Professor Ira Katznelson argues that U.S. government policies, beginning in the 1930s, favored white citizens over black citizens in practice, even if the policies' wordings were race-neutral. He discusses this in relation to affirmative-action policies favoring minorities today.
Audio and captioned video options are available.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, explores the history of the American West in the 1930s and 1940s. He examines the broad transformations that took place in the West during the New Deal, but also draws attention to some deeper structures in the West that did not change during that time.
What makes the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt's presidency particularly exciting to teach in history classrooms today? In part, apparent parallels between current events and history. The downward spiral of the Dow Jones, continued news about job layoffs, failures of financial institutions, economic stimulus plans, and executive and legislative initiatives evoke the specter of the 1930s.
The internet is full of classroom resources for teaching about the New Deal—arguably, perhaps more than for any other era. We've highlighted a few below that serve as gateways to this internet wealth and a few that address specific subjects and content.
During his first 100 days in office, President Roosevelt set an unprecedented legislative pace, sending 15 requests to Congress for action—all of which Congress passed. How FDR Made the Presidency Matter (The New York Times, January 16, 2009) summarizes Roosevelt's record-breaking legislative achievements. (This article is an entry in The Times 100 Days Blog that offers a historical perspective of the first 100 days in office of five 20th century presidents: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Blog entries compare their experiences with those of President Obama.)
Don't miss this! The March edition of History Now, a quarterly journal from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, focuses on multi-faceted approaches to learning about and to teaching the Great Depression. In this issue: The Great Depression: An Overview, historian David Kennedy roots the causes of the economic crisis in World War I and discusses the state of the nation during the 1920s, and the New Deal and its effects. Other content areas include lesson plans for elementary through high school including women, the Dust Bowl, migrant farmworkers, popular culture; an exhibit from New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum; and a variety of additional resources from historians, archivists, and educators.
Annenberg Media's series, America's History in the Making, the film, Film 18, By the People, For the People looks at how a new relationship between individuals and the government arose in the face of plummeting agricultural exports, the stock market crash, and environmental disaster all led to an unprecedented economic depression. Sign up for Video on Demand, a free service of Annenberg Media, in order to access series films.
According to A New Deal for the Arts, an exhibit from the National Archives, during the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the early years of World War II, the Federal government supported the arts in unprecedented ways. For 11 years, between 1933 and 1943, federal tax dollars employed artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers, and dancers. Never before or since has our government so extensively sponsored the arts. These archival materials explore categories of art—visual artists, writers, filmmakers, for example—and discuss examples and their creators.
Picturing U.S. History: an interactive resource for teaching with visual evidence, is a digital project from City University of New York and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Developed on the premise that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past, Lessons in Looking, a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities, helps teachers incorporate this visual evidence into their classrooms. In March 2009, George Mason University professor, Barbara Melosh focuses on teaching the Great Depression through photographs, political cartoons, comics, graphics, prints, and posters. A series of thoughtful essays and comments describes, annotates, and contextualizes selected visual works from the 1930s.
Best History Websites: US History Great Depression may be the gateway motherlode. This briefly annotated list is divided into three sections: Great Depression in the News; General Information; and Lesson Plans, Teacher Guides, Activities and More. Among the helpful resources: Teaching K-12 Economics and Taking Stock in the Past for the Future: Examining the Causes and Effects of the 1929 Stock Market Crash Through News Coverage in The New York Times, a 1999 lesson plan from New York Times Learning Pages.
New Deal Network is an educational guide to the Great Depression of the 1930, sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College/Columbia University and funded in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Document Library. The site is both a gateway and a resource center to just about any imaginable resource on The Great Depression, and includes Lesson Plans, K-12. (NHEC's Lesson Plan Reviews evaluates the approach of one of the Network's lesson plans for elementary school, Children's Letter's to Mrs. Roosevelt).
At Edsitement, the lesson plan, Worth a Thousand Words: Depression-Era Photographs, gives guidelines for working with the image library of the New Deal Network.
America in the 1930s, a project, developed by the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, allows visitors to view the 1930s through films, radio programs, literature, journalism, museums, exhibitions, architecture, art, and other forms of cultural expression. The site itself is best for students in high school and above; however, it contains excellent resources, such as audio of 1930s radio programs, that teachers can use with students of any age. Materials are most easily accessed through the organized Site Index.
The H-net discussion group, H-US1918-45: the New Deal Era and Its Origins offers an extensive cafeteria of Resources for Teaching. It's a gateway to a variety of materials spanning World War I through World War II. Resources include course syllabi for college and university classes (including that of noted 20th century historian, Alan Brinkley) which, in turn, lead to further web-based resources; categorized links to primary source websites, photographs and images, posters, maps, audio files and video from American Memory and History Matters, The Crash, FDR Archives, and more.
