Acids and Bases: Testing Rocket Cars
A car propelled by the reaction between lemon juice and baking soda has more in common with rockets and jet aircraft than one might think. In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, two cast members demonstrate the power of rocket-propelled vehicles and how to exploit the force produced by the carbon dioxide gas. Grades 3-8.
"Almost Broken Spirits": Farmers in the New South
In the decades following the Confederacy's 1865 defeat and the abolition of racial slavery, white southern landowners, entrepreneurs, and newspaper editors heralded the coming of a "New South" economic order. Freed from the plantation system, the South would enter the modern age, building factories to turn its cotton into cloth, its tobacco crop into finished cigars and cigarettes, and its growing coal and iron ore output into steel. But not all southerners benefited from a prosperous and indust
"All Men Are Born Free and Equal": Massachusetts Yeomen Oppose the "Aristocratickal" Constitution, J
The constitution of the United States was composed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Afterward, ratifying conventions were held in the states. In Massachusetts, site of the previous year's Shay's Rebellion against government enforcement of private debt collection, ratification did not go uncontested. Farmers from the western part of the state, such as the "yeomen" who signed this letter published in the Massachusetts Gazette in January, 1788, were suspicious of the power that the constituti
"Aint I A Woman": Reminiscences of Sojourner Truth Speaking
Isabelle Van Wagenen was born enslaved in New York State and became a well-known abolitionist speaker under the name Sojourner Truth after gaining her freedom in 1827. She moved to New York City where she engaged in evangelical and other reform activities; at various points she also lived in several utopian communities. Truth supported herself by traveling and speaking on abolitionist and women's rights subjects, taking the name Sojourner Truth in 1843. She often faced opposition at her speaking
Against Isolationism: James F. Byrnes Refutes Lindbergh
The interwar peace movement was arguably the largest mass movement of the 1920s and 1930s, a mobilization often overlooked in the wake of the broad popular consensus that ultimately supported the U.S. involvement in World War II. The destruction wrought in World War I (known in the 1920s and 1930s as the "Great War") and the cynical nationalist politics of the Versailles Treaty had left Americans disillusioned with the Wilsonian crusade to save the world for democracy. Senate investigations of w
A Word of Warning: A Former Slave Urges Constitutional Caution
The South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895 completed the process of disenfranchising African-Americans (and many poor whites). The state's restrictive policies began with the election law of 1882 that used an intricate system of eight ballot boxes to discourage illiterate white and black residents from voting. The 1895 convention added a poll tax and literacy test, thereby ensuring that a coalition of remaining black voters and disaffected whites could not unite to challenge Democratic
A Thorn in the Side: A Socialist Takes Aim at Gompers
During the 1890s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was faced with both the rising popularity of the People's Party in rural areas and attempts by the Populist movement to create a farmer-labor alliance. At the same time, socialist trade unionists lobbied for greater political involvement and adoption of several key socialist positions by the AFL. One of those socialist trade unionists was J. Mahlon Barnes, a Philadelphia cigar maker, member of the Cigarmakers' International Union, and memb
A Show of Support: Farmers Feed Homestead Strikers
In 1892 the possibility of a Labor-Populist alliance circulated. Populist orators like Mary Lease sought to build ties between the Farmer's Alliance and the labor movement by mobilizing farmers to send wheat and corn to striking workers at Carnegie's Homestead steel mill outside Pittsburgh. Despite the support for such an alliance among many in the labor movement, American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers opposed such political action. Gompers insured that the A.F.L maintained, in his w
A Pledge of Allegiance: Joining the Grange
When the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry was first organized in Minnesota in December 1867, its goals were primarily social and educational. The organization spread rapidly throughout the agricultural Midwest, attracting more than 850,000 members by 1875. The Grange's purpose also expanded--it experimented (unsuccessfully) with cooperatives, and, angered by hard times, tight money, and high railroad shipping rates, moved into politics. Members elected sympathetic state legislators wh
"A Modern School": Abraham Flexner Outlines Progressive Education
In the early 20th century, an impressive array of intellectuals, social critics, and grassroots activists came together to launch a progressive education movement that sought broad-based change in American educational practice. At the heart of the progressive program lay a pedagogy that emphasized flexibility and critical thinking. This was coupled with the belief that schools should establish organic relationships with their communities, that curricula should confront broad social issues, and t
