Alcohol, Temperance, and Prohibition

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Image, "Who will pay the beer bill?,", American Issue Publishing Company
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This small, but useful, website offers a wide range of primary source material for researching the history of the prohibition movement, temperance, and alcoholism. The more than 1,800 items include broadsides, sheet music, pamphlets, and government publications related to the temperance movement and prohibition.

Materials come from the period leading up to prohibition, such as an 1830s broadside on the "Absent Father" as well as the prohibition era itself, such as a 1920 pamphlet entitled, "Alcohol Sides with Germ Enemies." They end with the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933.

All digitized items are in the public domain. An essay, "Temperance and Prohibition Era Propaganda: A Study in Rhetoric" by Leah Rae Berk provides an overview of the topic and historical context.

Idea of America

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Photo, 2007 Powwow, Ken Rahaim, Smithsonian Institution, Flickr Commons
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The Idea of America invites student discussion concerning the historical and present day manifestations of ideals such as unity and diversity, equality and freedom, common wealth and private wealth, and law and ethics. Note that high school students and educators comprise the intended audience.

The website is divided into two major portions—Current Events and the Virtual Republic. Current Events offers more than 80 case studies, each of which includes an introduction, key questions (ex: "What makes the nation decide it is the right time to expand the promise of freedom and equality?"), questions connecting these broader key questions to the specific current event, and links to news columns and videos. Recently added topics include women in the military; the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell; and the line between hate speech and First Amendment rights protection.

The Virtual Republic is the place for debate. Here, students are encouraged to write and publish statements on their opinions, beginning with "We believe. . . " These statements can form the basis for debate or support among schools and student groups across the country. Participation requires free student and teacher registration. Students engage as active citizens, and essentially form a microcosm of the Great Debate which has existed throughout the history of the United States.

Research & Reference Gateway: History - North America

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Logo, Rutger's University Libraries
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This site furnishes hundreds of links to primary and secondary sources on North American history. An eclectic collection, it includes links to library catalogs throughout the world, archival collections, texts, journals, discussion lists, bibliographies, encyclopedias, maps, statistics, book reviews, biographies, curricula, and syllabi. Materials are arranged by subject, period, and document type. Try "History-North America" for the widest variety of vetted sources. Special resource collections include "America in the 1950s," "New Americans: American Immigration History," "The Newark Experience," "U.S. Business History," "U.S. Labor and Working Class History," and "Videos on the U.S. and American Studies."

Papers of John Jay

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Portrait, John Jay
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This site is a compilation of the unpublished papers of founding father John Jay, dating from 1745 to 1829. It is comprised of nearly 14,000 pages scanned from Jay's manuscripts and related materials. Abstracts and bibliographic notes accompany the scanned images. The primary documents are difficult to read in the original handwriting and they have not yet been transcribed. The quality of some of the images is also poor, although users can enlarge and enhance them. The records are searchable by name of writer, date of composition, name of holding institution, and accession number. Keyword searching of the abstracts, which vary in length and informational detail, is also possible.

Users will find letters from such prominent individuals as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. The correspondence deals with New York, anti-slavery, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, international affairs, and state government and politics. Those unfamiliar with Jay and his historical significance should be sure to visit the site's four thematic pages, each containing an essay (500 to 800 words) with links to documents. The site also includes a 1,300-word brief biography and a more than 50 item bibliography of relevant sources.

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.

Scales of Justice: A History of Supreme Court Nominations

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According to Backstory:

Just in time for the Kagan confirmation hearings, BackStory is delving into the long history of appointments to the Supreme Court. What qualities did presidents and lawmakers look for in Supreme Court justices 200 years ago, and how have those expectations changed? How much have nominees’ personalities and backgrounds mattered in the past? Was the confirmation process always as “politicized” as it seems today? Was it more so? How has media coverage affected the process? Join the History Guys as they explore the highlights – and lowlights – of Supreme Court nominations past.

Cayuga Museum of History and Art and the Case Research Lab [NY] Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/08/2008 - 13:38
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The Cayuga Museum of History and Art presents the history and culture of the Auburn, New York area. The museum is located within the 1836 Willard-Case Mansion, with the permanent exhibit addressing the history of the Auburn Correctional Facility. The Case Research Lab preserves the site where the first commercially successful talking film technology was developed. The site includes the darkroom, chemistry lab, recording studio, exhibits on talking film ventures, recording equipment, and the first sound camera.

The museum offers exhibits, guided tours, and thematic slide presentations. Reservations are required for guided tours.

Rosa Parks Museum [AL]

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The Rosa Parks Museum presents the history of the events of and the people involved in the 1955 and 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The museum is located at the site of Rosa Parks' refusal to give her seat on a Montgomery public bus to a Caucasian man. Following Parks' arrest, many African American residents boycotted the bus system as a protest against segregation. In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregation of buses unconstitutional. Collections include a replica of the aforementioned bus. The children's wing offers a sensory "time travel experience," which presents life under early Jim Crow laws.

The museum offers exhibits and a research center.

Legal Information Institute: Supreme Court Collection

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Logo, Cornell University Law School
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This site, maintained by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell University Law School, is a database containing synopses of cases sent to the United States Supreme Court from 1990 to the present. The site is also linked to more than 600 of the Supreme Court's most historically important decisions, from Marbury v. Madison (1803) to Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000). Four "Focused Collections" of cases deal with the Amistad case of 1998 in which movie director Stephen Spielberg was accused of plagiarizing portions of his movie script; 13 of the most important administrative law cases from 1947 to 1984; seven copyright law decisions from 1952 to 1994; and 12 patent law decisions from 1950 to 1995. The database is searchable by the names of the involved parties, the dates on which the case came before the Supreme Court, or the docket number. There is a link to general information about the court, including a Supreme Court case calendar, schedule of oral arguments, a biography and decision list for each current justice, a text of the rules of the Supreme Court, information about the Court's authority and jurisdiction, and a glossary of terms encountered in the Court's written opinions. The site also contains ideas for using the website for teaching, but these ideas, and the site itself, are geared more toward law students, and perhaps undergraduate upper-division legal history classes, than college survey or high school teaching. The site is somewhat difficult to understand and, despite the keyword searchable database, a bit confusing to navigate. Nevertheless, it is a good site for advanced research on Supreme Court cases.

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1945-1972

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Logo, US Department of State
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Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity, with material culled from Presidential libraries--including transcripts of tape recordings--and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of published volumes. For the Truman Administration, the site provides "1945-50, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment." Three volumes are available for the Eisenhower years, on American republics, Guatemala, and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Cyprus. The Kennedy Administration is represented by 25 volumes that cover, among other areas, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin crisis, and exchanges with Premier Khrushchev. A complete set of 34 volumes is available on the Johnson Administration, and 19 volumes currently are furnished from the Nixon Administration. Fifty-four volumes will eventually be available on the Nixon and Ford administrations. Useful volume summaries provide historical context. FRUS volumes for 1900-1918 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/) are described in a separate entry.