, African Americans and rural white Southerners, and used this powerful electoral force Roosevelt’s support for labor unions and regulations to push through Congress a far-reaching program for business and high finance earned him the enmity called the New Deal. It launched bold measures of many in the moneyed circles, but in FDR: An to promote economic reform and recovery, Intimate History, biographer Nathan Miller described and enacted unprecedented laws to protect the President as unaffected by these critics. ordinary citizens. “Living comfortably on inherited wealth, [Roosevelt] For example, The Social Security Act created cared little about money for its own sake,” Miller a safety net for victims of old age, poverty and wrote. “He never believed that the business ethic unemployment. The Federal Deposit Insurance should be dominant in American society, or that any protected savers from losing their money in a bank restriction on business was a threat to the American crash. The Wagner Act guaranteed basic rights way of life...” of workers to organize into trade unions and bargain for better terms and conditions at work. But some of the New Deal policies were rejected by the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and Roosevelt, And FDR took long strides to bring Americans out trying to remove this block to his legislative reforms, of the Hoovervilles and put them back to work. The made the biggest political error of his career. In Work Progress Administration (WPA), the largest 1937, he proposed to increase the size of the Court and most ambitious New Deal agency, gave jobs to by adding up to six new justices for every Supreme millions of unskilled men. They built massive public Court member older than 70 and a half years. projects, including the gigantic Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and thousands of public buildings The proposal was not illegitimate – the Constitution and roads. Almost every American community got does not define the size of the Supreme Court – but a new park, bridge or school constructed by the WPA. it triggered a nationwide storm of protests against what was widely regarded as an excessive power
117 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY grab. It was defeated in Congress, but Roosevelt did not lose his popularity. In 1940, he was reelected for a third term, and a fourth in 1944, acts so unprecedented that Congress and the states adopted an Amendment in 1947 that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Roosevelt continued the guide the country until 1945, when he died in office.
The start of World War II in 1939 rebooted the global economy, escalated demand for industrial goods, and ended the need for many of FDR’s emergency programs. But his key innovations are still important part of our lives. The Social Security and other New Deal laws, the TVA, and thousands of other public works still serve us. They continue fulfill FDR’s assurance that our nation “will revive and will prosper.”
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LESSON 7.2.11 | ACTIVITY | The Dust Bowl Primary Sources PURPOSE Economic and environmental catastrophe worse, and citizens of the Plains headed west combined in the 1930s to create the Dust Bowl. to California, hoping to reverse their fortunes. Years of over farming combined with record Instead, many found that life on the road or in drought and turned the once fertile lower Great the West was still rife with challenges of its own. Plains to dust. The misfortune of the land was The attached documents provide students with a the misfortune of its inhabitants, as thousands general overview of the Dust Bowl and a sense of Americans were left without their former of the personal upheaval this disaster created for livelihoods. The crushing Depression made matters many Americans.
PROCESS Students should download the documents ATTACHMENTS and the graphic organizer for this • The Dust Bowl assignment. As they analyze the documents • Dust Bowl Primary Source Analysis Tool they should fill in the chart. Upon completion of the charts, the class should engage one another with a discussion about what they found compelling in the documents. Perhaps you could even listen to the Woody Guthrie song included in the documents.
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READING | The Dust Bowl – From the Library of Congress
In the 1930s, disaster struck the southwestern Great is still remembered as “Black Sunday.” A day that Plains region of the United States. In the heartland began with mild warmth ended with a huge dust of the U.S., poor soil conservation practices and cloud, pushed at 60 miles per hour, blackening the sky. extreme weather conditions exacerbated the existing misery of the Great Depression and instigated the Unfit for Man or Beast largest migration in American history. The dust penetrated everything and everywhere. Wherever air could go, dust could infiltrate. No Historical Background matter how well sealed a home might be, the dust The semi-arid grasslands of the Great Plains were coated furniture, clothing, and cooking and eating first settled for large-scale agriculture in the 1860s, areas. During a dust storm, anyone venturing outside when Congress passed the Homestead Act and would be assailed by sand flying into their faces. encouraged thousands of families to move to the Livestock suffered equally. Poultry were suffocated area. As the nation’s demand for wheat grew, and larger farm animals were blinded and sickened however, cattle grazing was reduced and more by the swirling dust. acres were plowed and planted. Dry-land farming in combination with overgrazing caused destruction Moving West of the natural prairie grasses. The land became Though they tried to hang on, eventually millions increasingly bare and the strong winds found of people left the Great Plains. Almost one-quarter naturally in the Great Plains began to literally of the population was forced out when they lost blow the land away. Huge clouds of dust darkened their farms and ranches in bank foreclosures. The the sky for days and drifted like snow, covering need to feed their children and raise them in more farm buildings and homes. healthful surroundings drove many families to pack everything they owned in cars and trucks and head Throughout the Dust Bowl decade, the Plains were west. California became a popular destination. Its torn by climatic extremes. In addition to dirt storms, mild climate and diverse crops appealed to farmers residents of the Great Plains suffered through looking for work. Popular stories depicted California blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, earthquake, as a veritable promised land. Flyers advertising and record high and low temperatures. In February work for farm workers were widely circulated. In this 1933, temperatures dropped 74 degrees within 18 pre-interstate-highway period, Route 66 provided hours in Boise City, Oklahoma, and remained below a direct route from the Dust Bowl region to the freezing for several days while a dirt storm raged. Central Valley of California. In 1934, record high temperatures—as high as 120 degrees—caused hundreds of deaths in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Sunday, April 14, 1935,
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Life in California Sadly, life in California was not as idyllic as had been hoped. Many migrants gave up farming when they discovered that a good portion of California farmlands were owned by large, corporate farms that cultivated different crops and were far more modernized than the smaller farms of the Great Plains. There were often fewer jobs available than had been advertised, and desperate workers weren’t in a position to refuse the poor pay and living conditions offered by the corporate farms.
So, for many migrants, their unemployment continued in California. Roadside camps proliferated, feeding the resistance to migrant workers that came from many local citizens. Groups of vigilantes beat up migrants and burned their shacks to the ground. The local law enforcement officers were often hostile as well. Eventually, federal help was given to the migrants. Roosevelt’s Farm Security Administration built 13 camps designed to be self- governing communities. Each temporary housing complex accommodated 300 families in tents built on wooden platforms. Over the years, migrants from the Great Plains were integrated into the California culture. The FSA camps disappeared, roadside shacks were replaced with real houses, and migrant children were sent to the local public schools.
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READING | Document 1: Song: Dust Storm Disaster – Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
On the 14th day of April of 1935, There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky. You could see that dust storm comin’, the cloud looked deathlike black, And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track.
From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line, Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande, It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down, We thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom.
The radio reported, we listened with alarm, The wild and windy actions of this great mysterious storm; From Albuquerque and Clovis, and all New Mexico, They said it was the blackest that ever they had saw.
From old Dodge City, Kansas, the dust had rung their knell, And a few more comrades sleeping on top of old Boot Hill. From Denver, Colorado, they said it blew so strong, They thought that they could hold out, but they didn’t know how long.
Our relatives were huddled into their oil boom shacks, And the children they was cryin’ as it whistled through the cracks. And the family it was crowded into their little room, They thought the world had ended, and they thought it was their doom.
The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night, When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight. We saw outside our window where wheat fields they had grown Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown.
It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns, It covered up our tractors in this wild and dusty storm. We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in, We rattled down that highway to never come back again.
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HANDOUT | Document 2 – Image of Heavy Clouds of Black Dust1
1 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b27277/
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HANDOUT | Document 3 –Migrant Mother1
1 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b41800/
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HANDOUT | Document 3 –Migrant Mother1
1 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b41800/
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HANDOUT | Dust Bowl Primary Source Analysis Tool
SOURCE OBSERVE: WHAT ARE THE FIRST THINGS YOU NOTICE ANALYZE: WHAT DOES DOC ADD TO YOUR UNDERSTANDING ABOUT THE DOC? OF THE DUST BOWL?
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
DOCUMENT 1: “DUST BOWL DISASTER”
DOCUMENT 2: IMAGE OF HEAVY CLOUDS OF BLACK DUST
DOCUMENT 3: MIGRANT MOTHER
DOCUMENT 4: OKIE FAMILY ON HIGHWAY WEST
126 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.12 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #34 The New Deal
PREVIEW PURPOSE In which John Green teaches you about the New In this video, students will learn about President Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, plan to pull the United States out of the Great The New Deal. Through this video, students will Depression of the 1930’s. Did it work? Maybe. John come to understand the successes and failures will teach you about some of the most effective and of the New Deal. Essential programs and the lasting some of the best known programs of the New Deal. impact of the establishment of the welfare state are They weren’t always the same thing. John will tell important ideas worth highlighting. you who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it. He’ll also get into how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and citizens, and will even reveal just how the Depression ended. (hint: it was war spending)
PROCESS Remember that John speaks very quickly, LINK and you should watch the video with • Crash Course US History #34 – captions. Don’t forget to pause and rewind The New Deal when necessary. Before you watch the video, reread the the Unit 7 Essential Questions and the second of the Lesson 7.2 Essential Questions.
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LESSON 7.2.12 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (1:30) According to FDR’s campaign in the 1932 SAMPLE ANSWER: FDR believed it was the election, what was the responsibility of the government’s responsibility to guarantee every government? man a right to make a comfortable living. FDR also called for a balanced budget, so he didn’t state how he hoped to accomplish this responsibility.
