US History II

Today’s workshop concerns the Iran-Contra Affair (scandal, controversy, crime, pick your title). Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Wed 4/2 Troubled Innocence. Reading: Chapter 25. Primary Source paper is due

Links for class:
Duck and Cover (1951)
See the USA in Your Chevrolet (1953)
Two Ford Freedom (1956)
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
Camel News Caravan nightly newscast from 1952
Crisis in Levittown (1957)
In the Suburbs (1957)

Fri 4/4 Liberal Consensus. Reading: Chapter 26, up to p. 836. Exam Study Guide will be given out.

Mon 4/7 Workshop Day – bring textbook. Reading: Documents from Chapter 25-26

Wed 4/9 Discussion Day on Postwar America. Reading: Rest of Ch 26 and Review Ch 23-26

Study Guide Google Doc for Exam 3’s Terms

Fri 4/11 Exam #3 (Chapters 23-26). As before, you may bring a prepared double-sided 8.5×11″ sheet of paper

Assignment for Today: Each group will address one of these questions below, using the documents in our textbook. By the end of class each group should leave a comment here, responding to your assigned question.

Question 1: Using the evidence in Documents 23.1 – 23.5, which of these is the more correct statement and why?
World War II transformed racial and gender relations in the US.
World War II reinforced traditional racial and gender relations in the US.

Question 2: How should the end of the war be remembered? Whose point of view needs to be acknowledged, respected and included? Try writing a brief account of the end of the war that follows your own advice. Use Documents 23.6 – 11

Question 3 (laptop based): What physical resources, and what moral reasoning, did official American messages employ to build support for the conflict? How did war promotional materials construct World War II as a just, or even a “good” war? What kinds of commitments were being asked of the American people? Use any of these media documents:

WW2 Radio and Film Propaganda Examples (requires Windows Media Player)
Internet Archive: Films Made by the Office of War Information
Internet Archive: Audio recordings w/ keyword “World War II: Homefront”
“It’s Everybody’s War” (20th Century Fox)
Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front

Question 4: After 1945, the new postwar historical context included both the reality of atomic weapons, and a deep ideological standoff between “the West” and the USSR. How did this context affect understanding of foreign affairs and the US’s role in them? Use Documents 24.1 – 5

Question 5: In the 1940s and early 1950s, many Americans feared internal threats as well as those in international relations. Using Documents 24.6 – 10, answer these questions: In what different ways would HUAC and the witnesses appearing before it have defined “un-American”? What gave HUAC and the broader cultural movement now termed “McCarthyism” so much power at the time?

“I have in my hand…”

Anticommunism dominated American politics and culture in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The name of the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, has since become synonymous with the entire Second Red Scare era, although his own political career peak was only from 1950 to 1954. McCarthyism seemed to many a kind of cultural hysteria, a madness, infecting Congress and Washington, Hollywood, workplaces, and public life. To others, it was a deadly earnest effort to keep America free from subversion and potential nuclear annihilation.

Inspired by the NCAA tournament (March Madness), today’s workshop is a Sweet Sixteen bracket of primary sources relating to Senator McCarthy and McCarthyism. Who will dominate?

Working in groups, you have ten minutes to decide the winner between various sets of primary sources by trying to convince the other team your document is more important/interesting/useful to historians. By 15 past the hour, we will have our champion #1 source of the McCarthy era.

Remember to use your primary source analysis skills as you build your case: Who wrote or made this? When? Why? What does it say? What does it NOT say? What point of view or political ideology does it express? How could historians use it now; what message does it provide about McCarthy or his cultural context?

Some of the documents are in paper form, others you’ll need to access online:

Herblock Cartoons (pick ONE winner in the first round from your assigned group of 3)

Newsman Edward R. Murrow’s closing oratory for his TV show “See it Now” March 9, 1954

1952 Wisconsin Republican Primary Campaign Brochure, “What Has McCarthy Done for Wisconsin?”

Senate Censure of Joseph McCarthy (1954)

Use these links to navigate to the resource you picked up on the assignment sheet and use today’s class time to study the resource online. If you chose a book, there’s a stack in the front of the room you can select from. Remember to leave about 5-10 minutes at the end to compose a comment to this post sharing your findings and insights from this workshop with the rest of the class. Your submitted comment is my record of your attendance and participation in today’s workshop.

