Primary Sources by Chapter:
The Americans, Reconstruction to the 21st Century
Back to Averre.com

Before:
“It’s a long John”: Traditional African-American Work Songs
“Run Old Jeremiah”: Echoes of the Ring Shout
“Trouble So Hard”: Singing of Slavery and Freedom


Chapter 5: Frontier
Primary Sources:
Cross of Gold Speech
Political Cartoons Election 1896
Rural Life 1870s
Rural life; People were frugal 1880s
Rural Life: Home Remedies
Rural Life: Shaken Loose and Moving in the Panic of 93
Wizard of Oz; parable on Populism
Mark Twain, travels by Stagecoach
Murder of Wild Bill Hickock (newspaper)

Chapter 6: Railroads, Management and Labor
Primary Sources: 19th Century Child Labor
Sweatshop work
Survivor's accounts of Triangle Fire
Carnegie: The Gospel Of Wealth
Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid Rob a Train
Web Sources:
19th Century Child Labor in America
Story of a Sweatshop Girl (immigrant to NY)
Conductor on a Streetcar
Chicago Strike; a teamster
“For the Further Benefit of Our People”: George Pullman Answers His Strikers
Are Sleeping Cars Protected by the Constitution? Mr. Dooley on the Pullman Strike
(Coal) Miner's Story
The Triangle Factory Fire
Henry George: Progress and Poverty (complete text)
Hobo, 1894 Hard Times In America
Death of Garfield, 1881
Carnegie Speaks: A Recording of the Gospel of Wealth
The Gospel According to Andrew: Carnegie’s Hymn to Wealth
Russell Conwell Explains Why Diamonds Are a Man’s Best Friend

Chapter 7: Immigration & Urbanization
Primary Sources: Ethnic America
Mr. Paul's Story of NYC
Leaving Home for the Promised Land, 1894
Patent Leather Shoes
Etiquette for the Ballroom 1880
Calling Card Etiquette
“Trust in Poverty”: Lampooning the Trusts
The Great Chicago Fire
Death of a Child, 1890 (City Life)
Mark Twain satirizes "A Telephonic Conversation"
Keep Off the Grass!: Coxey’s Army Invades the Nation’s Capital
Websources:
Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfulls

Ch 8: Life At The Turn Of The Century
Segregation
Education
Mass Cutlure
WebSource:

Vaudeville
1898-1910 footage
part 2
Shaw & Lee
Who's On First?
Two 10s for a 5
WC Fields juggles
Harpo's Mirror Scene/Lucy
“I Have a Thirst that Could Sink a Ship!”: Early Vaudeville
“I’m A Gizzard”: The Vaudeville Comedy of Weber and Fields
Gibson girls.
Corbett Knocks Out Sullivan, 1892
Health & Health Care at the Turn of the Century
America's First Automobile Race, 1895
19th Century Social Dances
19th Century House
Housework in late 19th Century
Sidewalk Manners, 1905
The language of Flowers, 1907
How to Propose Marriage, 1880
Memory of Old Crank Phones and the Operator
"Information Please"- an account of the first telephones
Birth of the Hollywood Cowboy, 1911
Sinking of the Titanic, 1912
“I Seen My Opportunities and I Took ’Em.”: An Old-Time Pol Preaches Honest Graft
Eye on the East: Labor Calls for Ban on Chinese Immigration -S.F. building trades council
A Clear and Present Danger: The Chinese Exclusion Act
The “One Best Way” to Wash: A Home Economist Explains

Ch 9: The Progressive Era
One Woman's Encounter with Reformers
The Jungle- Whole text, by chapters
Plessy v. Fergusen
“Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are”: Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech
Oh Dear, What can the Matter Be? (audio) Suffragists
Black People's Day Montage, 1:44 (Real Audio)
Who Was Jim Crow? About minstrel 1:36
Missed Manners: Wilson Lectures a Black Leader 1914
American Variety Stage
How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis- a slideshow
Eyewitness:
The Roosevelts Move Into The White House, 1901
Recollection of a 1902 lynching in Florida
Riding a Rural Free Delivery Route, 1903
Wright Bros First Flight, 1903
The Gibson Girl- (Ideal Woman of early 1900s)
San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
Remembering the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot
Henry Ford's Assembly Line, 1908
Poisonous Occupations in Illinois- physician on dangerous trades
How Many Socialists Does It Take To Screw in a Light Bulb?: Finding Humor and Pathos in Class Struggle 1911
Hear Wilson’s Speech “On Labor”
Upton Sinclair Hits His Readers in the Stomach
Hear Taft’s Speech “On Popular Unrest”
Debs Attacks “the Monstrous System” of Capitalism
Children At Work, 1908-1912
One Strike Against Her: A Store Clerk Dares to Join the Union 1903
Working for the Triangle Shirtwaist Co
TR on Safari, 1909
Woman strike supporter of Ludlow Massacre, 1914
Two Bits for a Tragic Tale: Walter Fink’s The Ludlow Massacre
Eyewitness to Murder: Recounting the Ludlow Massacre
We are literally slaves, Early 20th C Black Nanny recalls
Sharecropping: They Drug Him Through the Streets!
Contraception, "A Less Reliable Form of Birth Control", 1914
Farm women describe their work, 1913
Retail worker joins union and gets fired, 1914
“Experiences of a ’Hired Girl’”: An Early Twentieth-Century Domestic Worker Speaks Out
Upstairs, Downstairs: The Science of Service
Mrs. Frederick Teaches Women How to Wash the Dishes
Apple Pie by the Book: Fannie Farmer vs. Catherine Beecher


