Audio Interview of Former Slave Fountain Hughes
A 101-year-old former slave tells about the suffering he experienced as a boy.
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A 101-year-old former slave tells about the suffering he experienced as a boy.
This feature is no longer available.
Visitors to the Museum can share in the journey of the Great Lakes Indian tribes who were forced to emigrate to Kansas in the 1800s, adapting their traditional Woodlands cultures to the rolling prairie landscape. At the Museum, once a Presbyterian mission built in 1845 to educate Iowa and Sac and Fox children, you will find quillwork, baskets, and other artwork of present-day descendants of emigrant tribes. Through the interactive exhibits, Native Americans tell stories in their own words.
The site offers exhibits, tours, and educational and recreational programs.
Following the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, "Jim Crow laws," which discriminated against African Americans, were justified as offering "separate but equal" accommodations. Overturned in 1954 by the case Brown v. Board of Education, segregation began long before Plessy. Answer these questions on the history of Jim Crow.
1. The term "Jim Crow" originally referred to:
b. A popular burlesque song and theatrical dance number
White actor, singer, and dancer, Thomas D. Rice, wrote and performed "Jim Crow" (sometimes called "Jump Jim Crow" because of the first line of the chorus) in 1829 or 1830. To perform the song, Rice dressed in tattered rags and frolicked comically to impersonate a very low caricature of a black man. His performances became an overnight sensation among white audiences, and he performed all over the country. He then took his act to Britain and France, where it became an even bigger hit.
One dismayed English drama critic in the London Satirist, however, wrote: "Talent is of no country, neither is folly; and were 'Jim Crow' of English creation, we should have assuredly dealt as severely with it as we have now done with the bantling of the new world--perhaps more so, for we would have strangled it in its birth to prevent it begetting any more of its own species to offend the world's eye with their repulsive deformities. The circumstance of its being an exotic, the production of the pestilential marshes of backwood ignorance, has had no effect with us in giving our opinion. There is no concealing the fact, that Jim Crow owes its temporary triumph in this country to one of those lapses of human nature which sometimes occurs, when the senses run riot, and a sort of mental saturnalia takes place." Quoted in "Jim Crowism," Spirit of the Times (New York), February 4, 1837.
2. "Jim Crow cars" were separate railway passenger cars in which blacks were forced to travel, instead of in the passenger cars in which whites took their seats. The term "Jim Crow cars" first came into use:
a. In the mid-1830s, in Massachusetts and Connecticut
Segregated public transportation began in the North before the Civil War. In many parts of the South, a black could not travel at all, unless he or she was accompanying (or accompanied by) a white, or carrying a pass from a white person.
The inconsistencies themselves bred conflict. One Massachusetts newspaper editor wrote, "South of the Potomac, slaves ride inside of stage-coaches with their masters and mistresses—north of the Potomac they must travel on foot, in their own hired vehicles, or in the 'Jim Crow' car. … What a black man is, depends on where he is. He has no nature of his own; that depends upon his location. Moreover the contradictions that appertain to him, produce corresponding contradictions in the white man. … Seriously, very seriously—do not the incongruities, the strange anomalies, in the condition of the coloured race, clearly show there is terrible wrong somewhere? … The confusion of tongues is terrible; the confusion of ideas is worse." From "Incongruities of Slavery," The Friend, March 26, 1842, quoting the [Worcester] Massachusetts Spy.
3. Among the very first deliberate African American challengers to Jim Crow practices in public transportation was:
b. Frederick Douglass, who refused, in 1841, to give up the first-class seat on the Eastern Railroad he took when he boarded the train at Newburyport, MA, and move to the train's Jim Crow car
Douglass may not have been the very first, but he appears to have been one of the first. African Americans in New England, beginning in late 1839, along with white abolitionists, with some successes, deliberately challenged extra-legal but fairly common Jim Crow accommodations on railroads, on stagecoaches, in churches ("Negro pews"), and in schools. The persistence of Jim Crow practices in the North, however, gave Southern slave-holding whites the opportunity to reproach even abolitionist Northern whites for "not treating their free blacks better."
