Disability History Museum

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Image, "The Polio Chronicle," Bolte Gibson, 1932, Disability History Museum
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This ongoing project was designed to present materials on the historical experiences of those with disabilities. The website currently presents nearly 800 documents and more than 930 still images dating from the late 18th century to the present.

Subjects are organized according to categories of advocacy, types of disability, government, institutions, medicine, organizations, private life, public life, and personal names. Documents include articles, poems, pamphlets, speeches, letters, book excerpts, and editorials.

Of special interest are documents from the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation Archives, including the Polio Chronicle, a journal published by patients at Warm Springs, Georgia, from 1931 to 1934. Images include photographs, paintings, postcards, lithographs, children's book illustrations, and 19th-century family photographs, as well as postcard views of institutions, beggars, charity events, and types of wheelchairs.

Brown v. Board of Education

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Photo, Protester, 1961, Brown v. Board of Education
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Created in anticipation of the 50-year anniversary of the monumental Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, this website covers four general areas. These include Supreme Court cases, busing and school integration, school integration in Ann Arbor (home of the University of Michigan), and recent resegregation trends in America. The site contains a case summary and the court's opinion for each of 34 landmark court cases, from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Brown includes transcripts of oral arguments, as well. Visitors can also read the oral histories of five members of the University of Michigan community who remember the Brown decision and its impact. There are more than 30 photographs of participants in the Brown case and other civil rights activists, as well as a collection of documents pertaining to desegregation in the Ann Arbor Public School District. A statistical section details the growing number of African Americans in Michigan and Ann Arbor schools from 1950 to 1960.

Researching Adolescent Immigrant History

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photographic print, Young Greek Shoe-Shiners, April 1912, Lewis Wickes Hine, LO
Question

I am a geography teacher in Los Angeles, CA. I want to teach about immigration to California from other countries to my 9th-grade students. Most of my students either have immigrant parents or are immigrants themselves. Do you have any suggestions as to where I can find resources about teen or child immigrants throughout history?

Answer

It’s great to hear that students are learning geography and I like your idea of using immigration, past and present, to help them learn this subject. A focus on children and teens only makes the plan more exciting, and I hope you find some resources that will fit your teaching goals and context in the set below.

California History Online

You may want to start with the go-to site for teaching K–12 California history, Calisphere. This site, produced by the California Digital Library at the University of California Libraries, has essays, texts, and images relevant to the history of California and its place in regional, national, and international events. Browse their collection on immigration here.
Search the site using the key phrase ”child immigrant” and you get hundreds of results including texts and images. Learn more about four groups, including African Americans and Hispanic Americans, by starting on their page, “California Cultures.”

Also check out the Library of Congress’s American Memory sites, California As I Saw It: California, 1849–1900 or Chinese in California, 1850–1925. At the latter site, one of the things you can find through an “immigration” search are official “certificates of residence.” Using one of these can provoke all kinds of questions from students and enable making connections to the present.

Focus on Children and Immigration

Additional potentially useful sites that address this topic include:

Print and Community Resources

Off-line, you may want to check out Phillip Hoose’s book, We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History. Here you will find short essays about specific young people in the past, both the famous and more obscure.

And don’t forget to check out your local museums, libraries, and independent bookstores. Often they have local history collections and programs that can help you make history come alive!

Good luck!

Little Cowpuncher: Rural School Newspaper of Southern Arizona

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Drawing, Ciara, From Little Cowpuncher, Redington School, November 20, 1932
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A work in progress, this site presents the southern Arizona school newspaper, Little Cowpuncher. Created by Anglo and Mexican American ranch children, from kindergarten through 8th grade, between 1932 and 1943 at five neighboring Arizona schools (Redington, Baboquivari, Sasco, San Fernando, and Sopori), the newspapers present the original and unedited stories, poems, and illustrations of students about their community and school life. The site includes a map that identifies the location of the five schools and users may select which newspaper they wish to examine by school and by year.

The newspapers include many stories about holiday celebrations, especially Halloween and Christmas. Also frequently featured are tales of rodeo activities and issues dedicated to graduating classmates. Other local events, such as an outbreak of chicken pox and droughts offer a unique perspective on the students' isolated rural lives.

Although the site is simply designed, middle and high school students and teachers will find that the newspapers present an opportunity to study pioneer Mexican and American ranch families and understand the bilingual and bicultural communities they created in Southern Arizona.

American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900

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Logo, Readex
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This subscription-only website presents an extensive archive of documents relevant to early U.S. history, offering full-color facsimile images of approximately 30,000 broadsides and ephemera. Advertisements, campaign literature, poems, juvenile literature, and Civil War envelopes comprise the bulk of the collection, making the archive especially valuable for those interested in early American consumer culture, political campaigns, and literary life. The collection also contains rich information on slavery, Native American relations, and local events—plays, gatherings, and religious events.