2. (2:20) What was the New Deal? SAMPLE ANSWER: The New Deal was a set of government programs intended to fix the Depression and prevent future depressions. The New Deal set about three “R” programs: relief, recovery, and regulate.
3. (4:30) What is the National Recovery SAMPLE ANSWER: The NRA was designed to be Administration (NRA)? a program in which government and business leaders worked together to coordinate industry standard for production, prices, and working conditions. This didn’t offer immediate help, so the government provided welfare payments to people who were desperate.
4. (7:45) What two laws stand out for their far- SAMPLE ANSWER: In an effort to focus on reaching effects during the second New Deal? economic security, new laws that stand out from the New Deal are the National Labor Relations Act (also called the Wagner Act), which guaranteed workers the right to unionize, and the Social Security Act.
5. (8:50) What were the goals of the Congress SAMPLE ANSWER: The Congress of Industrial of Industrial Organizations? Organizations set out to unionize industries like steel manufacturers and automobile workers. This also led to workers striking in order to negotiate employment agreements and working conditions.
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6. (9:30) In what ways did unions play SAMPLE ANSWER: Unions shaped the ideology an important role in shaping the ideology of the second New Deal by insisting that the of the second New Deal? economic downturn had been caused by under- consumption and that the best way to combat the depression was to raise workers’ wages, thus creating a consumer culture. Additionally, the thinking went that if people experienced less economic insecurity they would spend more of their money, so there were widespread calls for public housing and universal healthcare.
7. (10:00) What does Social Security provide, how SAMPLE ANSWER: Social Security provided was it funded, and what did it mean in terms unemployment insurance, aid to the disabled, aid of the relationship between government and to poor families with children, and retirement citizens? benefits. It was funded through payroll taxes rather than general revenue, and it represented a transformation in the relationship between the federal government and American citizens. Prior to the New Deal, Americans didn’t expect the federal government to assist them in times of economic hardship.
8. (10:30) What are Keynesian economics? SAMPLE ANSWER: Keynesian economics are ideas and theories that government should spend money even if it means going into deficits in order to prop up demand, which means government is much more present in the lives of people.
9. (10:50) Describe the initiatives of the Works SAMPLE ANSWER: The WPA provided jobs through Progress Administration (WPA). a government employment program which carried out public works projects like constructing public buildings, employing painters to create murals in those public spaces, paying actors and writers to create plays, and having photographers capture photos of everyday America.
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10. (12:00) How were southern African-Americans SAMPLE ANSWER: Because southern democrats at a disadvantage during the New Deal era? had a history of racism to benefit economically, the federal government faced political blocks by longtime legislative leaders. Southerners expected whites to dominate the government and the economy, and insisted on local administration of many New Deal programs. Those leaders made sure New Deal programs excluded sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic servants, all of whom were disproportionately African-American.
LESSON 7.2.12 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following question in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. According to Eric Foner, the New Deal “made the government an institution directly experienced in Americans’ daily lives and directly concerned with their welfare.” Reflect on this given your own experience. How do Americans today view the role of government in their lives? What are the criticisms of government being directly concerned with the lives of citizens?
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LESSON 7.2.13 | READ | Impact of the New Deal
PURPOSE This selection, from the Open Source textbook States. This reading gives students a greater sense The American Yawp, provides students with of the diversity of experience in the daily lives of an overview of how the impacts of the Great Americans during the period and provides further Depression and the New Deal were felt by depth for topics discussed in the Crash Course US different groups in different parts of the United History video over the New Deal.
PROCESS Share the attached reading with students. ATTACHMENT Remind them that they should read actively, • Regional Impacts of the New Deal marking the text as they go. This will allow them to be better prepared to discuss the reading in class. After completing the reading, students should be sure to answer the questions at the end of the document.
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READING | Regional Impacts of the New Deal – Selections from The American Yawp, Chapter 231
The New Deal in the South on landowners and local organizations to distribute The impact of initial New Deal legislation was money fairly to those most affected by production readily apparent in the South, a region of perpetual limits, but many owners simply kicked tenants and poverty especially plagued by the Depression. In croppers off their land, kept the subsidy checks 1929 the average per capita income in the American for keeping those acres fallow, and reinvested the Southeast was $365, the lowest in the nation. profits in mechanical farming equipment that further Southern farmers averaged $183 per year at a time suppressed the demand for labor. Instead of making when farmers on the West Coast made more farming profitable again, the AAA pushed landless than four times that. Moreover, they were trapped southern farm workers off the land. into the production of cotton and corn, crops that depleted the soil and returned ever-diminishing But Roosevelt’s assault on southern poverty took profits. Despite the ceaseless efforts of civic many forms. Southern industrial practices attracted boosters, what little industry the South had remained much attention. The NRA encouraged higher low-wage, low-skilled, and primarily extractive. wages and better conditions. It began to suppress Southern workers made significantly less than their the rampant use of child labor in southern mills, national counterparts: 75% of non-southern textile and, for the first time, provided federal protection workers, 60% of iron and steel workers, and a paltry for unionized workers all across the country. 45% of lumber workers. At the time of the crash, Those gains were eventually solidified in the 1938 southerners were already underpaid, underfed, Fair Labor Standards Act, which set a national and undereducated. minimum wage of $0.25/hour (eventually rising to .40/hour). The minimum wage disproportionately Major New Deal programs were designed with affected low-paid southern workers, and brought the South in mind. FDR hoped that by drastically southern wages within the reach of northern wages. decreasing the amount of land devoted to cotton, the AAA would arrest its long-plummeting price The president’s support for unionization further decline. Farmers plowed up existing crops and left impacted the South. Southern industrialists had fields fallow, and the market price did rise. But in proven themselves ardent foes of unionization, an agricultural world of landowners and landless particularly in the infamous southern textile mills. farm workers (such as tenants and sharecroppers), the In 1934, when workers at textile mills across benefits of the AAA bypassed the southerners who the southern Piedmont struck over low wages needed them most. The government relied and long hours, owners turned to local and state
1 http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/
132 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY authorities to quash workers’ groups, even as they Roosevelt initially courted conservative southern recruited thousands of strikebreakers from the many Democrats to ensure the legislative success of displaced farmers swelling industrial centers looking the New Deal, all but guaranteeing that the racial for work. But in 1935 the National Labor Relations and economic inequalities of the region remained Act, also known as the Wagner Act, guaranteed intact, but, by the end of his second term, he had the rights of most workers to unionize and bargain won the support of enough non-southern voters collectively. And so unionized workers, backed that he felt confident in confronting some of the by the support of the federal government and region’s most glaring inequalities. Nowhere was determined to enforce the reforms of the New this more apparent than in his endorsement of Deal, pushed for higher wages, shorter hours, and a report, formulated by a group of progressive better conditions. With growing success, union southern New Dealers, entitled “A Report on members came to see Roosevelt as a protector Economic Conditions in the South.” The pamphlet or workers’ rights. Or, as one union leader put it, denounced the hardships wrought by the an “agent of God.” southern economy—in his introductory letter to the Report, called the region “the Nation’s Perhaps the most successful New Deal program No. 1 economic problem”—and blasted reactionary in the South was the Tennessee Valley Authority southern anti-New Dealers. He suggested that (TVA), an ambitious program to use hydroelectric the New Deal could save the South and thereby power, agricultural and industrial reform, flood spur a nationwide recovery. The Report was control, economic development, education, and among the first broadsides in Roosevelt’s coming healthcare, to radically remake the impoverished reelection campaign that addressed the watershed region of the Tennessee River. Though inequalities that continued to mark southern and the area of focus was limited, Roosevelt’s TVA national life. sought to “make a different type of citizen” out of the area’s penniless residents. The TVA built The New Deal in Appalachia a series of hydroelectric dams to control flooding The New Deal also addressed another poverty- and distribute electricity to the otherwise stricken region, Appalachia, the mountain-and-valley non-electrified areas at government-subsidized communities that roughly follow the Appalachian rates. Agents of the TVA met with residents Mountain Range from southern New York to the and offered training and general education classes foothills of Northern Georgia, Alabama, and to improve agricultural practices and exploit new Mississippi. Appalachia’s abundant natural resources, job opportunities. The TVA encapsulates Roosevelt’s including timber and coal, were in high demand vision for uplifting the South and integrating it into during the country’s post-Civil War industrial the larger national economy. expansion, but Appalachian industry simply extracted these resources for profit in far-off
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industries, depressing the coal-producing areas even Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too earlier than the rest of the country. By the mid- much to him. The Great American Depression … 1930s, with the Depression suppressing demand, only became official when it hit the white man.” many residents were stranded in small, isolated Black workers were generally the last hired when communities whose few employers stood on the businesses expanded production and the first fired verge of collapse. Relief workers from the Federal when businesses experienced downturns. In 1932, Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) reported with the national unemployment average hovering serious shortages of medical care, adequate around 25%, black unemployment reached as high shelter, clothing, and food. Rampant illnesses, as 50%, while even those black who kept their jobs including typhus, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and saw their already low wages cut dramatically. venereal disease, as well as childhood malnutrition, further crippled Appalachia. Blacks faced discrimination everywhere, but suffered especially severe legal inequality Several New Deal programs targeted the region. in the Jim Crow South. In 1931, for instance, Under the auspices of the NIRA, Roosevelt a group of nine young men riding the rails established the Division of Subsistence Homesteads between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, (DSH) within the Department of the Interior to were pulled from the train near Scottsboro, give impoverished families an opportunity to relocate Alabama, and charged with assaulting two white “back to the land”: the DSH established 34 homestead women. Despite clear evidence that the assault communities nationwide, including the Appalachian had not occurred, and despite one of the women regions of Alabama, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and later recanting, the young men endured a series West Virginia. The CCC contributed to projects of sham trials in which all but one were sentenced throughout Appalachia, including the Blue Ridge to death. Only the communist-oriented International Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia, reforestation Legal Defense came to the aid of the “Scottsboro of the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, Boys,” who soon became a national symbol and state parks such as Pine Mountain Resort State of continuing racial prejudice in America and Park in Kentucky. The TVA’s efforts aided communities a rallying point for civil rights-minded Americans. in Tennessee and North Carolina, and the Rural In appeals, the ILD successfully challenged the Electric Administration (REA) brought electricity Boys’ sentencing and the death sentences were to 288,000 rural households. either commuted or reversed, although the last of the accused did not receive parole until 1946. Equal Rights and the New Deal The Great Depression was particularly tough for Despite a concerted effort to appoint black advisors nonwhite Americans. As an African American to some New Deal programs, Franklin Roosevelt pensioner told interviewer Studs Terkel, “The did little to directly address the difficulties black
