14 to 18 years

Spartacus, USA History, British History, Second World War, First World War,
Wed Directory, Teaching History, Education on the Internet, Search Website, Email

 

Child Labor in the United States: In 1900 approximately two million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States. The 1900 census, which counted workers aged 10 to 15, found that 18.2 percent of the country's children between those ages were working. The census report helped to spark a national movement to end child labor in the United States. It took organizational form in 1904 with the founding of the National Child Labor Committee. The movement combined moral outrage, new interpretations of the value of childhood, and dire warnings about racial and national decay to mobilize support for strict regulation of child labor. Equating child labor with slavery, some argued that the country had not faced such a serious moral problem since the Civil War. Jim Zwick's excellent website provides a wealth of information on the campaign that took place to bring an end to child labor in the United States.

Wall Street Crash: On 29th October, 1929, investors sold sixteen million shares at a loss of $10 billion, twice the amount of money in circulation in the whole country at the time. This website provides an overview of the crash and attempts to answer the questions: Why did so many people in the U.S. invest in the stock market during 1929? What caused the 1929 Crash? How did the US Government reaction to the crash? Did the Stock Market Crash Cause the Great Depression?

Depression Papers of Herbert Hoover: A large collection of primary documents concerning President Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Subjects covered include Tariffs and Agriculture, Economic Stability Program, Relief, Unemployment and Public Works, The Dust Bowl, Banks & Finance, The Federal Budget, Economic Recovery Measures and the Bonus March.

Bonus Marchers: In 1924 Congress voted $3,500,000,000 to the American veterans of the First World War. In order to prevent an immediate strain on its funds, the Government decided to pay the money over a 20 year period. During the Great Depression, many of these veterans found it difficult to find work. An increasing number came to the conclusion that the money would be more useful to them in this time of need than when the bonus was due. In 1932 John Patman of Texas, introduced the Veteran's Bonus Bill which mandated the immediate cash payment of the endowment promised to the men who fought in the war. This website explains what happened when 10,000 of these ex-soldiers marched on Washington in an attempt to persuade Congress to pass the Patman Bill.

New Deal Network: In October, 1996, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI), in collaboration with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Marist College, and IBM, launched the New Deal Network (NDN), a research and teaching resource on the World Wide Web devoted to the public works and arts projects of the New Deal. At the core of the NDN is a database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts (speeches, letters, and other historic documents from the New Deal period). Currently there are over 20,000 items in this database, many of them previously accessible only to scholars. Unlike many databases on the Web, which represent the holdings of a particular institution, NDN is drawing from a wide variety of sources around the country to create a theme-based archive.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Fireside Chats:A week after his Inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the first of what became known as his fireside chats. On 12th March 1933 an estimated 60 million people sat round their radio sets to listen to Roosevelt's talk on the Bank Crisis. This website is devoted to these fireside chats and includes the transcripts of 30 talks including those on the New Deal Program (7th May 1933), Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program (24th July 1933), Works Relief Program (28th April 1935), Reorganization of the Judiciary (9th March 1937), the European War (3rd September 1939) and Declaration of War With Japan (9th December 1941).

Roosevelt and the New Deal: A comprehensive encyclopedia of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Each entry contains a narrative, illustrations and primary sources. The text within each entry is hypertexted to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hypertexted so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper, organization, etc., that produced the material. So far there are sections on New Deal Personalities (22), New Deal Legislation (18) and New Deal Photographers (18).

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Museum, and Digital Archives, is an on-line resource devoted to fulfilling Franklin Roosevelt’s dream of making the records of the past available "for the use of men and women in the future." Through this site, scholars, teachers, students and members of the general public can now gain access to a portion of the rich collection of documents, photographs, sound and video recordings, finding aids, and other primary source materials found at the library in Hyde Park, New York.

Debunking the Roosevelt Myth: The home page of this website states: "Urban myths abound in modern culture. One of those myths surrounds the life and presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America's 32nd President. To this day, he is credited with pulling America out of the Great Depression. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Roosevelt was hardly a learned man. He knew little about economics either in theory or practice. He was indeed a great orator, but that was the extent of his gifts." The website provides links to online e-books hostile to Roosevelt including The Roosevelt Myth (John T. Flynn), Communism at Pearl Harbor (Anthony Kubek), Roosevelt's Road to Russia (George N. Crocker) and The Yalta Betrayal (Felix Wittmer).