Ch 10: America Claims an Empire

Platform of the Anti-Imperialist League, 1899
American Imperialism of the Philippines
Rudyard Kippling's "The White Man's Burden"
“The Poor Man’s Burden”: Labor Lampoons Kipling
“The Black Man’s Burden”: A Response to Kipling
Sen. Albert Beveridge on Expansion
US Declares War On Spain, 1898
Rough Riders Storm San Juan Hill, 1898
Date With Destiny: The Gonzales Diary
Manifest Destiny, Continued: McKinley Defends U.S. Expansionism

Ch 11: WWI

Bolsheviks Storm the Winter Palace, 1917
The power of pictures.
“Babes on bayonets.”
Execution of Tsar Nicholas II, 1918
I didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, singing against the war
Four Minute Men, speeches
Cartooning for Victory: World War I Instructions to Artists
“Cotton Belt Blues”: Lizzie Miles’s Blues Song Great Migration
Victory on the Menu: Recipes and Rationing
“Hard Chewing”: Supporting World War I at the Kitchen Table
Gas Attack, 1916
Assassination of Archduke Ferdinande, 1914
German Army Marches Through Brussels, 1914
Beginning of Air Warfare, 1914
Christmas in the Trenches, 1914
“His Car Is His Pride”: Ode to a World War I Ambulance
Gas and Flame in World War I: The New Weapons of Terror
Sinking of the Lusitania, 1915
Hot Chocolate: A World War I “Canteen Girl” Writes Home “Bombed Last Night”: Singing at the Front in World War I
“No Negroes Allowed”: Segregation at the Front in World War I
“This Is How It Was”: An American Nurse in France During World War I Death at the Battle of the Somme, 1916
Battlefield Debut of the Tank, 1916
Conclusions and recomendations by the committee of six disinterested americans- Haiti occupation, 1915
The people were very peaceable, Haiti occupation
Bandits or Patriots? Haiti
Avoid the use of the word Intervention, Wilson on US invation of Mexico
John Reed's What About Mexico; US & Mexican Revolution, 1911
Better Late Than Never?: Rickover Clears Spain of the Maine Explosion
UBoat Attack, 1916
America Declares War on Germany, 1917
Making the world safe for democracy
Nobody Woudl Eat Kraut,
Lawrence of Arabia, 1918
Food will win the war, Housewives in Uniform (Hooverizing)
Please Let Me Put Him in a Macaroni Box, Spanish Flu, 1918
He'll come home in a box, flu
Signing the Versailles Treaty, 1919
Hand of God, Wilson presents treaty to senate
“Times Is Gettin Harder”: Blues of the Great Migration
“Don't Have to Mister Every Little White Boy. . .”: Black Migrants Write Home