134 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY communities faced. To do so openly would provoke himself chipping in to pay pensions for able-bodied southern Democrats and put his New Deal coalition Negroes to sit around in idleness … while cotton at risk. Roosevelt not only rejected such proposals and corn crops are crying for workers.” Roosevelt as abolishing the poll tax and declaring lynching agreed to remove domestic workers and farm a federal crime, he refused to specifically target laborers from the provisions of the bill, excluding African American needs in any of his larger relief many African Americans, already laboring under and reform packages. As he explained to the the strictures of legal racial discrimination, from the national secretary of the NAACP, “I just can’t take benefits of an expanding economic safety net. that risk.” Women, too, failed to receive the full benefits In fact, even many of the programs of the New Deal of New Deal programs. On one hand, Roosevelt had made hard times more difficult. When the codes included women in key positions within his of the NRA set new pay scales, they usually took administration, including the first female Cabinet into account regional differentiation and historical secretary, Frances Perkins, and a prominently data. In the South, where African Americans had placed African American advisor in the National long suffered unequal pay, the new codes simply Youth Administration, Mary McLeod Bethune. perpetuated that inequality. The codes also exempted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a key advisor those involved in farm work and domestic labor, to the president and became a major voice for the occupations of a majority of southern black men economic and racial justice. But many New Deal and women. The AAA was equally problematic programs were built upon the assumption that as owners displaced black tenants and sharecroppers, men would serve as “breadwinners” and women many of whom were forced to return to their farms as mothers, homemakers, and consumers. New as low-paid day labor or to migrate to cities looking Deal programs aimed to help both but usually by for wage work. forcing such gendered assumptions, making it difficult for women to attain economic autonomy. Perhaps the most notorious failure of the New Deal New Deal social welfare programs tended to to aid African Americans came with the passage of funnel women into means-tested, state administered the Social Security Act. Southern politicians chafed relief programs while reserving “entitlement” at the prospect of African Americans benefiting benefits for male workers, creating a kind of two- from federally-sponsored social welfare, afraid that tiered social welfare state. And so, despite great economic security would allow black southerners to advances, the New Deal failed to challenge core escape the cycle of poverty that kept them tied to inequalities that continued to mark life in the the land as cheap, exploitable farm laborers. The United States. Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News callously warned that “The average Mississippian can’t imagine
135 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What was the economic situation in the South at the start of the Depression?
2. What were some examples of New Deal programs that specifically targeted the South?
3. What were some factors that served as obstacles to the benefits of the New Deal reaching everyone in the South?
4. Describe the Tennessee Valley Authority and its importance.
136 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
5. How did the New Deal impact Appalachia?
6. What is meant by the statement: “The Negro was born in depression.”
7. Who were the “Scottsboro Boys”?
8. In what ways did the New Deal fail to address the concerns of African Americans and women?
137 LESSON 7.2 | BOOM, BUST & RECOVERY
LESSON 7.2.14 | CLOSING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE At the start of the lesson, students looked at the specific passages and evidence from the content essential questions without much to go on. Now in the unit that provided insights into answering the that the lesson is over, students should revisit the driving questions. essential questions. This time, students should cite
PROCESS Ask students to think about these At the start of this lesson, students were questions and respond on their given two Unit 7 Essential Questions EQ Notebook Worksheets. and two Lesson 7.2 Essential Questions. As a reminder, here they are again: Now that students have spent some time with the material of this unit, they should Unit 7 Essential Questions: look back over the content covered as well • In what ways did the period as any additional information they have between 1890 and 1945 shape come across, and write down any quotes the political, social, and cultural or evidence that provide new insights into identity of the United States? the essential questions assigned for this • How did the relationship between lesson. Once they’ve finished, they should Americans and their government think about how this new information has shift during the period? impacted their thinking about the unit Lesson 7.2 Essential Questions: essential question, and write down their • In what ways can the 1920s be thoughts in their EQ Notebook. seen as both the dawn of a “New Era” in US History, and what ATTACHMENT were some of the reactions to a • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet changing culture? • What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.2.1, then again in Lesson 7.2.14. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. In what ways can the 1920s be seen as both the dawn of a “New Era” in US History, and what were some of the reactions to a changing culture? 2. What caused the Great Depression and how did America respond?
LESSON 7.2.1.
LESSON 7.2.14.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
139 LESSONUNIT 7 | 7.3 THE | AMERICANWORLD WAR EMPIRE II & BIRTH OF NEW NATION
LESSON 7.3.0 | OVERVIEW | World War II & Birth of New Order
It was World War 2 that eventually put the Great Depression to rest. It was also World War 2 that would see the United States cement itself as one of two superpowers during the majority of the second half of the 20th Century. For both of these reasons, World War 2 is an important turning point in our recounting of the history of the United States. These domestic and international impacts provide a framework for understanding the war. We’ll see how the economic, political, and social fabric of the United States was shifted by the war.
This lesson will include more military history than usual. (It’s about a war, after all.) Some of the major tactics, battles, and military innovations will be covered. Specifically, it will be important to understand that this was a war in which industry was both the benefactor and the beneficiary of American involvement in World War 2. On the
140 LESSONUNIT 7 | 7.3 THE | AMERICANWORLD WAR EMPIRE II & BIRTH OF NEW NATION
home front, activities included in lesson 7.3 will ask students to connect the events of World War 2 to the same Unit 7 Essential Questions we’ve been using for previous lessons. Students will see how the war shaped the role of government in the lives of American citizens. In some ways this involvement proved beneficial. For example, the mobilization of American labor in the name of the war effort provided many with economic opportunities they would not otherwise have had. However, it’s important to also consider those who were excluded from these benefits, such as the over 100,000 Japanese Americans who were evicted from their homes and placed in internment camps.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • In what ways did the period between 1890 and 1945 shape the political, social, and cultural identity of the United States? • How did the relationship between Americans and their government shift during the period?
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LESSON 7.3.0 | OVERVIEW | Learning Outcomes, Vocabulary, & Outline
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• World War II involved mass mobilization and near full employment, which brought the United States out of The Great Depression. • World War II birthed the nuclear arms race. • World War II left the United States and the Soviet Union as the two remaining superpowers and set the stage for the Cold War.
Lesson Esssential Questions
• What were the ways in which World War II impacted the lives of people in the United States? • What were the ways in which World War II impacted the world order?
LESSON OUTLINE
1 Opening | EQ Notebook – Lesson 3 6 Watch | Crash Course US History #36 – 2 Watch | Crash Course US History #35 – World War II Part 2 World War II Part 1 7 Activity | World War II Propaganda 3 Activity | World War 2 in Documents 8 Read | How American Industry 4 Activity | Compare and Contrast – Won World War II Female World War II Pilots 9 Read | Japanese Internment & The Tuskegee Airmen 10 Closing | EQ Notebook 5 Read | “The Death of Captain Waskow” by Ernie Pyle
142 LESSON 7.3 | WORLD WAR II & BIRTH OF NEW NATION
LESSON 7.3.1 | OPENING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE Each unit and lesson of the Crash Course United the Essential Question with evidence they have States History Course (CCUSH) is guided by an gathered throughout the unit. This provides students essential question. The Essential Question Notebook an opportunity to track their learning and to prepare (EQ Notebook) is an informal writing resource for them for future activities. To help students focus on students to track their learning and understanding the important ideas, this activity asks them to look of a concept throughout a unit. Students will be at the big ideas through the lens of the Essential given an Essential Question at the beginning of the Question. At this point, students won’t have much unit and each lesson and asked to provide a response background to bring to bear on the issue just yet. This based on prior knowledge and speculation. Students early exercise helps to bring to the fore what they will then revisit the notebook in order to answer know coming into the unit.
PROCESS Just as in the last unit, students will have questions and focus their thinking toward Essential Questions to guide their learning those topics. To begin the unit, they should during this unit. Our unit essential Questions record the new questions in their notebooks remain the same, but there are two new and jot down any initial ideas they may have questions specific to this lesson over World related to the topics discussed. War II. Students should think of these as guides to what it is they should focus on LINK for the bulk of the unit. Remind them that • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet if they ever find themselves unsure of what it is they’re supposed to be learning in a given activity, instruct them to review the
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.3.1, then again in Lesson 7.3.10. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. What were the ways in which World War II impacted the lives of people in the United States? 2. What were the ways in which World War II impacted the world order?