Roosevelt and the New Deal: A directory of the best websites on Roosevelt and the New Deal. It provides links to over 50 websites including the New Deal Network, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDR Cartoon Archive, Anticommunism and the New Deal Federal Art, The Four Freedoms, Roosevelt's Administration, New Deal Cultural Programs, Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Federal Writers' Project.

Father Coughlin: On 11th November, 1934, Father Charles E. Coughlin announced the formation of the National Union of Social Justice and began his bid to oust President Franklin D. Roosevelt from power. At this time some observers claimed that Coughlin was the second most important political figure in the United States. It was estimated that Coughlin's radio broadcasts were getting an audience of 30 million people. He was also apparently receiving 400,000 letters a week from his listeners. According to Wallace Stegner "Father Coughlin had a voice of such mellow richness, such manly, heart-warming, confidential intimacy, such emotional and ingratiating charm, that anyone tuning past it on the radio dial almost automatically returned to hear it again." This website traces the rise and fall of America's first radio star.

Munitions Investigating Committee: On 4th September, 1934, Gerald Nye and his Munitions Investigating Committee began interviewing witnesses and examining government documents. In the reports published by the committee over the next two years it was claimed that there was a strong link between the American government's decision to enter the First World War and the lobbying of the the munitions industry. This website looks at the impact that the Munitions Investigating Committee had on America's foreign policy before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The White House: The official website of the White House provides a large number of detailed biographies of people associated with this important building (organized under the headings of President, Vice-President and First Lady). There is also a online tour, a trivia quiz and information on the paintings in the White House.

Joe Hill: When Joe Hill heard he was to be executed by firing-squad on 19th November, 1915 he sent a message to Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World saying: "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." This PBS online story of Joe Hill explores the history of the nation as it struggled with issues of justice, opportunity, and the American Dream.

Tom Mooney: In a survey carried out in Europe in 1935 and it was discovered that the four best known Americans were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles A. Lindbergh, Tom Mooney and Henry Ford. The reason that Tom Mooney was on this list was because at the time there was an international campaign to get him freed from San Quentin Prison. Mooney had been convicted of throwing a bomb into the midst of a military parade in San Francisco during the First World War. He was sentenced to death but in 1918 this was commuted to life imprisonment. By this time the American government knew the truth about the case as the Secretary of Labor, William Bauchop Wilson, had arranged for a dictaphone to be installed in the private office of the District Attorney in San Francisco and had discovered that Mooney had been framed. Despite this information being reported in the national press, Mooney was not released from prison until Culbert Olson became Governor of California in 1939. This website provides biographies of all the main characters involved in this tragic case.

Dwight David Eisenhower: A collection of websites on Dwight D. Eisenhower run by the Internet Public Library. Links are collected under the following headings: Internet Biographies, Presidential Election Results, Cabinet Members, Notable Events, Historical Documents, Media Resources and Points of Interest.

Character Above All: Produced by PBS the website contains a collection of essays on ten American political leaders. This includes Franklin D. Roosevelt (Doris Kearns Goodwin), Harry S. Truman (David McCullough), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Stephen E. Ambrose), John F. Kennedy (Richard Reeves), Lyndon B. Johnson (Robert Dallek), Richard Nixon (Tom Wicker), Gerald Ford (James Cannon), Jimmy Carter (Hendrik Hertzberg), Ronald Reagan (Peggy Noonan) and George Bush (Michael Beschloss).

Civil Rights in the USA A comprehensive encyclopaedia of the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Each entry contains a narrative, illustrations and primary sources. The text within each entry is hypertexted to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hypertexted so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper, organization, etc., that produced the material. So far there are sections on: Campaigners (1860-1900), Campaigners (1900-1980), Issues, Events & Organizations (1840-1900) and Issues, Events & Organizations (1900-1980).

Martin Luther King Jr: Few have had as much impact upon the American consciousness as the late civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In recognition and support of his ideals of quality and fairness for all, The Seattle Times created a Web site in 1995 that celebrates this important historical figure. Since then, educators from throughout the United States and the world have used the site as a teaching tool. The site includes stories culled from The Seattle Times over the past decade, as well as archival information such as a photo gallery and audio clips of King's speeches. There's also a quiz and civil rights timeline. One of the most fascinating features of the site is its message board, which contains heartfelt tributes to King from people of all ages all over the world. The site has proven very popular, registering over 1 million page views each January and February.

