A Golden Opportunity for Science
A Golden Opportunity for Science is an educational exercise developed by the Bureau of Land Management. This exercise uses activities about gold to teach science, centering on the following information: how the pursuit of gold shaped society; metaphors, myths, lores and legends about gold; the mineral properties of gold; lode deposits and placer deposits; mining and recovery of gold; and the technology of heap leaching. There is also a debate between different interest groups involving a small g
"Conclusions and Recommendations by the Committee of Six Disinterested Americans"
U.S. marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. By 1919, Haitian Charlemagne Péralte had organized more than a thousand cacos, or armed guerrillas, to militarily oppose the marine occupation. The marines responded to the resistance with a counterinsurgency campaign that razed villages, killed thousands of Haitians, and destroyed the livelihoods of even more. In 1926 the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) organized a committee to look into conditions in Haiti and offer alt
Ballad to a Massacre: Private Prather's Portrait of Wounded Knee
In 1888 Plains Indians enacted a religious ritual seeking delivery from white domination, which took the form of a five-night dance (dubbed the "Ghost Dance" by whites). Two years later, the U.S. Army extinguished this vision of hope and defiance at the battle at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890. W. H. Prather, an African-American private in the Ninth Cavalry and the regimental poet, wrote "The Indian Ghost Dance and War," which recounted in ballad form the military's perspective on the m
Copyright in relation to Wendy Cope
The Poetry Foundation website features an article and user comments on using Wendy Cope's poetry and how she enforces her copyright strongly. It discusses the issues around using Cope's and other's poetry in your own work.
Im internet sprachen lernen
This learning object is in German, and considers how the internet can be used to practise speaking in German.
"Their Own Hotheadedness": Senator Benjamin R."Pitchfork Ben" Tillman Justifies Violence Against Sou
In this March 23, 1900, speech before the U.S. Senate, Senator Benjamin R. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina defended the actions of his white constituents who had murdered several black citizens of his home state. Tillman blamed the violence on the "hot-headedness" of Southern blacks and on the misguided efforts of Republicans during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War to "put white necks under black heels." He also defended violence against black men, claiming that southern whit
The Los Angeles Dressmakers Strike of 1933: Anita Andrade Castro Becomes a Union Activist
In October 1933 Chicana dressmakers in Los Angeles launched a citywide strike against the sweatshop conditions under which they toiled. An interview with Anita Andrade Castro, a young dressmaker who went on to become a longtime union activist, provided glimpses of the experience of the rank-and-file strikers. In two excerpts from a long interview done in 1972 by historian Sherna Gluck for the Feminist History Research Project, Castro described, first, her initiation into the union and, second, h
"The Greatest Tyrant in the State of Pennsylvania": A Late Nineteenth-Century Rail Worker Describes
Although publicists for the Gilded Age corporations celebrated efficiency and the science of management, their employees did not always join the celebration. What looked like careful and disciplined management from one perspective was often viewed as petty tyranny from below. While some workers assailed upper management for this abuse others experienced the tyranny more directly in their day-to-day work lives. In this transcript taken from testimony before the U. S. House of Representatives in t
"The Baby Was Made 'Delegate No. 800'": Frances Willard Meets Elizabeth Rodgers in the 1880s
The commitment of the Knights of Labor to equality for women was more than rhetorical, as seen in the career of Elizabeth Rodgers, the Master Workman, or head, of the organization's giant Chicago District No. 24. This 1889 portrait of Rodgers, offered by leading national anti-liquor activist Frances Willard, underscored the desire on the part of many Knights, both men and women, to connect the struggle for labor reform with a broader vision that included vehement opposition to liquor. It also sh
"Still Livin' Under the Bonds of Slavery": Minnie Whitney Describes Sharecropping at the Turn-of-the
The emergence of the sharecropping system in the South in the last three decades of the 19th century rested on an uneasy compromise between black farming families and the white landowners on whose land they labored. Sharecropping was an oppressive system but the experience of sharecropping families varied. In this interview done by historian Charles Hardy in 1984, Minnie Whitney, born in 1902, described the determined efforts of more progressive farmers like her father, who along with her mother
LONDON
A set of photos showing the sights of London
Race and Racism at the 1886 Knights of Labor Convention