4. After the Civil War, the practice of formally segregating whites and blacks working in Federal Government offices was instituted during the administration of which U.S. President?
c. Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson, who had been born in Virginia, soon after he took office in 1913, began a government-wide segregation of blacks and whites in Federal workplaces, restrooms, and lunchrooms. The policy appears to have been instituted after Wilson's Georgia-born wife Ellen visited the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington and "saw white and negro women working side by side." Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo (also Georgia-born, and soon to be the Wilsons' son-in-law) took the hint. Shortly thereafter, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams issued an order segregating the races in the Bureau. A Washington-wide order, covering all Government offices, followed, and soon all Federal offices everywhere in the country were covered by the same order.
Looking for more on Jim Crow laws and the impact of segregation on African Americans' lives? Try American Public Media's Remembering Jim Crow, for excerpts of oral histories from those who lived through segregation. Their close-to-an-hour-long radio program, Radio Fights Jim Crow, also looks at segregation—this time, at World War II-era radio programs that challenged civil rights abuses and stereotypes of African Americans.
The History of Jim Crow, created to accompany the PBS documentary miniseries The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, goes beyond guides to the series' four parts, providing essays, interactive maps, and lesson plans.
Race and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South: Charlottesville, VA, maintained by the University of Virginia, traces racism and segregation through the history of one city, with primary sources including oral histories, personal papers, newspapers, images, census data, maps, city records, and political materials.
For six lesson plans on segregation and education in a one-room Virginia schoolhouse, visit Teaching at Laurel Grove, from the Laurel Grove School Association.
Arriving in the U.S. by choice or against their will, minority groups sought ways to express their uniqueness and maintain a sense of community. How better to come together than as an audience—or as a group of performers? Answer the following questions on multicultural performing arts in the U.S.
1. During World War I, New York City audiences (if they knew the language of the performance) could attend patriotic musicals with titles like ____ War Brides and ____ Martyrs of America. What ethnic group fills in the blanks?
a. Jewish
From the late 1880s to around 1940, Yiddish-language theatre found a home in New York City—as did the wave of Jewish immigrants who brought the performance form to the U.S. Fleeing persecution in Russia, these immigrants, whether they chose to be performing artists or audience members, developed a unique theatre culture. Unlike the short variety acts of contemporary vaudeville, Yiddish theatre presented full-evening-length plays, accompanied by music or broken up with song-and-dance numbers. Plays adapted popular works by authors like Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov, drew from folklore and folk customs, and/or commented on recent events in the U.S. and abroad. Some addressed issues of assimilation, such as intermarriage and generational gaps, while others praised the virtues of the immigrants' adopted country—as did the musicals mentioned above.
2. In 1852, a 42-member opera troupe arrived in the U.S. After giving successful performances to immigrants from its country of origin, it traveled to New York City, where non-immigrants panned its performances. Where did the troupe come from?
d. China
In 1852, the Tong Hook Tong Dramatic Company arrived in California, following the stream of Chinese immigrants who had come to the state with the 1848 gold rush. Greeted warmly by immigrant audiences, they accepted a contract to perform in New York City. In New York, they discovered the contract was a scam, and secured their own theatre space, performing for New Yorkers independently. Chinese opera bears little resemblance to European opera, and even less to the "Oriental" image of China then popular on the mainstream stage. Confused by what they were seeing, New Yorkers rejected genuine Chinese theatre that did not match up with contemporary media stereotypes.
3. In the 1960s and 1970s, a grassroots theatre movement, beginning in efforts to educate migrant farmers and encourage them to form unions, took off, spreading across the United States. Which minority group did this movement represent?
c. Chicanos
In 1965, Luis Valdez, the son of Chicano migrant farm workers, founded the theatrical company El Teatro Campesino. El Teatro Campesino took theatrical performances—often without props, sets, or written scripts—directly to the camps of migrant farm workers. In its performances, the company sought to inspire farm workers to form a farm workers' union, but it also performed pieces based on Mexican popular theatre: corridas (dramatized ballads), peladitos (comic skits with an underdog protagonist), and religious pageants.
El Teatro Campesino's success led to the growth of a national Chicano theatre movement, which peaked in the 1970s.
4. In the late 1910s and the 1920s, record companies including Okeh, Paramount, Vocalion, and Columbia began releasing records by performers from which minority group?
c. African Americans
Prior to the Great Migration of the early 20th century, when African Americans came north in search of a better life, major record companies released African American music, but only as performed by white performers. Sensing the potential for a new market, the companies began to record African American performers and release their music on special labels targeted at African American audiences. Called "race records," these records were later marketed to white audiences as well. African Americans also established their own companies to distribute records—the first African American owned label, Black Swan, was established in 1921. Many styles of music associated with race records would later be recategorized as "rhythm and blues."