LESSON 7.3.1.
LESSON 7.3.10.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
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LESSON 7.3.2 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #35 World War II Part 1
PREVIEW PURPOSE In which John Green teaches you about World War In this video, students will be introduced to World II in the first of two episodes. This week, John will War II. They will come to understand the basics teach you how the United States got into the war, of American involvement in the war and the ways and just how involved America was before Congress the war would impact life in America and around declared war. John will talk a little about the military the globe. Essential people, events, tactics, and tactics involved, and he’ll get into some of the technological advancements will be presented. weaponry involved, specifically the huge amount of aerial bombing that characterized the war, and the atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask LINK students to watch the video before class. • Crash Course US History #35 – Remind students of John’s fast-talking and World War II Part 1 play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before they watch Video questions for students to answer during the video, remind them of the central ideas of their viewing. the Unit 7 Essential Questions and the Lesson 7.3 Essential Questions.
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LESSON 7.3.2 | WATCH | Key Ideas – Factual Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with students and ensure they are getting the key concepts covered in the video.
1. (2:00) In what ways is it incorrect to call SAMPLE ANSWER: The United States sponsored America isolationist during the lead up a series of arms reduction negotiations that resulted to entry into World War II? in the Washington Treaties limited the number of battleships a country could possess. The US also pursued the Good Neighbor policy with Latin America, which was based on the idea of being less intrusive in Latin American politics.
2. (2:40) In what ways was the United States SAMPLE ANSWER: The United States was isolationist isolationist during the lead up to World War II? in the sense that they were much less involved in world trade and through tariff policies. The US didn’t become involved in the war until two years after Hitler invaded Poland.
3. (4:30) What steps did America take in preparing SAMPLE ANSWER: In September 1940, Congress to enter the war? created the nation’s first peacetime military draft. By 1941, America had become the arsenal of democracy with the Lend Lease Act, which authorized military aid to countries that promised to pay back the assistance after the war. The US also froze the assets of Japan and essentially ended trade between the two nations.
4. (8:40) Which allied power did the majority SAMPLE ANSWER: The Soviets (Russians) did of fighting during the war? most of the fighting in the European theater, with losses of at least twenty million people, despite capturing Berlin.
5. (9:45) Describe the results of the two atomic SAMPLE ANSWER: The bomb dropped on Hiroshima bombs dropped on Japan. killed 70,000 people instantly, and by the end of 1945, another 70,000 had died from radiation poisoning. The Nagasaki bomb also killed 70,000
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people, with the death toll from the two bombs being greater than the number of American fatalities in the entire Pacific theater.
6. (11:00) According to John, what was the truly SAMPLE ANSWER: The truly horrible innovation of horrible innovation of World War II? World War II was bombing; especially significant was the decision to not just attack military targets.
7. (11:30) What is the shocking reality of the SAMPLE ANSWER: In World War II, perhaps 40% deaths amassed during World War II? of the 50 million people killed were civilians, which compared to World War I, had only 10% of civilian deaths. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in single acts and firebombing events.
LESSON 7.3.2 | WATCH | Conceptual Thinking Have students answer the following questions in order for them to make connections across different concepts and think more critically about the information presented in the video.
1. Was the use of atomic bombs during World War II justified and ethical?
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LESSON 7.3.3 | ACTIVITY | World War II in Documents PURPOSE This activity will give students a look at primary method of analyzing a primary source. This method sources related to three major military events during allows students to both better understand the World War II. Each is either a speech or writing from document content while also making sure that they a major political or military figure. The documents are are paying attention to important contextual details. accompanied by a chart that utilizes the SOAPSTone
PROCESS Students should be given access to both contrasting the documents, or they should the documents and the analysis tool for this participate in a discussion where they talk activity. They should begin by reading the with one another about this comparison. documents, marking the text as they go. They should then fill in the SOAPSTone chart for ATTACHMENT each document. Following the completion of • World War II in Documents the chart they should either write a summary • World War II Document Analysis Tool of their impressions, comparing and
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READING | World War II In Documents: Document 1 Pearl Harbor Day of Infamy Speech - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941)
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, live in infamy— the United States of America was I have directed that all measures be taken for suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air our defense. But always will our whole nation forces of the Empire of Japan. remember the character of the onslaught against us.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, No matter how long it may take us to overcome this at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation premeditated invasion, the American people in their with its government and its emperor looking toward righteous might will win through to absolute victory. the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had of the people when I assert that we will not only commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it the Japanese ambassador to the United States very certain that this form of treachery shall never and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State again endanger us. a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, our people, our territory, and our interests are in it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. grave danger.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii With confidence in our armed forces, with the from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was unbounding determination of our people, we will gain deliberately planned many days or even weeks the inevitable triumph — so help us God. ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive I ask that the Congress declare that since the the United States by false statements and unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, expressions of hope for continued peace. December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu...
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READING | World War II In Documents: Document 2 D-Day General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944)
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied I have full confidence in your courage, devotion Expeditionary Forces: to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes of Almighty God upon this great and noble and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere undertaking. march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.
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READING | World War II In Documents: Document 3 Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Announcing the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, Harry S. Truman (1945)
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence OF THE UNITED STATES that the Germans got the V-1’s and V-2’s late and Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one in limited quantities and even more grateful that they bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness did not get the atomic bomb at all. to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us the blast power of the British “Grand Slam” which as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history we have now won the battle of the laboratories as of warfare. we have won the other battles...
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl The United States had available the large number of Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the scientists of distinction in the many needed areas end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and a new and revolutionary increase in destruction financial resources necessary for the project and to supplement the growing power of our armed they could be devoted to it without undue impairment forces. In their present form these bombs are now of other vital war work. In the United States the in production and even more powerful forms are laboratory work and the production plants, on which in development. a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was power of the universe. The force from which the still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For sun draws its power has been loosed against those these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President who brought war to the Far East. Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists many lesser works devoted to the production of that it was theoretically possible to release atomic power. Employment during peak construction atomic energy. But no one knew any practical numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many that the Germans were working feverishly to find have worked there for two and a half years. Few a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of know what they have been producing. They see war with which they hoped to enslave the world. great quantities of material going in and they see
151 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest which has never been seen on this earth. Behind scientific gamble in history — and won. this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number that and power as they have not yet seen But the greatest marvel is not the size of the and with the fighting skill of which they are already enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the well aware. achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held … by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has I shall recommend that the Congress of the United been the capacity of industry to design and of labor States consider promptly the establishment of an to operate, the machines and methods to do things appropriate commission to control the production never done before so that the brainchild of many and use of atomic power within the United States. minds came forth in physical shape and performed I shall give further consideration and make further as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic worked under the direction of the United States power can become a powerful and forceful influence Army, which achieved a unique success in managing towards the maintenance of world peace. so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under pressure and without failure.
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that
152 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE HANDOUT | Primary Source Analysis Tool TIME Document 1 - Pearl Harbor
SPEAKER: WHO IS SPEAKING? WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S LIFE AND/OR VIEWS ON THE TOPIC?
OCCASION: WHEN WAS THIS DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT?
AUDIENCE: WHO WAS MEANT TO SEE/READ/HEAR THIS DOCUMENT? WHAT ABOUT THE AUDIENCE MIGHT INFLUENCE
PURPOSE: WHY WAS THE DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT IS THE SPEAKER TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
SUBJECT: WHAT IS THE OVERALL MAIN IDEA OF THE PIECE?
TONE: WHAT IS THE TONE OF THE PIECE? WHAT WORDS/QUOTES LET YOU KNOW THAT?
153 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE HANDOUT | Primary Source Analysis Tool TIME Document 2 - D-Day
SPEAKER: WHO IS SPEAKING? WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S LIFE AND/OR VIEWS ON THE TOPIC?
OCCASION: WHEN WAS THIS DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT?
AUDIENCE: WHO WAS MEANT TO SEE/READ/HEAR THIS DOCUMENT? WHAT ABOUT THE AUDIENCE MIGHT INFLUENCE
PURPOSE: WHY WAS THE DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT IS THE SPEAKER TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
SUBJECT: WHAT IS THE OVERALL MAIN IDEA OF THE PIECE?
TONE: WHAT IS THE TONE OF THE PIECE? WHAT WORDS/QUOTES LET YOU KNOW THAT?
154 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE HANDOUT | Primary Source Analysis Tool TIME Document 3 - Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
SPEAKER: WHO IS SPEAKING? WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S LIFE AND/OR VIEWS ON THE TOPIC?
OCCASION: WHEN WAS THIS DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT?
AUDIENCE: WHO WAS MEANT TO SEE/READ/HEAR THIS DOCUMENT? WHAT ABOUT THE AUDIENCE MIGHT INFLUENCE
PURPOSE: WHY WAS THE DOCUMENT WRITTEN? WHAT IS THE SPEAKER TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
SUBJECT: WHAT IS THE OVERALL MAIN IDEA OF THE PIECE?
TONE: WHAT IS THE TONE OF THE PIECE? WHAT WORDS/QUOTES LET YOU KNOW THAT?