(These are in alphabetical order)

Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Chinese in California, 1850-1925 (Library of Congress American Memory)
Chronicling America Historical Newspapers
Colorado Historical Newspapers Collection
Custer Battlefield Museum
Daniel Freeman’s Homestead Application, 1862
Denver Public Library photographs (Library of Congress American Memory)
Digital Archives of Sioux County Nebraska
Edward Curtis’s North American Indian (Library of Congress American Memory)
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
Little Bighorn National Monument
“Mythbusters” from students in HI 207 American West Course, Fall 2009
“No Renters Here” – Homesteading a Sod House
Plains Indian Ledger Art
Rawhide
Stagecoach (directed by John Ford, 1939)
Texas Border Photographs (Library of Congress American Memory)
Texas Ranch House
Texas State Historical Association – Handbook of Texas Online
Utah and Western Migration (Library of Congress American Memory)
Worcester State Library – Articles and Databases
Wyoming Newspaper Project

Lots of clips for today!

First, some pictures
A kid and his TV https://secure.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/2513320483/
Vintage TV sets on exhibit at San Francisco Airport http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum/exhibitions/terminal3_exhibitions/north_connect/tv/12.html

Commercials
Two Ford Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gkxC5rnbi8
See the USA with Dinah Shore https://www.myspace.com/video/cybotron/dinah-shore-quot-see-the-usa-in-your-chevrolet-quot/5888049
Brylcreem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6F4GtyRfto
Lucky Strike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYsAgcPtqU
Twinkies on Howdy Doody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyfCxrKW3XY
Spic & Span https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrOeRAPJazY

Programs
Lone Ranger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5xpQ84B30Q
Queen for a Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggV8Uwhnmq8
Bishop Sheen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVBXzf4eUJg
Elvis on Milton Berle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x0uKy5GfMw
I Led Three Lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTaPCSG1-_I
Donna Reed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-uh3XbUMfY
Abbot and Costello do “Who’s on First” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nti08LWtxJI
CBS “See It Now” (this one from 23 Dec 1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8rSxsDwjoQ

A Reconstruction overview

What to do for Friday:

Read the syllabus
Consider your personal goals for this class and your individual “track” within the course
Read EH Table of Contents, Introduction and Ch 17. Understand the multiple meanings for the word “RECONSTRUCTION”
Write your first SkillBuilder, on the “Wet With Blood” website – Guidelines here (PDF) – it’s due in or before class on Friday
Prepare to vote on the deep units & bring your ballot to class

Links for in-class viewing on Fri 12/2

9/11 Ten Years Later (History Channel)
George W. Bush Address to the Nation, 9/11/2001

Wednesday’s class  on 12/7 will be focused on addressing your questions, curiosity and knowledge gaps about 9/11/2001. Remember to keep our Unit 5 model in mind. Start with the event itself: what happened, and what did it mean? Then work either forwards (legacy, consequences, short and long-term effects) or backwards (what do you need to know in order for this event to make sense to you?).

Choose your own reading from the list below; these include resources, articles, videos, curriculum lesson plans, and other material from 9/11/2001 and the 10-year commemoration earlier this fall. Take a close look through at least one of these links, and read more if you feel you need more.

September 11 Digital Archive

Time Magazine special issue 9/2011 – “Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience”

New York Times, “9/11: The Reckoning”

Wall Street Journal 9/12/201,1 “America Grieves, Reflects”

History.com resources on 9/11: Ten Years Later

Resources on 9/11 Commemoration from the National Council for Social Studies

“Understanding 9/11” Resource Guide for Educators from the Foreign Policy Research Institute

“9/11 as History” – lesson plans and programs for kids K-12

9/11 Commission Report (2004) http://www.9-11commission.gov/

Handouts so far:
Unit 3 overview + atomic bomb documents (4 pages)
Kennan Telegram + NCS-68 excerpt (2 pages)

Powerpoint slides for Monday, 10/24 lecture on the origins, key documents, politics, and foreign policy strategies of the early Cold War (1945-1952)

Useful links:

Interactive map of Europe in the 20th century (BBC)
George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” from Moscow in 1946 (full text online)
Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, delivered March 1946
Economic Recovery Act of 1948, aka “The Marshall Plan”
The Truman Doctrine speech, 1947
NSC-68, 1950 top-secret policy report, declassified in 1975 (see the full page-by-page scan at the Truman Library)
Digital History, Cold War (online textbook)
Cold War Museum