Users can browse the archive by category: Genre, Subjects, Author, History of Printing, Place of Publication, and Language. Simple and advanced searches are available, enabling easy access into this large collection of documents. For those with access, this site provides an extensive resource for researching 18th- and 19th-century North America.

Girls’ Labor and Leisure in the Progressive Era

Question

Why is girlhood historically significant in this era?

Textbook Excerpt

The central focus of U.S. textbook chapters on the Progressive era is the historical agency of reformers who expanded public education, reformed industry, and organized to abolish child labor. Textbooks focus on adults more than children and on boys more than girls.

Source Excerpt

The sources show that Progressive reformers focused primarily on the “boy problem” as the major social crisis facing American cities. Sources reveal the anxieties of adults as well as the agency of girls who worked for wages, organized strikes, played on city streets, contributed to household economies, and participated in American society.

Historian Excerpt

Historians studying the Progressive era have examined the nature of reform, reformers, and those they sought to reform. They found that the middle-class notions reformers held about womanhood, childhood, and girlhood conflicted with the beliefs of immigrant working-class parents, as well as with the ideas and practices of a new generation of young people.

Abstract

The historical agency of adult reformers and the issues they championed in regard to children—principally child labor and education—are the focus of most textbook chapters on the Progressive era. However, shifting the focus to the labor and leisure of Progressive-era girls complicates the picture of adult do-gooders helping vulnerable “have nots.” Capable girls contributed to the growth of their families, communities, and country by producing goods, consuming commodities, and organizing workers. In the process, girls defied traditional gendered beliefs nurtured by immigrant parents and the ideals of girlhood fostered by middle-class reformers. Although both parents and Progressives sought to contain “wayward girls,” immigrant and urban working-class girls who embraced new commercial entertainments created a vibrant subculture that transformed American culture and society in the 20th century.

Television News of the Civil Rights Era

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Image for Television News of the Civil Rights Era
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In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was covered on news stations around the country. This website provides 230 of these video clips from two local television stations in Roanoke, Virginia. Clips feature both national events, such as the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, as well as footage of local school desegregation, protests, and interviews on the street.

Accompanying this footage are 14 oral histories (several from Virginians with firsthand knowledge of the Prince Edward Public Schools closing), and 23 documents that chronicle the official development of Massive Resistance in Virginia, in particularly the involvement of Senator Harry F. Byrd. "Essays and Interpretation" provides important historical context and analysis, with detailed pieces on "Virginia's Massive Resistance to School Desegregation" and the development of television news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia and Mississippi.

Colonial Williamsburg

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Photo, Asynchronous Fashion Photography Interactive, Colonial Williamsburg.
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Intended to promote tourism to Colonial Williamsburg, this website is also rich in educational resources. Visitors may "Experience the Life" by selecting one of 12 categories, ranging from animals to food to the African-American Experience; and will find information and resources about each topic. For example, visitors can learn about colonial clothing for men, women, and children. There is a paper doll game where players must assemble the various layers of colonial clothing in the proper order. Selecting the link "See the Places" allows users to virtually visit 27 buildings, including the prison (Public Gaol), the Capitol, and eight colonial sites, including Market Square and Duke of Gloucester Street. "Meet the People" allows visitors to learn about prominent Williamsburg natives, such as the Randolph family, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry; or meet more diverse groups, like African Americans or colonial children.

The "Teacher Resource" section allows educators to virtually tour Colonial Williamsburg or learn about the science of mapping colonial America. It also provides 18 lesson plans for exploring such topics as the colonial reaction to the Stamp Act or the murder trial of Abigail Briggs. Listen to the audio review:.

Children's Books Online

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Illustration, Pinkie says good-bye, Margaret Clayton, From Bunny Brothers
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This website's library offers full versions of more than 700 classic children's books indexed by age/interest reading levels (pre-readers and very early readers, early readers, intermediate readers, advanced readers, and adult readers). Such classic tales as Jack and the Beanstalk, Mother Goose, Three Blind Mice, Tom Thumb, The Ugly Duckling, Peter Rabbit, Puss in Boots, The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Pinocchio are available on the site.

A number of the books are available in multiple languages. The site's Eye in the Ear section offers audio tracks accompanying select children's books. And its Super Index offers a full listing of the available stories, poems, rhymes, book chapters, and illustrations. For those researching children or children's literature, this site is a treasure trove.

Child Labor in America, 1908-1912: Photographs of Lewis W. Hine

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Image for Child Labor in America, 1908-1912: Photographs of Lewis W. Hine
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Furnishes 64 photographs taken by Lewis W. Hine (1874–1940) between 1908 and 1912. Images document American children working in mills, mines, streets, and factories, and as "newsies," seafood workers, fruit pickers, and salesmen. The website also includes photographs of immigrant families and children's "pastimes and vices."

Original captions by Hine—one of the most influential photographers in American history—call attention to exploitative and unhealthy conditions for laboring children. A background essay introduces Hine and the history of child labor in the United States. This is a valuable collection for studying documentary photography, urban history, labor history, and the social history of the Progressive era.