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LESSON 7.3.4 | ACTIVITY | Compare and Contrast: Female World War II Pilots & The Tuskegee Airmen PURPOSE This activity is designed to give students a better groups were essential to the war effort. Students understanding of the ways in which women and should also note how the respect shown to these African Americans played significant roles in the service groups contrasted with the ways women military effort. While both the WASPs and the and African Americans were often treated in Tuskegee Airmen are very specific examples of American society. That contrast will be an important the contributions of these two large and important example of how experiences in World War II will groups, their stories will still provide students with impact postwar American ideals. an understanding of the ways in which marginalized
PROCESS Give students access to both readings. Students should also consider how this fits They should mark up the texts and make into the context of America during the period an outline of the articles as they read. discussed in Unit 7. Once they are finished, they should write a 1-2 page comparison of the experiences ATTACHMENTS of the WASPs and Tuskegee Airmen. The • Female World War II Pilots: comparison should focus on their service, The Original Fly Girls the challenges they faced, and the impact • The Tuskegee Airmen that they had.
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READING | Female World War II Pilots: The Original Fly Girls1 – Susan Stamberg
The following article is a production of National be released for combat duty overseas. The group Public Radio (NPR), written by Susan Stamberg. of female pilots was called the Women Airforce During WWII, a shortage of male pilots in the United Service Pilots — WASP for short. In 1944, during States led to the formation of a group called WASP the graduation ceremony for the last WASP training — the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Stamberg class, the commanding general of the U.S. Army reports on this relatively little-known group, and its Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, said that when struggle for national and military recognition. the program started, he wasn’t sure “whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 In 1942, the United States was faced with a severe in heavy weather.” shortage of pilots, and leaders gambled on an experimental program to help fill the void: train “Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can women to fly military aircraft so male pilots could fly as well as men,” Arnold said.
1 https://www.commonlit.org/texts/female-wwii-pilots-the-original-fly-girls
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A few more than 1,100 young women, all civilian But there was a problem. She was half an inch volunteers, flew almost every type of military shorter than the 5-foot-2-inch requirement. aircraft — including the B-26 and B-29 bombers — as part of the WASP program. They ferried “I just stood on my tiptoes,” she says. When she new planes long distances from factories to military arrived at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, bases and departure points across the country. where most of the WASP were trained, “Well, there They tested newly overhauled planes. And they were a lot of other short ones just like me, and towed targets to give ground and air gunners we laughed about how we got in.” training shooting — with live ammunition. The WASP expected to become part of the military Short, tall, slim, wide, they all came in knowing how during their service. Instead, the program was to fly. The military trained male pilots from scratch, canceled after just two years. but not the female civilian volunteers.
They weren’t granted military status until the 1970s. “They didn’t want to bring in a bunch of girls who And now, 65 years after their service, they will didn’t know how to fly an airplane,” says Katherine receive the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. Sharp Landdeck, associate professor of history Congress. Last July, President Obama signed a bill at Texas Woman’s University, who’s writing a book awarding the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal. about the WASP, tentatively called Against The ceremony will take place on Wednesday on Prevailing Winds: The Women Airforce Service Capitol Hill. Pilots and American Society. “So you have women who are getting out of high school and taking every Women with Moxie dime they had to learn how to fly so they could Margaret Phelan Taylor grew up on a farm in be a WASP.” Iowa. She was 19, had just completed two years of college and was ready for adventure in 1943 A Dangerous Job when a Life magazine cover story on the female Once when Taylor was ferrying an aircraft cross- pilots caught her eye. Her brother was training country, somewhere between Arizona and California, to be a pilot with the Army. Why not her? She asked she saw smoke in the cockpit. Taylor was trained to her father to lend her money for a pilot’s license — bail out if anything went wrong. “But the parachutes $500, a huge amount then. were way too big. They weren’t fitted to us,” she says. “The force of that air and that speed and “I told him I had to do it,” Taylor says. “And so he let everything, why that just rips stuff off you. You’d me have the money. I don’t think I ever did pay it slip right out.” back to him either.” So her plane was smoking and Taylor faced a defining moment.
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“I thought, ‘You know what? I’m not going until I see her remains to be sent home. So — and this is flame. When I see actual fire, why, then I’ll jump.’” a common story — her fellow pilots pitched in.
Was she scared? “No. I was never scared. My “They collected enough money to ship her remains husband used to say, ‘It’s pretty hard to scare you.’” home by train,” says Pohly. “And a couple of her The plane’s problem turned out to be a burned-out fellow WASP accompanied her casket.” instrument. And, because Rawlinson wasn’t considered military, But 38 female pilots did lose their lives serving their the American flag could not be draped over her country. One was 26-year-old Mabel Rawlinson coffin. Her family did it anyway. from Kalamazoo, Mich. The Program is Pulled “I’ve always known of her as the family hero,” says The head of the WASP program was Jacqueline Rawlinson’s niece, Pam Pohly, who never knew Cochran, a pioneering aviator. (After the war, she her aunt. “The one we lost too soon, the one that became the first woman to break the sound barrier.) everyone loved and wished were still around.” Cochran’s goal was to train thousands of women to fly for the Army, not just a few dozen integrated Rawlinson was stationed at Camp Davis in North into the men’s program. She wanted a separate Carolina. She was coming back from a night training women’s organization and believed militarization exercise with her male instructor when the plane would follow if the program was a success. And crashed. Marion Hanrahan, also a WASP at Camp it was. The women’s safety records were comparable Davis, wrote an eyewitness account: and sometimes even better than their male counterparts doing the same jobs. I knew Mabel very well. We were both scheduled to check out on night flight in the A-24. My time But in 1944, historian Landdeck says, the program preceded hers, but she offered to go first because came under threat. “It was a very controversial time I hadn’t had dinner yet. We were in the dining room for women flying aircraft. There was a debate about and heard the siren that indicated a crash. We ran whether they were needed any longer,” Landdeck says. out onto the field. We saw the front of her plane engulfed in fire, and we could hear Mabel screaming. By the summer of 1944, the war seemed to be It was a nightmare. ending. Flight training programs were closing down, which meant that male civilian instructors were It’s believed that Rawlinson’s hatch malfunctioned, losing their jobs. Fearing the draft and being put into and she couldn’t get out. The other pilot was the ground Army, they lobbied for the women’s jobs. thrown from the plane and suffered serious injuries. Because Rawlinson was a civilian, the military “It was unacceptable to have women replacing was not required to pay for her funeral or pay for men. They could release men for duty — that
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was patriotic — but they couldn’t replace men,” “We were children of the Depression. It was root Landdeck says. hog or die. You had to take care of yourself. Nobody owed us anything,” she says. And so, Arnold announced the program would disband by December 1944, but those who were The WASP kept in touch for a while. They even still in training could finish. The Lost Last Class, formed a reunion group after the war. But that didn’t as it was dubbed, graduated, but served only 2 ½ last long. Then, in the 1960s, they began to find weeks before being sent home on Dec. 20, along each other again. They had reunions. They started with all the other WASP. talking about pushing for military status. And then something happened in 1976 that riled the whole Lillian Yonally served her country for more than WASP’s nest. a year as a WASP. When she was dismissed from her base in California, there was no ceremony. “The Air Force comes out and says that they are “Not a darn thing. It was told to us that we would going to admit women to their flying program,” be leaving the base. And we hopped airplanes Landdeck says. An Air Force statement says “it’s to get back home.” Home for Yonally was across the first time that the Air Force has allowed the country in Massachusetts. women to fly their aircraft.”
That was a familiar story, but Landdeck says there Thirty years later, that comment still upsets former were some bases that did throw parties or had full WASP Yonally. reviews for their departing WASP. “It was impossible for anybody to say that. That Riling the Wasp’s Nest wasn’t true. We were the first ones,” Yonally says. The women went on with their lives. The fact that the WASP were forgotten by their own A few of them got piloting jobs after the war, but Air Force united the women. They lobbied Congress not with any of the major airlines. And some of them to be militarized. And they persuaded Sen. Barry stayed in the air as airline stewardesses. In those Goldwater to help. He ferried planes during the war, days, no major commercial airline would hire these just as the WASP did. And then, in 1977, the WASP experienced women as pilots. Like many World War were finally granted military status. II veterans, most WASP never talked about their experiences. Over the years it has been reported that the WASP records were sealed, stamped classified and And according to Taylor, they never expected unavailable to historians who wrote histories about anything either. WWII. According to archivists at the National Archives, military records containing reports about
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the WASP were treated no differently from other records from the war, which generally meant the WASP records weren’t open to researchers for 30 years. But unlike other stories from the war, the WASP story was rarely told or reported until the 1970s.
“It’s hard to understand that they would be forgotten and difficult to believe that they would be left out of those histories. But even they forgot themselves for a while,” Landdeck says.
In 1992, to preserve their history, the WASP designated Texas Woman’s University in Denton as their official archives.
Yonally is proud to be honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, 65 years after her service, but she’s sad that fewer than 300 of her 1,100 fellow WASP are alive to receive it.
“I’m sorry that so many girls have passed on. It’s nice the families will receive it, but it doesn’t make up for the gals who knew what they did and weren’t honored that way,” Yonally says.
Taylor is also excited about the medal. She served her country out of loyalty, she says. That was certainly part of it. But the other reason? “I did it for the fun. I was a young girl and everybody had left and it was wartime. You didn’t want to get stuck in a hole in Iowa; you wanted to see what was going on.”