The Library of Congress's American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 includes a subsection just for Yiddish-language playscripts. It encompasses 77 unpublished manuscripts, as well as an essay on Yiddish theatre. Brown University Library has digitized a collection of sheet music covers, including many songs from Yiddish musicals.
Today, only one professional Yiddish theater remains in the U.S.—the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, in New York City. Founded in 1915, the company now promotes the preservation of the Yiddish language and theatre traditions.
Also from the Library of Congress, The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 archives approximately 8,000 primary source images and documents on Chinese immigrant life in California from the gold rush years through the early 20th century. Try searching by keyword "theater" or "theatre" to find images of theatrical (though not operatic) productions. For other resources on Chinese immigrants, enter "Chinese" as a keyword in NHEC's History in Multimedia search for online lectures, podcasts, and other presentations or in the Website Reviews search for websites with valuable primary sources.
For more on the influx of Chicano migrant workers in the mid-20th century, refer to NHEC's blog post on teaching Mexican American history with the Bracero Program (the Bracero Program was the largest guest worker program in U.S. history). Also look at PBS' The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Struggle, made to accompany the documentary of the same name, for information on Cesar Chavez, Mexican American labor activist. Luis Valdez established El Teatro Campesino to support and further Chavez's goals.
PBS' Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns, also designed to accompany a documentary, features an article on race records. NPR offers a short audio presentation on the first recorded blues song sung by an African American artist—"Crazy Blues," sung by Mamie Smith—one of the first steps in the establishment of the race records market.
While women may often have been left out of historical accounts, they were never left out of history—and some women got themselves into the books in remarkable (and unusual) ways. Match the pictures of each of the following women with the descriptions of their accomplishments in the drop-down menu:
1. Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran). Investigative undercover reporter for the New York World and globe traveler. Lived 1864-1922.
2. Annie Smith Peck. Amateur American archeologist of Greek antiquities, and world's most famous mountaineer. Scaled Mt. Shasta, the Matterhorn, Popocatépetl, Orizaba, and Huascarán, among others. Lived 1850-1935.
3. Marguerite Harrison. Reporter for the Baltimore Sun and spy in revolutionary Russia. First foreign woman to be held by Bolshevists in the Lubyanka prison. Explorer and cinematographer in China and among the Bakhtiari in Central Asia. Lived 1879-1957.
4. Annie Edson Taylor. Unemployed schoolteacher who, at age 63, was the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, on October 24, 1901. Lived 1838-1931.
5. Mabel Stark (Mary Haynie). Daughter of Kentucky farmers. Joined the circus and, during the 1920s, became the world's most famous and skilled tiger and lion trainer, working with up to 18 cats at once. Lived 1889-1968.
6. Sonora Webster Carver. As a teenager in 1923, the first woman performer to dive on horseback 40 feet down into a deep pool of water at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Regularly performed the stunt for two decades, even after being blinded in 1931 during a dive. Lived 1904-2003.
7. Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick. In 1908, at age 15, became the first woman to use a parachute (from a hot air balloon), then in 1913, the first woman to make a jump from an aircraft. Trial tested parachute designs for the U.S. Army, and in 1914 made the first free fall parachute jump. Made over 1,100 jumps. Lived 1893-1978.
PBS' American Experience series of documentaries includes Around the World in 72 Days, on Nellie Bly and her 1889-1890 journey around the world. The full text of Bly's account of her experiences, Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in 72 Days, can be found free to download or read online at Project Gutenberg. Her report on time spent undercover in an insane asylum, Ten Days in a Mad-house, can also be found at this site.
In 1902, Annie Edson Taylor published a 17-page booklet recording her experiences: The Internet Archive presents the full text of Over the Falls: Annie Edson Taylor's Story of Her Trip: How the Horseshoe Fall Was Conquered.
Sonora Webster Carver also wrote about her life, in her autobiography A Girl and Five Brave Horses. In 1992, Disney released a film, Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, based on Carver's life—though, as with most films, it presents a highly fictionalized version of a true story.