Ch 12 & 13: 1920s
The Scopes Trial, 1925
“Times look pretty dark to some.” - on 1921 depression
“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”: Defending Liberal Protestantism in the 1920s
Eight Hours in the Forenoon, Eight Hours in the Afternoon; IWW on migrant farm work
Temperance & Prohibition
“Shall We Gather at the River?”: Aimee Semple McPherson on Prohibition
“Not Rum but Righteousness”: Billy Sunday Attacks Booze
Lindbergh, PBS
Welcoming Home a Hero: Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh Speak
Robert Benchley: An Eminently Safe Citizen; on The Making of a Red
US Intervention in Nicaragua; Kellogg charges Bolshevist Threat
To Abolish The Monroe Doctrine, proclamation of Augusto Sandino
Jailed for Freedom: A Women’s Suffragist Remembers Prison
Starving for Women’s Suffrage: “I Am Not Strong after These Weeks”
Suffrage on Stage, parody of the opposition
Suffrage in Print, spoof of opposition
NAACP official calls for censorship of Birth Of A Nation,
1915
New Middle class Housekeeping: How I keep house without a Maid
Sadie's Servant Room, domestic work in song
Automobiles and milady’s mood.
Model kitchens.
Music and milking time. radio on the farm
“Teaching old dogs new tricks.” Flappers
Attorney General A, Mitchell Palmer's "Case Against the Reds"
Emma Goldman on her deportation in red scare
Kissing Rudy Valentino, high school student describes movies
Speak Garvey Speak! follower on a Garvey Rally
DuBois criticizes Washington
Henrietta Chief recalls indian boarding school
God Knows More About Tim than President Wilson, letters against Daylight Saving Time
Chicago Race Riot, Chicago Daily News- 1919
Chicago Daily Tribune on race riot- 1919
I witnessed the Steel Strike, 1919
Save Sacco and Vanzetti!
They are Dead Now- eulogy of Sacco & Vanzetti
Last Days Remembered, on deaths of Sacco & Vanzetti, 1927
One Night When the Levee Broke, Mississippi flood, 1927
Seven Altogether went down, family disappears in Mississippi flood
Defending Greenwood, survivor of Tulsa Race Riot, 1921
An “Un-American Bill”: A Congressman Denounces Immigration Quotas
“Shut the Door”: A Senator Speaks for Immigration Restriction
More Work for Mother? Scientific Management at home
A Man's Thanksgiving; hymn to the God of Business
The Ancient Days have Not Departed; Coolidge on spirituality of commerce
White sheets in Washington, D.C. KKK
Welfare capitalism and its conceits.
Put on a happy face.
Gertie Refuses a Suitor: Edna Ferber’s “The Frog and the Puddle” Department Stores, Shopgirls
“No Snuggling!” Sex Talks to Young Girls
“I Am Only a Piece of Machinery”: Housewives Analyze Their Problems
The New Woman of the 1920s: Debating Bobbed-Hair
Effie Bauer Turns Down Gabie Marks: Edna Ferber’s “One of the Old Girls” Shopgirl ponders career vs marriage
The Secret Life of Shop Girls: O. Henry’s Short Story “The Trimmed Lamp”
Enemies, A Drama of Modern Marriage: The Sexual Revolution Enacted
Warning Against the “Roman Catholic Party”: Catholicism and the 1928 Election
Should a Catholic Be President?: A Contemporary View of the 1928 Election
“Love and Companionship Came First”: Floyd Dell on Modern Marriage
“I Am Almost a Prisoner”: Women Plead for Contraception
“No Gods, No Masters”: Margaret Sanger on Birth Control
“When the Whistle Blows . . . I Come Home and Get Supper”: Women and Work in the Interwar Years
Poet William Carlos Williams Describes the Crowd at the Ballpark
“Do Insects Think?” Robert Benchley Satirizes Science
“Complete Nudity Is Never Permitted”: The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930
Oh Yeah?: Herbert Hoover Predicts Prosperity
Stiff upper lip. response to suffering

Ch 14 & 15: The Depression & New Deal
To Save Ourselves: “Anti-Japanese Activities of the Members of the CHLA”
To Save China: “New York Hand Laundry Alliance Intensifies Anti-Japanese Work”
“The Gigantic Forces of Depression Are Today in Retreat”: Hoover Insists That Things Are Getting Better
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address
“One Third of a Nation”: FDR’s Second Inaugural Address
The Bum as Con Artist: An Undercover Account of the Great Depression
Lending a Hand: A Woman Remembers Hoboes of the 1930s
The Vagrant in Fiction: Emblematic American?
“The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde” by Bonnie Parker
“We Have Got a Good Friend in John Collier”: A Taos Pueblo Tries to Sell the Indian New Deal
“It Had a Lot of Advantages”Alfred DuBray Praises the Indian Reorganization Act
“It Didn’t Pan Out as We Thought It Was Going To” Amos Owen on the Indian Reorganization Act
“I’m Going to Fight Like Hell”Anna Taffler and the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s
The Los Angeles Dressmakers Strike of 1933: Anita Andrade Castro Becomes a Union Activist “Organize among Yourselves”: Mary Gale on Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression
“The Depression has Changed People’s Outlook”: The Beuschers Remember the Great Depression in Dubuque, Iowa
Losing the Business: The Donners Recall the Great Depression
“What He Has Done Is Sickening to Contemplate”: Catholic Liberal John Ryan Denounces Father Charles Coughlin
“Somebody Must be Blamed”: Father Coughlin Speaks to the Nation
“An Independent Destiny for America”: Charles A. Lindbergh on Isolationism
Against Isolationism: James F. Byrnes Refutes Lindbergh
“Must a Fellow Wait to Die?”: Workers Write to Frances Perkins diseases; work conditions
“Hearty Big Strong Men All Died”: The Lasting Impact of the Silicosis “Plague” in the 1930s
Suspicion of Subversion: Congressional Conservatives Attack the Federal Theater Project
 “It Was a Wildly Exciting Time”: Milton Meltzer Remembers the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project
“Art Within Reach”: Federal Art Project Community Art Centers
The Corn Parade. Art project murals
Painting the American Scene: Artists Assess the Federal Art Project
“A Well-Mannered Bandit and a Killer”: Little Berta Ballard Remembers Billy the Kid

