Posters: American Style

Annotation

An exhibit of 20th-century poster art relating to three subjects: commerce, propaganda, and patriotism. Presents approximately 135 posters, arranged into four thematic categories: "American Events"; "Designed to Sell"; "Advice to Americans"; and "Patriotic Persuasion." The selections--which concentrate "on major artists and images that have endured in our collective memory"--include 100-word biographical sketches of artists, short introductions for each category, and other pertinent background information. Special focus is directed to posters on the 1939 World's Fair, the war in Vietnam, the Black Panther movement, the moon landing, the motion picture Vertigo, the poem "Howl," Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" address and Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech. Audio files and photographs related to these topics are included. The site also contains a 4,000-word essay by curator Therese Heyman, discussing the history and concept of poster art, notes on the process of production, and a discussion of the impact of posters. A site of particular interest to art historians and scholars of popular culture.

National Security Archive

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Photo, White House Photo # 5364 / 5364-02, Oliver F. Atkins, Dec 21, 1970
Annotation

Despite its official sounding name, this is a non-governmental institution. Founded in 1985 as a central repository for declassified materials obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the Archives at present offers approximately 100 "Briefing Books," each providing government documents and a contextual narrative on national security history and issues, foreign policy initiatives, and military history.

While much of the material relates to events abroad, documents provide information on U.S. involvement and perceptions. Major categories include Europe (with documents on the Hungarian Revolution, Solidarity, and the 1989 revolutions); Latin America (overall CIA involvement, war in Colombia, contras, Mexico); nuclear history (treaties, Berlin crisis, India and Pakistan, North Korea, China, Israel); Middle East and South Asia (Iraq and WMD, hostages in Iran, October 1973 war); the U.S. intelligence community; government secrecy; humanitarian interventions; and September 11 sourcebooks on the terrorist threat. A wealth of information on U.S. diplomatic and military history during and after the Cold War.

Phillip Morris Advertising Archive

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Advertisement, "Proofing stock for four-color cover advertisements " 1967
Annotation

More than 55,000 color images of tobacco advertisements from litigated cases, dating back to 1909, are now available on this site, created as a stipulation of the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco industry and various states' attorneys general. In addition, more than 26 million pages of documents concerning "research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising and sales of cigarettes, among other topics" are provided in linked sites to the four tobacco companies involved—Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Brown and Williamson—and to two industry organizations, the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research. Ads and documents can be accessed by date, brand name, title words, and persons mentioned, among other searchable fields. Images can be magnified and rotated. An important site for those studying the historical uses of advertising to promote smoking and those with a more general interest in some of the motifs in ad texts and images that have become part of 20th-century American life.

Oral History Digital Collection

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Image for Oral History Digital Collection
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These full-text first-person narratives present the voices of more than 2,000 people from northeast Ohio discussing issues significant to the state and the nation. These oral histories, collected since 1974, focus on a range of topics such as ethnic culture, including African American, Greek, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Romanian, and Russian, and industry, such as steel, pottery, brick, coal, and railroads.

Others discuss labor relations, including women in labor unions, wars (World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War), college life (including the shootings by National Guard troops at Kent State in 1970), the Holocaust, and religion. Subject access is available through more than 200 topics listed alphabetically.

American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning

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Annotation

This site introduces the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (ASHP/CML), an organization located at the City University of New York (CUNY) that "seeks to revitalize interest in history by challenging the traditional ways that people learn about the past," with a particular emphasis on labor history and social history. The site includes information about ASHP/CML books, documentary films, CD-ROMs, Internet projects, and educational programs, as well as five articles by staff members and numerous links to history resources.

"Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Immigrant Women in the Turn-of-the-Century City" presents selected photographs, illustrations, and accompanying short explanatory texts intended for use with a ASHP/CML documentary of the same name. Among the Project's current endeavors is "an intellectual and spatial exploration of P. T. Barnum's American Museum," entitled The Lost Museum, which burned down under mysterious circumstances in 1865. With the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ASHP/CML produces History Matters.

Virginia Military Institute Museum

Description

The Virginia Military Institute Museum, located in the 1916 Jackson Memorial Hall on the Institute's campus, displays artifacts from its historical collection to chronicle the creation and development of the Virginia Military Institute and the contributions of its alumni to history.

The museum offers exhibits, guided tours for school groups, and research library access by appointment.

Old State Capitol Museum of Political History [LA]

Description

Louisiana's 150-year-old Old State Capitol has withstood war, fire, scandal, bitter debate, and abandonment. Today, the building functions as the Museum of Political History, presenting multimedia history exhibits that engage visitors in an interactive exploration of the events and people that contributed to Louisiana's story. In particular, the "We the People . . ." civic awareness exhibit helps audiences internalize the process of campaigns, elections, and the day-to-day aspects of democracy.

The museum offers exhibits and serves as a venue for press conferences, traveling exhibits, special programs, and an annual lecture series.

CWIHP: Cold War International History Project

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Scholarship on the Cold War has been written primarily by Westerners with little access to sources in Soviet archives. This extensive collection seeks to remedy this gap in Cold War historiography by presenting sources from the former Communist bloc. Thousands of documents in the diplomatic history of the Cold War are currently available, stretching in time from the 1945–46 Soviet occupation of northern Iran through the late 1990s.

The annotated sources are divided into 50 collections and by geographic region. Collections cover a wide range of topics, including specific events (1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 1980–81 Polish Crisis) and broader topics stretching over longer periods of time (Economic Cold War, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, The Cold War in Africa). Collections vary widely in size, between three and several hundred documents, and include primarily official documents and communication—meeting minutes, memoranda, transcribed conversations between leaders, reports, and several personal letters and diary entries.

Eudora Welty House [MS]

Description

The Eudora Welty House served as the residence of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty (1909-2001) for 76 years. The Welty home retains the author's own belongings, set as she lived among them. Welty authored short stories, novels, and her memoir. She is best known for her novel The Optimist's Daughter, a story of family and loss. Her stories and novels depict life in the South.

The house offers period rooms, gardens, tours, and archive access. Reservations are required for both tours and archive access.

Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum [WI]

Description

The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum claims to be the only museum focusing solely on the creation of wooden type and the printing process involving said type. Collections include more than 1.5 million individual pieces of wooden type. In the 19th century, pieces such as those in the collection were a necessity for mass communication. Aside from type, the museum displays printing tools, type specimen catalogs, hot metal type production, and hand operated printing presses.

The site offers exhibits and demonstrations. Field trips are welcome.