Encyclopedia Britannica Guide to Black History: This website features 600 informative articles on Black History. The material is illustrated with historical film clips and audio recordings, as well as hundreds of photographs and other images. Eras in Black examines five centuries of black heritage through five distinct time periods, from the slave revolts of early America through the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Each era is further divided by topic, with biographies and photographs of notable people and descriptions and documents of historic events. The Timeline of Achievements traces the yearly contributions of African-Americans in politics, industry, the arts, religion, sports, and education. The website also includes a Study Guide for Students, which is organized around six classroom activities, each with their own teacher recommendations, technical tips, and scholastic bibliographies.

Africans in America: This excellent PBS website on slavery in America is presented in four parts. The Terrible Transformation (1450-1750), Revolution (1750-1805), Brotherly Love (1791-1831) and Judgement Day (1831-1865). For each era there is a historical narrative, a resource bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a teacher's guide for using the content of the website.

Martin Luther King Jr. Project: The King Papers Project is a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and the social movements in which he participated. Initiated by the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, the website includes sections on papers, speeches, sermons, autobiography, chronology and articles.

Black History Museum: This creative website provides several interactive exhibits on Black History. This includes Black Resistance: Slavery in the U.S., The Tuskegee Airman, Jackie Robinson, Black Panther Party, Black or White, The Million Man March, The Scottsboro Boys and This Is Our War. There is also a Kid's Zone with a collection of games and brain teasers.

Rosa Parks Portal: On December 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks changed America forever when she was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white patron on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. Mrs. Parks was found guilty of disorderly conduct and that lead directly to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. However, Mrs. Parks was not the "quiet seamstress" as the media has often portrayed her. In 1943 she became a member of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and she served as its secretary until 1956. After the Bus Boycott, Mrs. Parks lost her job and, with her husband and mother, relocated to Detroit in 1957. The Rosa Parks Portal claims to be the web resource directory for all Rosa Parks sites online.

Voices From History: The Nation journal has assembled a package of articles and resource material on Black History. The selections, all originally published in the pages of The Nation over the past 135 years, feature articles that illuminate the magazine's steadfast commitment to racial justice. The selected pieces take on many different subjects and come from many different perspectives. This includes articles by Jesse Jackson (1991), Alice Walker (1989), James Baldwin (1980), Martin Luther King (1965), Leroy Jones (1964), I. F. Stone (1956), W. E. B. Du Bois (1956), Langston Hughes (1926) and George Schuyler (1926).

Legacy of Harry T. Moore: As leader of the Florida Progressive Voters League, Harry T. Moore succeeded in tripling the enrollment of registered black voters. By 1945 over 116,000 black voters were registered in the Florida Democratic Party. This represented 31 per cent of all eligible black voters in the state, a figure that was 51 per cent higher than any other southern state. Moore was also a full-time organizer of the NAACP in Florida and he organized the campaign against the wrongful conviction of three African Americans for the rape of a white woman in Groveland, Florida. Willis McCall, the Sheriff of Lake County, shot two of the men while in his custody. One was killed and other man was seriously wounded. After the shooting Moore called for the McCall's suspension. A month later, on 25th December, 1951, a bomb exploded in Moore's house killing him and his wife. This excellent website produced by the PBS tells the story of the first NAACP official killed in the civil rights struggle.

NAACP Timeline: The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was founded by a multiracial group of activists on 12th February 1909. For more than ninety years, the NAACP has been built on the individual and collective courage of thousands of people. People of all races, nationalities and religious denominations, who were united on one premise - that all men and women are created equal. This timeline provides details of the activities and achievements of the NAACP.

Scottsboro Case: The film Scottsboro: An American Tragedy and this companion website offer insights into topics in American history including race relations, civil rights, the Depression, the Communist Party of the United States, and judicial due process. You can use part or all of the film, or delve into the rich resources available on this website to learn more about this tragic case. Teaching activities on the website are grouped into 4 categories: history, economics, geography, and civics.

McCarthyism: A comprehensive encyclopaedia of McCarthyism. Each entry contains a narrative, illustrations and primary sources. The text within each entry is hypertexted to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hypertexted so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper, organization, etc., that produced the material. So far there are sections on: Events, Issues & Organizations, Communist Spies, The Investigators, The Informers and Blacklisted.

Questia: McCarthyism: Questia is an online library that provides access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences. You can read every title cover to cover. The content - selected by professional collection development librarians - is not available elsewhere on the Internet. To complement the library, Questia offers a range of search, note-taking, and writing tools. These tools help students locate the most relevant information on their topics quickly, quote and cite correctly, and create properly formatted footnotes and bibliographies automatically. The section on McCarthyism includes McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare McCarthyism, the Fight for America, The Intellectuals and McCarthy, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective, The Great Red Menace and Cold War Fugitive: A Personal Story of the McCarthy Years.