The annual convention of the Knights of Labor that convened in Richmond, Virginia, on October 4, 1886, took place in a region riven by racial and political conflict. The convention and the Knights, the most powerful labor organization in late 19th century America, were quickly plunged into conflict over the organization's attitudes toward the question of social equality between the races. A major controversy erupted over whether or not Frank J. Ferrell, a black representative of the Knights' pow
"Organize among Yourselves": Mary Gale on Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression
The Communist-led Unemployed Councils were the first and the most active of the radical movements that sought to mobilize the jobless during the Great Depression. In this interview, which is taken from the radio series "Grandma Was an Activist," relief worker Mary Gale, who was sympathetic to radicals and the jobless, described how she worked behind the scenes to encourage her clients to organize and demand better treatment. The jobless and the poor had few advocates for them, and radicals like
"Oh God, For One More Breath": Early 20th century Tennessee Coal Miners' Last Words
Coal mining and railroad work were the two most dangerous trades in the United States in the early 20th century. Coal miners frequently died in spectacular explosions and cave-ins that could kill dozens or even hundreds at a time. Although most testimony about coal mining disasters came from survivors and observers, the men who suffocated to death in the Fraterville, Tennessee mines in May 1902 left behind their own grim account. Trapped in the mine after an explosion and with their air rapidly
Movie Dreams and Movie Injustices: A Black High-School Student Tells What 1920s Movies Meant to Him
Fears about the impact of movies on youth led to the Payne Fund research project, which brought together nineteen social scientists and resulted in eleven published reports. One of the most fascinating of the studies was carried out by Herbert Blumer, a young sociologist who would later go on to a distinguished career in the field. For a volume that he called Movies and Conduct (1933), Blumer asked more than fifteen hundred college and high school students to write "autobiographies"of their expe
Kate Richards O'Hare's Life as a Socialist Party Organizer
In her autobiographical essay, "How I Became a Socialist Agitator," which was first published in Socialist Woman in October 1908, Socialist Party organizer Kate Richards O'Hare credited her career as a "Socialist agitator" to her youthful exposure to poverty and "sordid suffering." As she explained in this essay, her disillusionment with the church and a talk by labor organizer "Mother"Jones further pushed her toward socialism.
"It Was Considered Low Music": Pianist Eubie Blake on the Birth of Ragtime at the Turn of the Centur
Ragtime music, with its syncopated, polyrhythmic style, was born, according to cultural historian Robert Snyder, in the 1890s in the black saloons and brothels of southern and Midwestern cities like Baltimore and St. Louis. By the end of the 19th century ragtime had assumed a place at the center of American popular music and remained there until the 1920s. Ragtime meant a tinkling piano and no one played the ragtime piano any better or longer than Eubie Blake, born in Baltimore in 1887. In this
"It Set the Indian Aside as a Problem"A Sioux Attorney Criticizes the Indian Reorganization Act
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which became known as the Indian New Deal, dramatically changed the federal government's Indian policy. Although John Collier, commissioner of Indian affairs who was responsible for the new policy, may have viewed Indians with great sympathy, not all Native Americans viewed the Indian New Deal in equally positive terms. In this 1968 interview with historian Joseph H. Cash, attorney Ramon Roubideaux, a Brule Sioux, denounced the Indian Reorganization Act as
"I'm Going to Fight Like Hell"Anna Taffler and the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s
The Communist-led Unemployed Councils mobilized jobless men and women in hundreds of local communities to demand jobs and better treatment from relief authorities. In these excerpts from a recorded interview, Anna Taffler, a Communist activist and a Russian Jewish immigrant, described how her own experience of facing eviction pushed her into organizing the unemployed. She also talked about the focus of local councils on issues like fighting for more relief and stopping evictions.
"I Will Kill Frick": Emma Goldman Recounts the Attempt to Assassinate the Chairman of the Carnegie S
Henry Clay Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, was demonized by labor for his role in the violent Homestead strike in 1892 in which a pitched battle was fought between strikers and company-hired Pinkerton detectives. Known for his uncompromising and cruel tactics, Frick became an obvious target for labor activists looking to make a statement during the protracted strike. In this excerpt from her autobiography, Living my Life, radical Emma Goldman described how fellow radical Alexander