“Right After That They Walked Out”: Alice Wolfson Recalls the Origins of the CIO
“That Broke Down the Ethnic Barriers”: A Steelworker Describes the Decline of Ethnic Hostility in the 1930s
“This Is the Pressure That They Used”: Genora Dollinger Recalls the Flint Sit-Down Strike
“I Was Able to Make My Voice Really Ring Out”: The Women’s Emergency Brigade in the Flint Sit-Down Strike
“Please Help Us Mr. President”: Black Americans Write to FDR anti lynch bill
On the road. loss of farms; off to CA
Migrants.
“We Do Our Part.” NRA
The Spirit of ’32. effort to raise comodities prices
“We can take it!”  CCC
“He’s a Demagogue, That’s What He Is”: Hodding Carter on Huey Long
“Huey Long Is a Superman”: Gerald L. K. Smith Defends the Kingfish
Pure Personal Government: Roosevelt Goes Too Far in Packing the Court
“Younger and More Vigorous Blood”: FDR on the Judiciary
FDR versus Nine Old Men: Schechter v. United States
Hear Joe Louis Knock Out Max Schmeling: Black Sports Heroes in the Depression Era
“I Will Not Promise the Moon”: Alf Landon Opposes the Social Security Act, 1936
“Share the Wealth”: Huey Long Talks to the Nation
“Waitin’ on Roosevelt”: Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of Roosevelt”





Ch 16 & 17 WWII
“Cutting a New Path”: A World War II Navy Nurse Fights Sexism in the Military
“I Always Had Pads with Me”: A G.I. Artist’s Sketchpad, 1943–1944
“A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”: FDR Asks for a Declaration of War
“This Is No Joke: This Is War”: A Live Radio Broadcast of the Attack on Pearl Harbor
“80 Rounds in Our Pants Pockets”: Orville Quick Remembers Pearl Harbor
The “Man in the Street” Reacts to Pearl Harbor
“The World Will Note”: President Truman Announces the Atom Bomb
“Why Did We Have to Win It Twice?”: A Physicist Remembers His Work on the First Atomic Bomb
“I Saw The Walking Dead”: A Black Sergeant Remembers Buchenwald
“We Need to Exterminate Them”: A Marine Describes the Battle of Guam “Hello, You Fighting Orphans”: “Tokyo Rose” Woos U.S. Sailors and Marines Japanese radio propaganda
Scottsboro defense.
Didactic Dramas: Antiwar Plays of the 1930s
A Japanese Soldier Describes the Horrors of Guadalcanal
The War Labor Board Insists on Equal Pay for Black Workers
Equal Pay for Equal Work: The War Labor Board on Gender Inequality
Roll Hitler Out and Roll the Union In: The No-Strike Pledge
“Obey Your Air Raid Warden”: Big Band as Public Service Announcement
Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation
Schoolchildren at Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho, 1940s
May K. Sasaki Describes the Minidoka, Idaho, Incarceration Camp
Bob Fuchigami Describes Conditions at the Merced Assembly Center, California
Bob Fuchigami Remembers the Makeshift School at the Amache, Colorado, Incarceration Camp
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Describes Preparing for ’Evacuation’ To an Incarceration Camp
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Recalls Caring for her Baby in the Manzanar Incarceration Camp
Kenge Kobayashi Recalls the Loyalty Questionnaires and Conditions at Tule Lake Segregation Center
Mits Koshiyama Recalls Japanese American Resistance to Incarceration
Masao Takahashi Describes Incarceration at the Missoula, Montana, Department of Justice Detention Center
“Jap Trap,” World War II Propaganda Poster
Kay Matsuoka Describes the Journey to Gila River, Arizona, Incarceration Camp Tosh Yasutake and Mitsuye May Yamada Discuss Tosh’s Decision to Join U.S. Army and Visiting Their Father at a U.S. Department of Justice Incarceration Camp
Norman I. Hirose Remembers Entertainment at the Topaz, Utah, Incarceration Camp
Milton Eisenhower Justifies the Internment of Japanese Americans
Korematsu v. United States: The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Internment
“Evacuation Was a Mistake”: Anger at Being Interned
“Shaping Mental and Moral Forces”: Memo on Propaganda “This Is No Time for You to Take a Rest”: Hollywood Goes to War
Fibber McGee and Molly on Mileage Rationing
Pachucos in the Making": Roots of the Zoot
“Aluminum for Defense”: Rationing at Home during World War II
Read an Issue of Yank, The Army Weekly
“Belles of the Ball Game”: Women’s Professional Baseball League Thrives in the 1940s