Try a search in NHEC's Website Reviews—Topic: Women—for websites featuring other remarkable women in American history. From Women in Journalism, archiving interviews with reporters who followed in the footsteps of women like Marguerite Harrison, to the Library of Congress's Votes for Women, preserving material from the fight for women's suffrage, NHEC highlights websites with primary sources suitable for use in the classroom.
What people sold—and how they were selling it—can tell you a lot about a society at any given time period. What do ads seem to want people to want? What needs or desires do the products sell themselves as fulfilling? Who do ads leave out? Who do they include? Select the year that the following advertisements were published.
1.
1941: Pan American Airways began in 1927 with a single engine aircraft and a single route between Key West and Havana. By 1941, the airline flew to 55 different countries, between North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Airline ads in the late 1930s advertised air travel similar to train travel, with sleeping berths and dining cars. When the U.S. entered World War II, the world’s only aircraft that could carry payloads across an ocean were nine Pan Am Boeing 314 flying Clippers, and three that Pan Am had sold to Britain. The U.S. government took over all of Pan Am’s over-ocean aircraft, crews, and operations. Pan American airplanes were used in overt operations by the War Department, and in 1942, 1,445 war planes were delivered to the British army. [1]
2.
1938: Hormel developed canned ham in 1926, and eleven years later produced the first canned meat product that did not require refrigeration, a distinctive chopped ham and pork shoulder mixture, marketed as “spiced ham.” A major advertising campaign started in mid-1937, promoting the product as “miracle meat” and “anytime meat.” SPAM proved effective for the military and because it wasn’t rationed like beef was, it became a major staple for American families during the war. [2]
3.
1956: While passenger service on the Union Pacific Railroad started in 1866, early accommodations were rough and often uncomfortable. The 1890 Overland Limited, a luxury train, ran between Omaha and San Francisco, and by 1921, passenger revenues reached an all-time high. As the Twenties progressed, the automobile became more accessible and necessary, and Union Pacific took some drastic marketing steps to increase business. Luxurious Steamliner passenger trains began operating in the 1930s with opulent furnishings, impeccable service, and total comfort, developing over the next decades with sleeping cars, coaches, diners and lounges, dome coaches, and dome diners, unique to Union Pacific. [3]
4.
1959: Pharmacist Dr. John Stith Pemberton produced the syrup for Coca Cola in Atlanta in 1886. Marketing for the drink began immediately with coupons and souvenir fans, calendars, clocks, urns, and other novelties depicting the trademark. Coca Cola’s first advertisement appeared in 1895, featuring Boston actress Hilda Clark. By World War II, Coke was bottled in 44 countries on both sides of the conflict. From the mid-1940s through 1960, the number of countries with bottling operations nearly doubled. In 1955, the company introduced varying sizes of bottles. Metal cans were not available until after 1960. Campaign slogans include the 1929 “Pause that Refreshes,” “It’s the Refreshing Thing to Do” in 1936, and 1944’s “Global High Sign.” The 1950s produced “Sign of Good Taste,” “Be Really Refreshed,” and “Go Better Refreshed.” [3]
5.
1969: Panasonic was founded in 1918, selling duplex lamp sockets in Japan, expanding rapidly to other areas. By 1961 the company began producing televisions for an American market. In 1962, television started transmitting via satellite, allowing for real-time images changing the industry. In the mid-1960s, television manufacturers competed to make the smallest set.
6.
1932: Parents started giving children pacifiers around 1800. Concern for the way thumbsucking and other such activities impacted physical and social development prompted adults to use such contraptions as the Baby Alice Thumb Guard.
Vaccination—introducing dead or weakened versions of germs into the body to promote the production of antibodies and create immunity to a disease—has been practiced for at least 200 years, making it a chronological "peer" of the United States. Which childhood diseases do the American public health announcements below address?
1. Rubella
Rubella, otherwise known as German measles, causes only very mild symptoms in most people with healthy immune systems (largely a rash and swollen glands in the neck), but can be fatal or crippling to unborn children. If a woman contracts rubella while pregnant, there is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "an 80% chance that her baby will be born deaf or blind, with a damaged heart or small brain, or mentally retarded." Miscarriage is also possible.
This 1970 image promotes vaccination against the disease, which became available in 1969. In 1964-1965, during a major rubella outbreak, more than 20,000 children were born with disorders from the disease.