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READING | Tuskegee Airmen – Jessica McBirney (2017)
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African- actually occurred in the 1940s in the U.S. military, American fighter pilots and bomber pilots, including thanks to the hard work of a group known as the their support crew, who flew for the U.S. Army Tuskegee Airmen. Air Forces in World War II. Despite facing racial discrimination, their missions were some of the Tuskegee Airmen: most successful in the American military. An Early Civil Rights Success The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African As you read, identify the challenges faced by the American fighter pilots and bomber pilots, including Tuskegee Airmen and then analyze the impact that their support crew, who trained at the Tuskegee this group had on race relations in America. Air Fields in Alabama during World War II. They became the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th When most people think of the Civil Rights Bombardment Group in the U.S. Army Air Forces at Movement and the end of legalized segregation the height of the war, and their missions were some in the U.S., they think of the 1960s. However, of the most successful in the American military. the movement did not start then, and it was not confined to the streets and diners in the South. During World War I, several decades earlier, African One of the earliest successes for racial equality Americans were denied the ability to become fighter
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pilots and help the war effort. This sparked a growing Combat-Ready controversy in the African American community. In By 1943, in the middle of the U.S.’s involvement April of 1939, after a 20-year battle, Congress finally in World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen were ready allocated funds to set up a special division to train for combat. In one of their earliest missions, African American pilots to fly fighter planes. a group was assigned to attack a strategically located island in the Mediterranean Sea, near Most people were highly skeptical of the new unit. Italy. They successfully got over 1,000 Italian troops Racism was still very present in and out of the to surrender and were instrumental in the capture military, and many Army officials did not believe of the island. African Americans had the skills or the intelligence to learn everything a pilot needs to know. In later assignments, they became most famous for their ability to escort larger bomber planes. The Training for Battle airmen became known as Red Tails, or Red Tailed Over 400 African Americans enlisted to be in the Angels, because of the distinctive red markings on new division. The entrance requirements were very the tails of their small fighter planes. Soon the strict, including high experience requirements and sight of a swarm of Red Tailed escort planes kept a series of IQ and other intelligence tests. Because enemy fighters from trying to attack the bomber of discriminatory policies in the Army, all the officers planes they protected. in charge of the new recruits were white. The 332nd Fighter Group became one of the most The practical training took place at the Tuskegee successful squadrons of fighter planes in the Army. Air Fields in Alabama, and the trainees also took For example, in March of 1945, they destroyed three courses at Tuskegee University nearby. They quickly German fighter jets and damaged five more without proved their personal drive to learn and their skills losing any of their own planes to the enemy. as pilots. Their proficiency struck blows at previous race-based policies in the military; they soon Continuim Racism needed to undergo highly advanced training that The 477th Bombardment Group faced more challenges, African Americans had previously been barred as one of their early commanders was an overt from receiving. racial segregationist. The pilots wanted to be treated as well as their white counterparts, which included The Tuskegee Air program gained national attention having access to an officer’s club on their training when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt paid them a visit base in Michigan. Their commander would not allow in 1941. She rode as a passenger of pilot C. Alfred them to enter. “Chief” Anderson, who had become an unofficial leader and tutor in the group because of his skills. After two transfers to two different states and After the trip, she remarked, “Well, you can fly all right.” continuing discrimination, a large group of the pilots
163 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY forced their way into an officer’s club in Indiana, and over 100 of them were arrested for disobeying orders. The charges were soon dropped because they were so unfair, but the events demonstrated the severe racism African American military personnel continued to face even though they were so successful.
Legacy and the End of Segregation At the end of World War II the Tuskegee Airmen were well-known for being some of the best pilots in the military. The escort groups had among the lowest loss records in the Army Air Forces. Their success was due to their extensive pre-war experience and their personal strength and drive during training and combat.
In the years after the war, the U.S. Air Force became a separate entity from the Army, but many of its white squadrons were at least somewhat under- qualified for the tasks they needed to perform. However, they could not hire any experienced black airmen because of segregation policies. This eventually led President Truman to sign Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which called for equal treatment policies and effectively ended segregation in the military. This was one of the earliest steps to ending segregation across the country; it would not have been possible without the hard work and expertise of the Tuskegee Airmen.
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LESSON 7.3.5 | READ | “The Death of Captain Waskow” – Ernie Pyle
PURPOSE Ernie Pyle was the most famous American journalist reactions to the deaths of several compatriots, covering World War II in Europe. Even today, including a beloved officer. Later, World War II his pieces from the front lines evoke countless would take Ernie Pyle’s life. Stationed as a war emotions and images of Americans in physical correspondent near Okinawa, Japan, Pyle was shot and emotional combat on both the European and and killed by a Japanese machine gunner a few Pacific fronts. This short piece recounts soldiers’ months before his 45th birthday.
PROCESS Share the attached reading with students. like this? Do you think this human Remind them that they should read actively, retelling of the experience of war marking the text as they go. After reading, is important? Should journalists students should write a short reflection, just stick to the facts instead? addressing the following questions. • What do you think writings like • What were some of your initial this one can tell us about the reactions to the content of the importance of good journalism, piece? generally? • What are some of the examples of imagery that you think make Pyle’s ATTACHMENT piece effective? • “The Death of Captain Waskow” • How do you think people on the homefront might view a piece
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HANDOUT | “The Death of Captain Waskow” – Ernie Pyle
AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944
In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.
“After my own father, he came next,” a sergeant told me. their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly “He always looked after us,” a soldier said. from the other side, bobbing up and down as the “He’d go to bat for us every time.” mule walked.
“I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair,” The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside another one said. dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help. was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley The first one came early in the morning. They slid below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight him down from the mule and stood him on his feet as they walked. for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing Dead men had been coming down the mountain all there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, alongside the road.
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I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small say something in finality to him, and to themselves. in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being I stood close by and I could hear. alive, and you don’t ask silly questions. One soldier came and looked down, and he said We left him there beside the road, that first one, and out loud, “God damn it.” That’s all he said, and then we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water he walked away. Another one came. He said, cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch “God damn it to hell anyway.” He looked down for of mules. a few last moments, and then he turned and left.
Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was for four days, and then nobody said anything more hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the down into the dead captain’s face, and then he shadow of the low stone wall. spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: “I’m sorry, old man.” Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, moonlight, in the road where the trail came down not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said: off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. “This one is Captain Waskow,” one “I sure am sorry, sir.” of them said quietly. Then the first man squatted down, and he reached Two men unlashed his body from the mule and down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. and looking intently into the dead face, and he never Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, uttered a sound all the time he sat there. alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows And finally he put the hand down, and then reached until somebody else comes after them. up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered The unburdened mules moved off to their olive edges of his uniform around the wound. And then orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant he got up and walked away down the road in the to leave. They stood around, and gradually one moonlight, all alone. by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to
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After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.
Source: Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches, edited by David Nichols, pp. 195-97. Accessed via the Indiana University Media School. Image of Ernie Pyle is in Public Domain.
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LESSON 7.3.6 | WATCH | Crash Course US History #36 World War II Part 2 PREVIEW In which John Green teaches you about World War who were interred in camps. In short, World War 2, as it was lived on the home front. You’ll learn II changed America’s role in the world, changed about how the war changed the country as a whole, American life at home, and eventually spawned the and changed how Americans thought about their History Channel. country. John talks about the government control of war production, and how the war probably PURPOSE helped to end the Great Depression. A broader This episode of Crash Course US History provides implementation of the income tax, the growth a sense of how World War 2 impacted the lives of large corporations, and the development of the of Americans back home. Students will better West Coast as a manufacturing center were also understand the economic, political, cultural, and social results of the war. The war positively changed the shifts that the war brought to citizens of the United roles of women and African Americans, but it States. It’s these changes that cement World War II was pretty terrible for the Japanese Americans as an important turning point in World and US History.
PROCESS As with all of the videos in the course, ask LINK students to watch the video before class. • Crash Course US History #36 – Remind students of John’s fast-talking and World War II Part 2 play the video with captions. Pause and rewind when necessary. Before they watch Video questions for students to answer during their viewing. the video, remind them of the central ideas of the Unit 7 Essential Questions and the Lesson 7.3 Essential Questions.
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LESSON 7.3.6 | READ | Key Ideas – Factual Answer the following questions as you read the primary-source accounts.
1. (:50) In what ways was America a different SAMPLE ANSWER: World War II strengthened the country by the end of World War II? federal government and brought about even more governmental intervention and control than had been seen during World War I. There was massive rationing of food and supplies, entire industries were completely taken over by the government, and the feds fixed wages, rent, prices, and production quotas. Unemployment dropped and production was high. The US GNP rose from $91 Billion to $214 Billion during the war.
2. (2:00) How was the US Gross National Product SAMPLE ANSWER: It’s assumed that the GNP grew able to increase so dramatically? primarily due to federal spending with government expenditures doubling the amount it had been in the previous 150 years combined. Before WWII, only 4 million Americans paid federal income taxes, but following it, 40 million Americans paid.
3. (3:10) What areas of the country saw growth and SAMPLE ANSWER: Cities benefitted the most, benefitted from the war production? Which areas especially those centered around industrial production suffered? sites - notably Seattle, which became a shipping and aircraft-manufacturing hub, and Los Angeles, which became the second largest manufacturing center in the country. Because most industrialization happened in cities, the south suffered the most due to having only two cities with more than half million people.
4. (4:00) What impact did the war have on women? SAMPLE ANSWER: Women made up a third of the civilian labor force in addition to the 350,000 who served in the military. Additionally, married women in their thirties outnumbered single women in the
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workforce. This would set in motion a radical shift in gender roles and employment expectations in the coming decades following the war.