The online interactive exhibit, A New Deal for Texas Parks demonstrates local impact of New Deal Programs—in this case, the Civilian Conservation Corps, who constructed the first state parks in Texas. Visitors are invited to flip through the pages of the scrapbook to explore how individuals, communities and landscapes in Texas were impacted by the New Deal Era, to explore primary source materials (including music, oral history videos, and newsreels) and to create a personal scrapbook of materials. The exhibit is thematically organized, and at the beginning of each thematic chapter, a PDF file with questions guides content exploration.
Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter and Columbia University Provost Alan Brinkley discuss the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, the subject of Alter's recent book, The Defining Moment: FDR’s First Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope. The book contends that the first 100 days were not only the beginning of the New Deal, but also "the climax to a piece of political theater," which had begun years earlier when Roosevelt overcame polio and public perceptions of him as an elitist lightweight.
More than 2,300 firsthand accounts of slavery and 500 black and white photographs of former slaves are presented on this website. These materials were collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Project Administration, a Roosevelt Administration New Deal bureau.
Each slave narrative transcript is accompanied by notes including the name of the narrator, place and date of the interview, interviewer's name, length of transcript, and catalog information. Each photograph has similar notes. Browse photographs and narratives by keyword, subject, and narrator. An introductory essay discusses the significance of slave narratives and a selection of excerpts from eight narratives along with photographs of the former slaves. This is a rich resource for exploring slavery, historical memory, and New Deal efforts to document America's past.
Earlier in April, we highlighted a few resources for teaching about the New Deal, but here's one addition well worth checking out.
An exhibition, 1934: A New Deal for Artists, is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery until January 2010, and a multifaceted, online educational website complements this display.
Curator Elizabeth Broun explains The Public Works of Art Project of the New Deal. "Artists were encouraged to portray 'the American Scene.' With this minimal guidance, they turned to local and regional subjects and created a picture of the country striving to survive through hard work and true grit. They were inspired by the idea that their art would be displayed in public spaces for broad audiences." It was the first time the United States government provided direct support to artists.
The website encourages visitor immersion in the works of art—regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life. The 1934 artists reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community, and optimism.
An Exhibition Slide Show is open to public comments and shared stories.
A flash presentation takes visitors into a virtual movie theater where virtual curators talk about picturing the 1930s, provide historical context, explanations of individual paintings, and the chance to create movies with personal collections. Movies are created using Digital Storyteller created by primaryaccess.org. (Be forewarned: navigation is a little complex in this component, but well-worth the exploratory effort. It's a good idea to visit How is This Site Organized.)
Mapping 1934 lets visitors see where the exhibition's artworks were painted.
The museum has also created a 1934 Flickr group to share the nearly 400 related artworks and objects from its collection. New images are added each week both by the museum and members of the public who choose to join the group. Comments, stories, and new images are invited and welcome.
From PBS:
An ambitious engineer turned a ragtag army of unemployed into a celebrated work force to create the Hoover Dam, a colossus rising 700 feet above the Colorado River that became a beacon of hope in dire times, bringing electricity and water to millions in the U.S. west.
This American Experience documentary traces the creation of the Hoover Dam, located between Arizona and Nevada.
From the Library of Congress website:
"The origins and legacy of the Federal Writers' Project are the focus of an excerpted film screening and panel discussion."
Journalist Kirstin Downey talks about Frances Perkins, the subject of her book The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. As secretary of labor during FDR's presidency, Perkins initiated social-welfare reforms in areas including unemployment, child labor, immigration, and work-week length.
According to the lecture's page on the Library of Congress website, "The "New Deal" Franklin Delano Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration on March 4, 1933. The multifaceted social, cultural, and fiscal recovery program aimed to reform and reinvigorate national life, and to end the Great Depression. Many New Deal administrators believed that art could be a part of the daily lives of all Americans, not just the elite, and could enrich the lives of all who came in contact with it. [. . . ]
Leading scholars present recent research based on New Deal materials, showcasing how innovative interpretation of the Library of Congress's archival holdings continues to inspire new revelations and reassessments of 20th-century American culture. Speakers include human rights activist Stetson Kennedy, who presents "Working for the New Deal: A Voice from the Era"; historian Michael Kazin from Georgetown University, who presents the keynote address; and Christopher Brieseth, from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute at Hyde Park, N.Y., who provides a summation of the two days in his presentation on "Lessons from the New Deal for the 21st Century." Other scholars discuss topics as varied as the Native American contributions to the Federal Writers Project, WPA marionette theaters, and how New Deal researchers documented topics as diverse as traditional music, religion, and Puerto Rican culture."