Donald L. Miller, with Waldo E. Martin, Jr., and Virginia Scharff, looks at the Progressive era (from 1890 to 1926) as it was experienced by minority groups, including women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian and Mexican immigrants.
From the Library of Congress website:
"As an illustrator and journalist, Tracy Sugarman covered the nearly one thousand student volunteers who traveled to the Mississippi Delta to assist black citizens in the South in registering to vote. Two white students and one black student were slain in the struggle, many were beaten and hundreds arrested, and churches and homes were burned to the ground by the opponents of equality. Yet the example of Freedom Summer resonated across the nation. The U.S. Congress was finally moved to pass the civil rights legislation that enfranchised millions of black Americans.
Blending oral history with memoir, We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns chronicles the sacrifices, tragedies and triumphs of that unprecedented moment in American history."
Donald L. Miller, with Pauline Maier and Louis P. Masur, looks at the institution of slavery in the United States, from 1819 to 1854. The presentation examines economic differences between the North and the South; slave culture; slave resistance, including Turner's Insurrection; and the depiction of slavery and slaves in art and media.
Donald L. Miller, with Virginia Scharff, Douglas Brinkley, Stephen Ambrose, and Pauline Maier, follows American history from 1803 to 1861. Focusing on Westward Expansion, the presentation begins with the Louisiana Purchase and continues on to examine transportation available in this time and the development of a slave-based economy in the South.
Donald L. Miller, with Pauline Maier and Virginia Scharff, follow the growth of the British American colonies from 1663 to 1763, examining the expansion of the economy (and of the slave trade), population increase, the development of slave culture, social structure (particularly in the city of Philadelphia), political trends, the life of Benjamin Franklin, and the French and Indian War.
In 12 short video clips, scholar J. Douglas Smith analyzes cartoons on massive resistance, a 1950s campaign led by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., to resist desegregation following Brown v. Board of Education.
In 16 short video clips, scholar Chandra Manning looks at the song "John Brown's Body," the events it relates to, and its evolution over time.
In 11 short video clips, scholar Chandra Manning demonstrates scholarly analysis of letters by Civil War soldiers.
In 11 short video clips, Smithsonian curator Barbara Clark Smith analyzes John Smith's 1612 map of Virginia.
The National Portrait Gallery's Warren Perry tells the story of a portrait of author and photographer Eudora Welty (1909-2001).