AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

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Logo, AMDOCS
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Provides links to approximately 390 documents, most of which are related to the nation's political, diplomatic, military, and legal history. Arranged chronologically, the site begins with excerpts of Christopher Columbus' journal of 1492 and ends, at present, with President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 address announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq [update: documents reach from around 800 to 2007]. Includes speeches, statutes, treaties, court decisions, memoirs, diaries, letters, published books, and even a few songs. The site, created by Lynn Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas, is valuable especially for high school and college students who need easy access to many of the canonical documents in American history.

Historical Society of Topsail Island and Missiles and More Museum [NC]

Description

The Historical Society of Topsail Island operates the Missiles and More Museum. The Missiles and More Museum contains exhibits addressing Operation Bumblebee, Osprey aircraft, Camp Davis, natural history, Native American life, and pirates. Operation Bumblee was a circa 1946-1948 confidential guided missile testing program under the U.S. Navy, while Camp Davis served as an important air training center for World War II.

The society offers interactive and traditional exhibits, monthly lectures, and school and group museum tours. Reservations are required for lectures and museum tours.

Dirt on Their Skirts

Description

This electronic field trip looks at pioneering women baseball players, owners, umpires, and teams from as early as 1866, all the way up to present-day women playing and working in baseball. The common thread running through the stories examined is the efforts of women and girls to be a part of America's national pastime: baseball.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that women once played professional baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), from 1943-1954. Founded by Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley as a method to entertain Americans and keep ball parks full during World War II, the league provided an unprecedented opportunity for young women to play professional baseball; see the country; and aspire to careers beyond the traditional female roles of teacher, secretary, nurse, librarian, or housewife.

Department of Transportation: Digital Special Collections

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Logo, DoT Library
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This archival site makes available public papers and government investigative and research reports concerning the history of transportation in the U.S. It contains Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and Department of Transportation railroad accident investigation reports from 1911 to 1994, with more than 4,000 reports, as well as aircraft accident reports from 1934 to 1965, with more than 790 reports. "Turner, Fairbank, and MacDonald" papers contains more than 540 public papers of Thomas H. MacDonald, H.S. Fairbank, and F.C. Turner of the Bureau of Public Roads and later the Federal Highway Administration. These include reports, speeches, development plans, and memoranda. Fairbank's papers cover the period 1920 to 1954, MacDonald's from 1919 to 1952, and Turner's from 1947 to 1971. Other documents include civil aeronautics manuals; Federal Aviation Administration research reports; historical Department of Transportation orders; U.S. Coast Guard navigation and inspection circulars from the 1960s to the present; and reports from the 1924, 1926, 1930, and 1934 National Conferences on Street and Highway Safety. Each collection of materials can be searched individually.

American Literature on the Web

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Image, "Ralph Waldo Emerson"
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Provides thousands of links to information on and texts by more than 300 American writers from 1620 to the present. Users can search in five chronological periods for links to timelines, author's sites, related resources, music and visual arts, and "social contexts." Also contains specific categories for electronic text collections, U.S. History, American Studies, poetry, movements and genres, Southern literature, women writers, literary theory, reference works, and "minority literature/multi-cultural resources," including categories for African-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, and Latino/Latina writers. Authors represented include famous literary figures such as Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), Anna Bradstreet (ca. 1612-72), Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), Emily Dickinson (1830-86), and Ralph Ellison (1914-94); important public figures, such as William Byrd (1674-1744) and Frederick Douglass (1818-95); and lesser-known figures, such as John Woolman (1720-72) and Amelia Edith Barr (1831-1919).

Offers images of many writers, links in Japanese, a section devoted to Canadian authors, a master list of authors in alphabetical order, and "two site-specific search engines" for word searches of this site and others. Last updated in December 2001, many links are no longer operable; however, as a gateway, it offers an abundance of usable links in a well-designed format for those needing resources on American writers and their times.

Fort Worden State Park and the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum [WA]

Description

For Worden State Park consists of 434 acres of land and shoreline surrounding and incorporating the remains of Fort Worden, which was in use between the late 1800s and 1953. Key sites include historic structures, the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum, and the Commanding Officer's Quarters. The quarters portray a late Victorian (1890-1910) period setting. The Coast Artillery Museum focuses on artillery mechanisms used to defend Puget Sound between the late 1800s and circa 1945.

The site offers period rooms, exhibits, and picnic sites.

Contemporary Supreme Court Approaches to Constitutional Interpretation, Part Two

Description

Professor Ralph A. Rossum examines the ways in which recent and current U.S. Supreme Court Justices interpret or seek to interpret their duties and the founding documents of the U.S. He looks at what precedents and interpretations of the Founders' intent are incorporated in contemporary justices' thought.

This lecture continues from Contemporary Supreme Court Approaches to Constitutional Interpretation, Part One.