"A Man's Thanksgiving": A Hymn to the God of Business
President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes required to accommodate a commercial civilization. An even more forceful publicist for the view that business and spirituality were compa
"A Little Standing Army in Himself": N. A. Jennings Tells of the Texas Rangers, 1875
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought an enormous chunk of Mexico to the United States. This added to the territory obtained by the annexation of Texas in 1845, but more than just territory was added. More than 75,000 Spanish-speaking residents became U.S. citizens, but the struggle to achieve that citizenship was long and often unsuccessful. Mexican-Americans lost political power and civil liberties quickly in Texas. Justice was hard to secure and the ranching country of South Texas b
A Letter Home From Massachusetts Bay in 1631
Over 20,000 migrants from England crossed the Atlantic to the new colony of Massachusetts Bay in the decade of the 1630s. This sudden influx of settlers became known to historians as the "Great Migration." Once in New England, they quickly dispersed to various towns. About forty families followed Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Reverend George Phillips four miles up the Charles River to found the community of Watertown in July 1630. Many had relocated from the East Anglian region of England, whe
"A Foreigner in My Own Land": Juan Nepomuceno Seguin Flees Texas, 1842
Few Anglos lived in San Antonio after the Texas Revolution of 1835-36 and Tejanos (Texas-Mexicans) continued their rule. Juan Nepomuceno Seguin was born into a prominent tejano family and had close ties with Stephen Austin, leader of the first American settlers in Texas. He became mayor or alcade at an early age and fought on the Anglo side with the coming of Texas' revolt against Mexico. However, his political situation increasingly became fragile because of the changing balance of power and An
17.100J Political Economy I: Theories of the State and the Economy (MIT)
Political Economy I explores the major social science paradigms for analyzing relations among state, economy, and society. Through readings, lectures and discussion of original texts in political liberalism and individualism, neo-classical economics, Marxism, sociological and cultural theories, and neo-institutionalism, the seminar examines the fundamental assumptions on which our understanding of the social world and our research are based. All participants in the seminar are required to do the
"A Heritage of Scorn": Harper Urges A Color-Blind Cause
The struggle for woman suffrage lasted almost a century, beginning with the 1848 Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, and including the 1890 union of two competing suffrage organizations to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA and other organizations campaigned diligently for the vote in a variety of ways, but did not achieve success until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. This prolonged struggle entangl
"A German Beer Garden on Sunday Evening."
Between 1820 and 1860, 1,500,000 immigrants arrived in America from Germany. Many of the new arrivals who settled in cities such as New York worked as shopkeepers and skilled tradesmen, although many more worked as employees in construction, brewing, and manufacturing. Although German immigrants did not mix politics and liquor, reformers were disconcerted by the atmosphere of their social establishments. Unlike the bars in Irish neighborhoods, the beer gardens catered to whole families. As this
Global Development Policies and Social Injustice
The Sixth Goal of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases such as tuberculosis. In Bolivia, a country with a population of over 8,000,000 people, it was claimed in 2006 that there were 2366 confirmed cases of HIV. According to the World Health Organization, Bolivia is considered to be a country with a low incidence of the virus affecting 0.10% of the adult population. In contrast, it has been estimated that 50% of the population is infected
A Clear and Present Danger: The Chinese Exclusion Act
The San Francisco Building Trades Council (BTC), organized in 1898, actively participated in the anti-Asian agitation that characterized California politics, particularly labor politics, in the late-19th century. The BTC, like the national American Federation of Labor (AFL), argued that the very presence of Chinese (and, after 1900, Japanese and Korean immigrants as well) dragged down the living standards of white workers. The following excerpt is from a 1902 AFL pamphlet entitled Some Reasons f
Weather Watchers
Students are introduced to some essential meteorology concepts so they more fully understand the impact of meteorological activity on air pollution control and prevention. First, they develop an understanding of the magnitude and importance of air pressure. Next, they build a simple aneroid barometer to understand how air pressure information is related to weather prediction. Then, students explore the concept of relative humidity and its connection to weather prediction. Finally, students learn