5. (5:45) What were FDR’s four freedoms? SAMPLE ANSWER: FDR’s four freedoms were: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
6. (6:30) What was the Servicemen’s SAMPLE ANSWER: Also known as the GI Bill, the Readjustment Act? Servicemen’s Readjustment Act attempted to prevent widespread unemployment for returning soldiers. By 1946, more than a million former soldiers were enrolled in college and almost 4 million received assistance with mortgages, which spurred a post-war housing boom.
7. (7:35) How did the war reshape the way SAMPLE ANSWER: Because we had fought against Americans thought of themselves? Nazism, Americans saw themselves as opposite of their beliefs: While the Nazis were racists, Americanism would mean diversity, tolerance, and equality for all. FDR claimed that to be an American was a “matter of mind and heart,” not “a matter of race and ancestry.”
8. (8:30) Describe race relations during the times SAMPLE ANSWER: The war years saw a dramatic before and after the war. increase in immigration from Mexico under the Bracero Program, which lasted until 1964. Roughly 500,000 Mexican-American men and women served in the armed forces during the war, as did 25,000 American Indians. However, because Indian reservations were mostly rural, they did not benefit from wartime prosperity. Asian-Americans suffered horrible racism, especially Japanese-Americans. African-Americans engaged in the Double V campaign which sought victory over the Axis powers abroad and victory over racism domestically.
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9. (9:10) What is Executive Order 9066? SAMPLE ANSWER: Executive Order 9066 expelled all persons of Japanese descent from the west coast. With 70% of Japanese-Americans living in California, more than 100,000 of them were sent to internment camps where they lived in makeshift barracks.
10. (12:00) How did America position itself as the SAMPLE ANSWER: The dollar, backed by gold, global economic leader following the war? replaced the British pound as the main currency in international trade and commerce. The US became the financial leader in the global capitalist order and established the World Bank to help rebuild Europe while also helping developing countries to stabilize their currencies.
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LESSON 7.3.7 | ACTIVITY | World War II Propaganda PURPOSE This activity is designed to give students a sense inspiring sentimental and patriotic feelings toward of the role of propaganda in building nationalism the war. Among the ideas that students should see and a sustainable war effort for World War 2. being conveyed are notions of patriotism, duty, fear, This will be accomplished through an analysis guilt, ideas of femininity and masculinity, and the of several propaganda posters from the war. The depiction of the brutality of the “other”. posters demonstrate the power of imagery in
PROCESS For this assignment students will be ATTACHMENTS viewing propaganda posters from World • World War II Propaganda Analysis War 2. Students should use these sources • World War II Propaganda Analysis Tool to complete the World War 2 Propaganda Analysis Chart. When they are done, they should be ready to discuss their findings in class.
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HANDOUT | World War II Propaganda Examples1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War II Propaganda Examples1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War II Propaganda Examples1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War II Propaganda Examples1
1 *all posters are in public domain
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HANDOUT | World War II Propaganda
SOURCE WHAT ARE YOUR GENERAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE SOURCE? WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN THAT ADDRESS ANY OF THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS LESSON OR UNIT?
POSTER #1
POSTER #2
POSTER #3
POSTER #4
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LESSON 7.3.8 | READ | How American Industry Won World War II PURPOSE The impact of World War 2 on the economy and that it’s this increased economic activity that pulled the mobilization of the economy on World War 2 is the US from the Great Depression for good and difficult to overstate. This article provides students provided a foundation upon which the booming with details about how industry in the United States postwar economy would be constructed. powered the war effort. It’s important to remember
PROCESS Make the attached article, “How American ATTACHMENT Industry Won World War II,” available to • How American Industry students. As usual, students should read Won World War II actively by marking up the text and taking notes. They should also be sure to answer the questions at the end of the document.
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READING | How American Industry Won World War II1 – Mike Kubic (2016)
In this article, Mike Kubic, a former correspondent Yet by the end of the war, the U.S. produced two- of Newsweek, discusses the role of industry in thirds of the weapons and equipment used by the the United States in World War II.The demands of Allies (primarily the U.S., Great Britain, and the participating in the second World War revitalized Soviet Union) to defeat the Axis of Germany, Japan American industry and made the United States and Italy. In 1945, Joseph Stalin, the dictator of a global leader in production. The enhanced warships the Soviet Union (who would become, after the war, and aircrafts provided by the United States were a major U.S. adversary) publicly acknowledged crucial to securing victory for the Allied forces. As you that “Without American production, [the Allies] read, take notes on the impact of the war and could never have won the war.” its demands on American life, in terms of both individuals and institutions. This Herculean achievement was made possible by the total mobilization of American industry, In Freedom’s Forge, an in-depth account of the role the country’s labor force of 54 million, and the American industry played in World War II, Arthur genius of thousands of military and civilian Herman tells a story that illustrates the abysmal engineers, scientists and executives. Many of the condition of the U.S. military at the onset of that civilian volunteers were given military ranks global conflict. In the summer of 1939, mere weeks and uniforms, and some, who were independently before Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Poland, Brigadier wealthy, toiled for Uncle Sam for $1.00 a year. General George Patton—who would go on to become a legendary wartime commander—took charge of During America’s four years of involvement in the a unit with 325 tanks that needed certain nuts and war, these members of our “Greatest Generation” bolts to keep them working. Patton tried, without put 324,000 military aircrafts in the air, launched success, to order the hardware from the Army 6,771 large ships (including 349 destroyers), and quartermaster. In the end, he ordered the nuts and supplied the Allied ground forces with 2.5 million bolts from a Sears catalogue and paid for them out tanks, trucks, and jeeps; 2.7 million machine guns; of his own pocket. and 250,000 pieces of artillery. Three American products exemplified the nation’s decisive On the eve of the most cataclysmic war in history, contribution to the military triumph of the Allies: the American army was so short of equipment that it used borrowed Good Humor trucks as make- I. LIBERTY SHIPS believe tanks in military maneuvers. As an island nation, Britain required more than a million tons of imported material each week
1 https://www.commonlit.org/texts/how-american-industry-won-world-war-ii
180 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY to survive and fight throughout the war. Hitler’s in England, similar ships took several months each Germany, which had the world’s greatest fleet to build while, In the U.S., each was completed on of modern submarines, attacked the convoys of the average in less than six weeks. As many as 14 England-bound merchant ships ferociously and Liberty ships were launched each day, and they sank hundreds of them in an attempt to cut off quickly became the beasts of burden of American the British lifeline. aid. By the end of the war, they had transported a total Even before the U.S. entered the war in December of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $659 billion today) 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came worth of arms and food supplies, $31.4 billion of to Britain’s aid. In March, he and British Prime which went to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Minister Winston Churchill agreed on a lend-lease Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, arrangement under which the U.S. would lend and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies. Further, the Royal Navy 50 WWI destroyers to protect the Liberty ships stayed in service for a long time. the convoys and the U.S. was given the use of British military bases in Bermuda, Newfoundland, Although many were sunk by the German U-boats, and the West Indies. But the biggest help came 2,400 survived the war, and hundreds of them were when American shipbuilders set out to shore up used to carry American GIs to the European bases Britain’s supply line by building replacements for the of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and torpedoed cargo ships. to bring wartime refugees to the U.S. By 1959, 16 of them were converted by the U.S. Navy into radar Using a basic British design, American experts picket ships. created a vessel that was oil-fired (rather than coal- fired), so that it could be refueled at sea; simplified II. B-29, THE FLYING SUPERFORTRESS its production by using welding instead of rivets; Nazi Germany started WWII as well prepared for and enlarged its cargo capacity so that it could carry battle in the skies as it was on the seas. Hitler’s ten thousand tons of material. Essentially a floating Luftwaffe had tested its doctrines and aircraft boxcar, each Liberty ship could deliver everything in the Spanish Civil War, and by 1939, it had from tanks and bombers to wheat and corn. Most tens of thousands of the most sophisticated and importantly, it could be mass-produced in record technologically advanced military aircraft and well- time and numbers, in 18 U.S. shipyards—mainly in trained and experienced pilots. In 1940, as part of Baltimore, Richmond, and Portland, Maine—where its blitzkrieg, Germany sent 1,380 heavy bombers to the keels for the 2,710 Liberty ships were laid. wreak ruin and destruction in England.