Ch 18 & 19 Cold War & Post War Boom
GM Rejects Reuther’s Call to “Open the Books”: The Post-WWII Strike Wave
“A Youngster Needs a Knowledge of the Present”: A Popular Magazine Urges Tolerance for the Distractions of Youth
“Violent Death in Every Form Imaginable”: A Senate Committee Report Assesses “Crime and Horror” Comic Books
“Good Shall Triumph over Evil”: The Comic Book Code of 1954
“A Make-Believe World”: Contestants Testify to Deceptive Quiz Show Practices
“Every Effort Was Made to Control the Shows”: A Television Producer Details and Defends Deceptive Quiz Show Practices
“The Shadow of Incipient Censorship”: The Creation of the Television Code of 1952
“A Sop to the Public at Large”: Contestant Herbert Stempel Exposes Contrivances in a 1950s Television Quiz Show
“The Truth Is the Only Thing with Which a Man Can Live”: Quiz Show Contestant Charles Van Doren Publicly Confesses to Deceiving His Television Audience
Leon Sverdlove On the Taft-Hartley Act
“You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”: Paul Robeson Appears Before HUAC
“They Want to Muzzle Public Opinion”: John Howard Lawson’s Warning to the American Public
“I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions”: Lillian Hellman Refuses to Name Names “The World Was at Stake”: Three “Friendly” HUAC Hollywood Witnesses Assess Pro-Soviet Wartime Films
“Enemies from Within”: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s Accusations of Disloyalty
"Damage": Collier’s Assesses the Army-McCarthy Hearings
“Have You No Sense of Decency”: The Army-McCarthy Hearings
“The Ordeal of Bobby Cain”: Racial Confrontation at a Newly Integrated Southern High School
“What I Tell My Child About Color”: Black and White Fathers in Atlanta Try to Explain Race Relations to Their Sons
“Supreme Court Decisions Just Are Not Enough”: The Need for Federal Legislation to Desegregate the South
“No Heat, No Water . . . and a Large Sign Reading ’Colored’”: Inequality in “Separate but Equal” Railroad Accommodations
“The Negro Voter: Can He Elect a President?”
“Mob Rule Cannot Be Allowed to Override the Decisions of Our Courts”: President Dwight D. Eisenhower"s 1957 Address on Little Rock, Arkansas
“We Can Control Our Affairs Pretty Well”: Southern Senators Protest Proposed Antilynching Legislation
“Get on the Ground and We Will Kick Your Head In”: A Reporter Tells of Terrorism in Alabama
"The Negro in America Today": South African Novelist Alan Paton Dissects the Racial Situation in the South in the Year of Brown v. Board of Education
“And We Shall Overcome”: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Special Message to Congress
“The First Freedom Ride:” Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE
“I Didn’t Know Anything About Voting:” Fannie Lou Hamer On The Mississippi Voter Registration Campaign

“And This Happened in Los Angeles:” Malcolm X Describes Police Brutality Against Members of the Nation of Islam

“The A-Bomb Won’t Do What You Think!”: An Argument Against Reliance on Nuclear Weapons
“I’m Not Afraid of the A-Bomb”: An Army Captain Tries to Dispel Fears about Radioactivity
“The Utopian Promise of the Peacetime Atom”: Predictions and Hopes for Atomic Energy

“Let’s Have a Meeting:” Cathy Wilkerson on SDS Organizing
“It Was All Men Talking:” Cathy Wilkerson on 1960s Campus Organizing

Ch 21
Websource: American RadioWorks, Remembering Segregation