2. Diphtheria
Diphtheria, a highly-contagious bacterial disease, causes flu-like symptoms—but, left untreated, the CDC says that it "produces a toxin that can cause serious complications such as heart failure or paralysis" and kills one out of 10 of its victims.
In the 1920s, diphtheria killed approximately 15,000 victims a year, many of them children. With widespread use of the vaccine, the disease is now very rare in the U.S.. This poster dates from 1941.
3. Smallpox
The highly contagious smallpox virus causes fever, headache, vomiting, and a severe skin rash, killing many of its victims and scarring survivors. Today, smallpox cases are virtually unknown, due to a global vaccination campaign that has its roots centuries ago—the English physician Edward Jenner first vaccinated against smallpox at the end of the 18th century.
In 1809, Massachusetts became the first state to require vaccination. Vaccinations for smallpox in the U.S. continued until 1972. This image is from 1941, eight years before the last recorded case in the country.
4. Polio
The polio virus can cause symptoms ranging from those of the common cold to severe muscle pain followed by partial paralysis (often in the legs, but sometimes in other muscles). According to the CDC, a 1916 outbreak killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 others, while the National Network for Immunization Information reports that an epidemic in 1952 affected 21,000 people.
Vaccines for polio came out in 1955 and 1961; the last U.S.-originating case occurred in 1979, and the disease no longer exists in the western hemisphere. This poster is from 1963, and features "Wellbee," a CDC mascot used to promote vaccination and public health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website provides resources on (largely present-day) health and health practices, but its Public Health Image Library (PHIL) presents a searchable database of health-and-medicine-related images and videos. The search engine can be tricky to operate, and some of the images (many are photographs) contain graphic representations of injury and disease, so you may want to take care while surfing or when directing students to the website.
You can find many more posters from the New Deal era, on topics ranging from public health to theater performances, at the Library of Congress' American Memory collection By the People, for the People: Posters from the WPA. Read the Clearinghouse's review of this website here.
For a sprinkling of other public health posters, and information on the lives of major U.S. scientists who worked in biomedical research and public health, try the National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science. The Clearinghouse reviews the Profiles here.
Colonial Williamsburg's ongoing podcast touches on colonial-era vaccination in a July 13, 2009, podcast on a 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston.
A Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American history blog entry looks at the museum's collection of flu vaccines. The Museum's online exhibit Whatever Happened to Polio? offers online games, historical photos, and other resources on polio and the development of a vaccine against it.
PBS offers the full-length documentary American Experience: The Polio Crusade, free to watch online.
Search the topic "Health and Medicine" in our Museums and Historic Sites database to find possible health-and-medicine-related field trip sites in your area. Many towns have small apothecary and drugstore museums, and your region may have a larger museum, as well—such as DC's National Museum of Health and Medicine or Maryland's National Museum of Dentistry.
As the work of another school year begins, Labor Day reminds us to honor the nation's workers. Since the rise of industry, workers have used strikes and other forms of protest to demand change and recognition. Select the correct answer for each of the labor-related questions below.
1. What U.S. census data does this map portray?
a. The 1930 relative concentration of "totally unemployed persons registered" in each state.
b. The 1870 relative amount of "total capital invested (in dollars) in manufacturing" in each state.
c. The 1920 relative concentration of "manufacturing establishments" in each state.
d. The 1950 relative concentration of "employed females" in each state.
By 1920, industry had established itself as a fixture of the American economy and way of life, though its hubs remained in the Mid-Atlantic. New York continued to be a center of industry, and Illinois, with the continuing rise of Chicago as an urban industrial center, had become one, as well.
2. On May 4, 1886, a peaceful workers' rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square ended in death and confusion when a dynamite bomb was thrown into a line of approaching police officers. The Haymarket Affair received nationwide media attention and the trials of the alleged guilty parties went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Four of the accused were hung and a fifth committed suicide.
What reform was the rally supporting?
a. The removal of hazardous parts-manufacturing machinery from a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant.
b. The passing of a minimum-wage law in the state of Illinois.
c. The paying of compensation to workers who suffered debilitating injuries from repetitive factory work.
d. The institution of the eight-hour workday.
