Curriculum - Women & the American Story
From the New York Historical Society. Teachers should skim through this while planning to see how and where they can incorporate lessons, ideas and events of women's history into their planning.
"Our Misery and Despair": Kearney Blasts Chinese Immigration
To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China—the greatest and oldest despotism in the world—for a cheap working slave. It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free American in the Labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white Labor.
California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance?
Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the ninth census 1870 with contributions from many eminent men of science and several departments of the government - Copy 1 | Library of Congress
[Postcard] Perhaps the World Ends Here, by Julian Brave NoiseCat | Harper's Magazine
Alternative reading for US History students that connects climate change's effect on the Pine Reservation with Wounded Knee. One way to help students become better writers is to expose them to better writing
Eye on the East: Labor Calls for Ban on Chinese Immigration
Some of the anti-immigration is motivated by economics. There were many white workers who saw Chinese immigration as a means to drive down their wages. Their support for anti-immigration legislation is motivated by economics
1880 Census: Volume 1. Statistics of the Population
Poverty party invitations from the Gilded Age.
How many teachers and students would believe that middle and upper class Americans hosted costume parties in which their guests were invited to dress, talk and act like poor people? This short article should pique the interest of anyone who reads it, though perhaps it's worth following some of the links to see how it can be incorporated into a lesson.
Our Documents - Transcript of Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)
The text of the first two paragraphs of the Sherman Anti-Trust act is some of the most straightforward and unobtuse in federal law, students with some support can understand it. Teachers should invest that minimal class time to lead students through understanding the law so they can then think through how it could be used to stop unions, and how it was not used to stop protected monopolies in the mid 20th century.
The Divorce Colony — The Atavist Magazine
What will happen to your US History high school students when you replace your Pullman Strike or Cross of Gold Lesson with a reading into divorce in the 1890s? It's a question worth finding the answer. They are either the child of a divorced family or the close friend of someone who is but your history course might have been ignoring divorce as if it never happened in the past. People have always gotten divorced, but like most in the past, its both the same and different than now.
Lisa Kaplan on Twitter: "THREAD: Today I went to the public library for the first time in a long time. A woman came up to me and asked me to help her with the computer so she could apply for a custodial job. She had gone to the organization she wanted to
Thread discusses the challenges facing people who do not have an email address or phone in trying to simply get a job
Rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan |
Students use primary and secondary sources to analyze the arguments of the populists and the look for similarities between the rhetoric of the 1890s and the 2010s
The Dark Side of the Gilded Age - The Atlantic
Was Were the gains of the Gilded Age worth its costs? Using this book review, students can research the question on their own to defend their own answer to that question
Chinese Labor in America - Scientific American 1869
This article welcoming Chinese immigration appeared in Scientific American in 1869 - how do students consider the racism in this article? How do we reconcile messages that seem to welcome immigrants yet are still racist? What information in this article foretells the change in sentiment in the early 1880s that brings the Chinese Exclusion Act?
Expulsion: The Tacoma Method | Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation
This page offers a concise account of the forced expulsion of the Chinese residents of Tacomo Washington in 1885 . Teachers looking for events that show continuity and change in the history of immigration in the United States can use event to show students the nature of anti-immigrant sentiment through the lens of a real event with real people - rather than the antiseptic factoid of federal legislation like the Chinese Exclusion act.
The Tacoma Method - 1885
This site chronicles the forced remove of more than 700 Chinese residents of Tacoma, Washington in 1885.
John Dingell: How to Fix Government - The Atlantic
This is an important read for the end of the year, or during constitutional lessons
Residential school survivor talks about the electric chair at St. Anne's school | Video News | EBL News
Chilling 8 minute video
Louis Hyman on Twitter: "In my history of consumption class, I teach about #Sears, but what most people don't know is just how radical the catalogue was in the era of #Jim Crow. #twitterstorians"
Sears Roebuck's catalog business helped Black Americans by giving them a means to shop when white shop owners denied them.
Man with a Plan | The New Yorker
Teachers covering social darwinism can give students an reading exercise with this article, focusing on Herbert Spencer's tour of the US popularizing his theory (which was not Darwin's). It will take some editing, but is is grade level and reading level appropriate for high school readers
Time To Make Life Hard For The Rich
Trying to get students to understand labor unrest in the United States in the Gilded Age? How about populism? Perhaps you can let them know what class rhetoric sounds like today - this reading should do it
Evaluating Historical Sources on Juana Briones | Stanford History Education Group
Although this document lesson would fit into the chronological sequence in the late 1880s, it can be used earlier in the school year to focus student's differentiation between an historical source's strengths and limitations.
Condition of the Indian Tribes. Report of the Joint Special Committee ..1867
This is the complete report at the Internet Archive. Students an either flip through the pages of the book, or search key phrases. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=710
Popular Music and Race - 1890s vs 1990s
This lesson has students comparing lyrics of African American sheet music of the 1890s and rap music of the 1990s. They can then think about the contextual forces that account for the many similarities.
How Typewriters Changed Everything | JSTOR Daily
Usually the light bulb, phonograph and telephone get all of the invention attention of the late 19th century - perhaps the typewriter needs to be included. This short article makes the pitch, the links in it may close the deal. It does not mention the prominent role it played in the novel Dracula. This might connect more clearly with Chromebook students
Ten Companies own most of the world's food brands. - Graphic
This graphic from Oxfam lists hundreds of products from life savers, chex its and M&Ms to Chex and Cheerioes. Almost all of the food products can see in a local WaWa or supermarket. Despite the variety of brands, they are only owned by ten companies. Teachers can throw this up on the screen while talking about Sherman Anti-Trust law.
Congressional Tribute to the inventor of the telephone (Not Alexander Graham Bell)
How many history students in the United States lost points on history tests by not choosing "Alexander Graham Bell" on a multiple choice question? How many PowerPoint presentations list Bell as the inventor the the telephone? This shows that provisional nature of that fact
How Robber Barons hijacked the “Victorian Internet” | Ars Technica
When teachers think of telegraph and later telephone networks as a "Victorian Internet", they can build lessons that capitalize on student's interests an connect real issues of the past and the present. Students can be tasked with researching net neutrality and looking for precedent in the age of the Robber Barons. Essays that connects the past and present. A worthwhile alternative to standard textbook reading
William Allen White What's the matter with Kansas? August 16 1896
This wonderful example of sarcastic invective can be used by teachers to illustrate the argument against populism in the late 1890s. Better yet, it can be used in a lesson on sarcasm itself - can students read this without any introduction and recognize it as sarcasm?
We have an old mossback Jacksonian who snorts and howls because there is a bathtub in the state house; we are running that old jay for Governor. We have another shabby, wild-eyed, rattle-brained fanatic who has said openly in a dozen speeches that "the rights of tee user are paramount to the rights of the owner"; we are running him for Chief Justice, so that capital will come tumbling over itself to get into the state. We have raked the old ash heap of failure in the state and found an old human hoop-skirt who has failed as a businessman, who has failed as an editor, who has failed as a preacher, and we are going to run him for Congressman-at-Large. He will help the looks of the Kansas delegation at Washington. Then we have discovered a kid without a law practice and have decided to run him for Attorney General. Then, for fear some hint that the state had become respectable might percolate through the civilized portions of the nation, we have decided to send three or four harpies out lecturing, telling the people that Kansas is raising hell and letting the corn go to weeds.
Columbus Day, 1892 - not 1492 - Lesson
From "THinking Like an Historian", this 14 page lesson provides teacher background and context along with a complete lesson and resources.
How the Fake News Crisis of 1896 Explains Trump - The Atlantic