The Liberty ships were nothing to look at: President By contrast, the U.S. Army Air Force (later renamed Roosevelt, who launched the first of them in the U.S. Air Force) in 1940 had a total 1771 combat September 1941, called them “dreadful looking.” But aircraft, only 46 of which were heavy bombers. But,
181 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY spurred by the need to prepare for war and British the plane’s 40,000 parts and shipped them to plants orders for $1.2 billion worth of warplanes, American in Kansas, Georgia, Nebraska, and Washington. airplane manufacturers developed a new system of mass production. Assembled by 1,500 workers—including hundreds of women, known as “Rosies the Riveters”— By adopting the assembly line methods of the on six separate assembly lines, the enormous plane automobile industry, organizing in-time parts was at first pronounced to have “more bugs than deliveries, and launching three shifts a day, the Entomology Department of the Smithsonian American aviation rose from the 41st to the top- Museum.” But after 900 engineering changes producing industry of the U.S. within two years. it became the most formidable and long-distance projection of America’s armed might. In 1944, each American airplane factory worker more than doubled the output of his/her German Almost 100 feet long, weighing 58 tons, and counterpart and quadrupled the output of his/ powered by four engines, it climbed higher and her Japanese counterpart, and American industry faster than most fighter planes, and cruised for was moving a war plane on the runway every five 5,330 miles—the distance from New York to San minutes. By the end of 1941, the manufacturing of Francisco and back. Bristling with machine guns U.S. combat aircraft had shot up to 8,395; it nearly and capable of delivering 20,000 pounds of explosives, tripled a year later, to 24,669; and by the end of the the Superfortress was primarily used for major air war, America was producing 74,564 war planes raids on very distant targets. a year—15,057 of which were heavy bombers. One of these raids, carried out by 334 B-29s, took Nothing, however, approached the feat of place in March 1945. It destroyed 16 square miles constructing the B-29, the most advanced, expensive, of Tokyo and killed 83,000 people. It was the most and devastating flying warplane of the war. apocalyptic air attack of the war until the B−29s dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In design since 1938, the plane was described by Herman as “the most massive project in the III. THE MANHATTAN PROJECT history of aeronautics.” Later known as the “Flying The A-bomb development began modestly in 1939 Superfortress,” the B-29 was the brainchild as a U.S.-British top-secret project, but it grew of Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly solo to an effort involving hundreds of the world’s best from New York to Paris. It had five principal scientists and industrial leaders and more than manufacturers (Boeing, North American, Bell 130,000 workers in the U.S., Britain, and Canada. Aircraft, Wright Aeronautics, and GM’s Fisher The so-called “Manhattan Project” cost nearly $26 Body) and 1,400 subcontractors who manufactured billion in today’s dollars.
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Over 90 percent of the expenditures went to the On September 2, less than a month after the production of fission material and to research and Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered, effectively testing facilities at 30 sites in the U.S. (mainly Oak ending World War II. Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, N.M., Argonne, Ill. and As surprising as it may be, Freedom’s Forge includes Hanford, Wash.), Britain, and Canada. The actual a statistic that puts the civilian contribution to the cost of the development and production of the first WWII victory in a rarely noted context: “The number two A-bombs was less than 10 percent of the total. of workers, male and female, who were killed or injured in the U.S. industries in 1942-43 exceeded President Harry S. Truman authorized the use of the number of Americans killed or wounded in the atomic weapons only three months after the uniform, by a factor of twenty to one.” German defeat in Europe, after Japan rejected the Allies’ offer issued on July 26, 1945 at the Potsdam conference. The proclamation outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan and warned that, were it not accepted, Japan would face “prompt and utter destruction.”
As Japan continued fighting and the U.S. faced the prospect of 150,000 GI casualties in the invasion of the Japanese islands, on August 6, a B-29 dropped an A-bomb on the industrial city of Hiroshima.
Sixteen hours later, President Truman called again for Japan’s surrender and warned the Japanese that otherwise they had to “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
When the Japanese government still did not respond, on August 9, another B-29 dropped a second A- bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
The two bombings killed at least 129,000 people in total.
183 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. How did American industry change from the beginning of the war to its end?
2. What were some of the important impacts of the following? a. Liberty Ships b. B-29 Bombers c. Manhattan Project
3. In what ways do these projects display the good and the bad of industry at war? (Think about what each was used for; look at the casualties.)
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LESSON 7.3.9 | READ | Japanese Internment
PURPOSE During World War 2, President Franklin Roosevelt to reflect upon the ways in which war and fear authorized the removal of Japanese Americans from impact how people live out the values they profess. their communities and their internment in camps The American government acknowledged that it on federal lands. These camps would be imprison was wrong in the way it applied its values in this over 100,000 people guilty of nothing other than instance and, in 1988, it attempted to make up for their heritage. Understanding this event through some of the damage done by paying out $20,000 in the attached article will better allow students reparations to survivors of internment.
PROCESS Make the attached article on Japanese ATTACHMENT Internment available to students. As usual, • Japanese Internment students should read actively by marking up the text and taking notes. They should also be sure to answer the questions at the end of the document.
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READING | Japanese Internment1
Unfounded fears that Japanese American citizens might sabotage the war effort led Franklin Delano Roosevelt to order that all Americans of Japanese descent be forced into internment camps.
Overview • President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 resulted in the relocation of 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast into internment camps during the Second Posters ordered Japanese American citizens to report for World War. internment. Image courtesy National Archives. • Japanese Americans sold their businesses and houses for a fraction of their value before being than three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl sent to the camps. In the process, they lost their Harbor, amid concerns that Japanese American livelihoods and much of their life savings. citizens might pose a threat to national security. • In Korematsu v. United States (1944) the These concerns were driven by public hysteria Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality grounded in racism and false reports of sabotage of internment. In 1988, the United States and collaboration with the enemy. issued an official apology for internment and compensated survivors. Under the Executive Order, some 112,000 Japanese Americans—79,000 of whom were American Executive Order 9066 citizens—were removed from the West Coast and In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt placed into ten internment camps located in remote issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the areas. Japanese Americans were given only a few Secretary of War to declare certain areas within days’ notice to report for internment, and many had the United State as military zones, and to restrict to sell their homes and businesses for much less access to those areas on the grounds of wartime than they were worth. In so doing, they lost much of military necessity. The president’s order came less what they had accrued in the course of their lives.2
1 https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-us-history/period-7/apush-us-wwii/a/japanese-internment 2 On internment, see Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and The Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright Pub- lishing, 2013), 339; Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, Harry H.L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans, from Relocation to Redress (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991); Wendy L. Ng, Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002).
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Map of Japanese internment camps, 1941-1945 Japanese Americans were ordered to leave the “Exclusion Area” on the West Coast of the United States and to move to remote internment camps. Map courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The camps—like the one at Manzanar, California, located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains— Korematsu v. United States (1944) were surrounded by fences, barbed wire, guard Fred Korematsu was an American-born twenty- towers, searchlights and machine guns. Families three-year-old welder of Japanese descent living incarcerated in the camps lived in uninsulated in the San Francisco Bay area. In May 1942, he cabins or converted stables. They occupied their was arrested for failing to comply with the order for enforced idleness by organizing schools and camp Japanese Americans to report to internment camps.4 newspapers, by running barber or beauty shops, With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, and more. A small number were cleared for work Korematsu sued on the grounds that as an American outside the camps.3 citizen he had a right to live where he pleased.5
3 See David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 754. 4 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 756. 5 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 757.
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But in a 6-3 decision in Korematsu v. United States The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 provided financial the Supreme Court ruled that interning Japanese redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee Americans during the war for purposes of “military from the camps. In 2001, Congress made the ten necessity” was constitutional. internment sites historical landmarks, asserting In his dissenting opinion in Korematsu, Justice Frank that they “will forever stand as reminders that this Murphy asserted that the internment program nation failed in its most sacred duty to protect “goes over ‘the very brink of constitutional power’ its citizens against prejudice, greed, and political and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.” He added: expediency.”9 “I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree Article written by John Louis Recchiuti. This article is has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.” 6 In 1984, a federal court voided Korematsu’s conviction, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on Fred Korematsu.7
Aftermath and redress In the aftermath of the wartime internment, young Japanese Americans who had been interned went on to become among the best educated Americans, earning salaries more than a third above the national average.8
6 “Abyss of racism . . .” quoted in Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 335. “I dissent . . .” quoted in Otis Stephens and John Scheb, American Constitutional Law, v. 1 (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008), 224. 7 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 759. 8 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 760. 9 William Yoshino and John Tateishi, “The Japanese American Incarceration: The Journey to Redress,” excerpted from Human Rights, American Bar Association, Spring 2000.
188 CRASH COURSE | US HISTORY NAME COURSE WORKSHEET | Questions TIME
1. What were the consequences of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 for Japanese Americans?
2. What would you do if you and your family were suddenly told that you had to leave your home and jobs to live in an internment camp?
3. What lessons can we learn from the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War that we can apply to today’s world? How can we make sure that such actions against an entire class of people never happen again?
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LESSON 7.3.10 | CLOSING | EQ Notebook
PURPOSE At the start of the lesson, students looked at the specific passages and evidence from the content in essential questions without much to go on. Now the unit that provided insights into answering the that the lesson is over, students should revisit the driving questions. essential questions. This time, students should cite
PROCESS At the start of this lesson, students were Ask students to think about these questions given two Unit 7 Essential Questions and two and respond on their EQ Notebook Lesson 7.3 Essential Questions. As a reminder, Worksheets. here they are again: Now that students have spent some time Unit 7 Essential Questions: with the material of this unit, they should • In what ways did the period look back over the content covered as well between 1890 and 1945 shape as any additional information they have the political, social, and cultural come across, and write down any quotes identity of the United States? or evidence that provide new insights into • How did the relationship between the essential questions assigned for this Americans and their government lesson. Once they’ve finished, they should shift during the period? think about how this new information has Lesson 7.3 Essential Questions: impacted their thinking about the unit • What were the ways in which essential question, and write down their World War II impacted the lives thoughts in their EQ Notebook. of people in the United States? • What were the ways in which ATTACHMENTS World War II impacted the world • The EQ Unit 7 Notebook Worksheet order?
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UNIT 7 | EQ Notebook Worksheet Answer the Essential Questions in Lesson 7.3.1, then again in Lesson 7.3.10. In your answer, be sure to include ideas such as historical context and how themes through history change over time. Use specific examples to support your claims or ideas.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS 1. What were the ways in which World War II impacted the lives of people in the United States? 2. What were the ways in which World War II impacted the world order?
LESSON 7.3.1.
LESSON 7.3.10.
HOW HAS YOUR THINKING CHANGED?
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