The speakers at the Haymarket Affair supported strikers who had engaged in a May 1 nationwide walkout to support an eight-hour workday. On May 3, the first workday after the walkout, police killed two workers outside a McCormick plant during a confrontation between scabs (temporary workers hired to replace strikers) and strikers. This event provided an impetus for the Haymarket rally.
3. On February 6, 1919, more than 60,000 Seattle workers refused to work, marking the high point of a series of strikes and unrest that started in January 1919. The first labor action to effectively shut down an entire city, this strike hoped to secure what result?
a. The reinstatement of workers ousted by returning soldiers.
b. A pay raise for the city's shipyard workers.
c. The cessation of all U.S. hostilities against the Bolshevik Red Army in Russia and of any support for forces opposing the Red Army.
d. A stop to the installation of new machinery that would reduce the work force necessary in the shipyards.
During World War I, the government imposed wage controls, keeping the wages of Seattle shipyard workers down even as the shipyards expanded through war production contracts. Following the war, the workers expected a raise in their wages; when denied, approximately 25,000 members of the Metal Trades Council union alliance went on strike. A general citywide strike followed, with about 35,000 other workers striking in support of the shipyard protest. The strike officially ended on February 11—though not before touching off a widespread "Red Scare."
4. On December 30, 1936, the workers at Flint, Michigan's General Motors automobile plant began a six-week long strike to press for better working conditions. Organized by the United Auto Workers, the strike used what relatively unusual technique to make its point?
a. Strikers not only stopped working during the strike, but left town entirely, taking their families with them.
b. Strikers remained entirely silent during the strike.
c. Strikers, instead of picketing outside of the factory, occupied the factory, preventing upper management and law enforcement from entering.
d. Strikers sabotaged the factory's power supply, re-sabotaging it whenever plant management repaired it.
Known as the Flint Sit-down Strike, this strike used techniques later adapted by the civil rights movement. On December 30, workers sat down at their places and refused to leave the factory for six weeks. Provided food and supplies by supporters, the workers repelled attempts by the police to drive them out and even initiated the surprise takeover of another plant in the last two weeks of the strike.
The map of the 1920 concentration of manufacturing establishments was generated by the University of Virginia Library's Historical Census Browser. The browser provides searchable census data for 1790 through 1960, with the option to visualize any data selections in maps such as the one above; all of the categories mentioned in Question One are categories available on the website. For Teachinghistory.org's review of the Historical Census Browser, go here.
Teachinghistory.org's reviews the Library of Congress's American Memory collection Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887 here.
The Seattle General Strike Project looks at the 1919 general strike through primary sources, including photographs, video clips, newspaper articles, and oral histories. The website is part of the University of Washington's larger Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, collecting primary sources on civil rights and labor movements throughout the city's history. NHEC reviews the Project here.
Historical Voices provides a website on the Flint Sit-down Strike: Remembering the Flint Sit-down Strike: 1936-1937. The website provides close to 100 oral history interviews with strikers, as well as essays on the events of the strike. NHEC's review of the website can be found here.
Federal Census figures demonstrate the migration of people from state to state and from region to region over the years. Below are three maps depicting the migration rate (the rate of net domestic migration per 1,000 people), each covering a five-year period. Match each map to the period it represents.
1.
b. 1965-1970
2.
a. 1935-1940
3.
c. 1995-2000
Overall, the census data describes the following pattern of migration flow between California and the other states, showing the periods 1955 to 1960 in red and 1995 to 2000 in blue:
All of these maps are from Trudy A. Suchan et al's Census Atlas of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007), available online, as well as in print. Check out Chapter 7, "Migration," for further data and visualizations on migration trends.
Interested in exploring the census further in the classroom? Teachinghistory.org's Lesson Plan Review The First Census: America in 1790 leads students to examine census data for insights into the politics behind the Great Compromise and the Three Fifths Compromise at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Don't be turned away by its long name—the Selected Historical Decennial Census Population and Housing Counts website houses more than 21 historical census reports and the history of each U.S. census taken. The United States Census Bureau, of course, also provides a wealth of census data and tools for accessing and assessing the data. And for census data stretching from 1790 to 1960, try the University of Virginia's United States Historical Census Data Browser.
What year did each of these fashion advertisements appear in the newspaper?
1.
1915
2.
1925
3.
1917 (Note the military accents.)
4.
1905.
5.
1935.
6.
1910.
7.
1940.
8.
1895.
9.
1955.
10.
1960.