The Korean War: This impressive website has been produced by the US Department of Defense to commemorate the 1.8 million veterans who served in the Korean War. There are sections entitled History of the Korean War, Medal of Honor Recipients, Images, Just for Teachers and Frequently Asked Questions. The site also includes interviews with 14 soldiers who took part in the war.

Kennedy Assassination: Ever since the death of John F. Kennedy on 22nd November 1963 investigators have speculated on the people responsible. This website provides a collection of articles on the subject including The Special Group (Sue Morrison), Jeff Orr (Cover Up), Dirty Politics (Mark Edwards), Magic Bullet (Mary Tracy), Vietnam Connection (Mat Wilson) and Secret Service (Vince Palamara).

Assassination of John F. Kennedy: John McAdams' website provides a comprehensive overview of the issues, with pages on Dealey Plaza, the Single Bullet Theory, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, the movie "JFK," Jim Garrison's New Orleans investigation, and theories linking the assassination to the CIA and the Vietnam War. A key purpose of the site is to debunk the conspiracy theories and conspiracy factoids that have dominated public perceptions of the assassination. Thus it is especially useful to people who have read mostly conspiracy books, or seen one or more conspiracy videos, or seen the movie "JFK" and want to know the "rest of the story." There are numerous primary sources, including Oswald's own political writings, witness testimony, FBI reports, video and audio clips, and numerous photos.

Collective Memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most important conflicts of the cold war period. This was the first time that the two superpowers had come so close to starting a nuclear war. This website run by Brown University is a collection of individual accounts of the crisis. It is also possible to add your own story to the collection.

Cold War: To complement CNN's Cold War documentary series, CNN Interactive, has created this outstanding website on the subject. Created by a team of more than a dozen editors, writers and producers, the Cold War website includes interactive maps, rare archival footage online, biographies of key figures and recently declassified documents. An added attraction is the facility for visitors to tour Cold War capitals through 3-D images.

John F. Kennedy: The main objective of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is to advance the study and understanding of President Kennedy's life and career and the times in which he lived; and to promote a greater appreciation of America's political and cultural heritage, the process of governing and the importance of public service. The library's website includes a detailed biography and a collection of speeches and photographs.

The Cold War: The Cold War International History Project disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War. The project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former "Communist bloc" with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources. It also seeks to transcend barriers of language, geography, and regional specialization to create new links among scholars interested in Cold War history. Among the activities undertaken by the project to promote this aim are a periodic Bulletin and other publications to disseminate new findings, views, and activities pertaining to Cold War history.

The Cold War: There are 6 galleries in the Public Record Office Cold War Exhibition, each containing a number of case studies. Each Case Study is designed so that it can be used as a 'stand alone' item in one or two classroom sessions. However, each Case Study in a Gallery is linked to form a more coherent area of research. This has been done to give students and teachers the maximum amount of flexibility. Each Gallery is accompanied by a timeline and a glossary to help students and teachers in putting the source material into context. Each source is accompanied, where appropriate, by useful notes and a transcript. At various points throughout the Exhibition, there are links to other websites where extra information or other resources can be found.

Harry S. Truman: The Presidential Years: At the Truman Presidential Museum & Library there is a 10,500-square-foot exhibition of the major issues and events of Harry S. Truman's presidency. There is now a website version of this exhibition and it includes sections on: First Four Months, Decision to Drop the Bomb, Postwar Challenges, Europe 1947, Origins of the Cold War, Recognition of Israel, Second Term, Cold War Turns Hot, America 1952, Leaving Office, Legacy Gallery and A Living Legacy.

San Francisco Earthquake: The Museum of the City of San Francisco website provides several online exhibitions. This includes a detailed account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Sections include Timeline, Newspaper Clippings, Eyewitness Accounts, San Francisco Fire Department Report, Police Department Report, Map of the Earthquake, Seismograph Readings, Engineering and Scientific Reports, Relief & Recovery Efforts and Photographs of the 1906 Disaster.

American Labor Unions: Helen Marot (1865-1940) worked as a librarian in Wilmington, Delaware, before moving to Philadelphia to open her own private library on social reform. In 1903 Marot joined with Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, Margaret Haley, Agnes Nestor, Florence Kelley and Sophonisba Breckinridge to form the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). She is today best remembered for her book American Labor Unions. This pioneering work on the early history of the trade union movement in the United States is now available from the BoondocksNet Editions website.

American Memory is a project of the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress. More than 5 million items relating to American history are available from the unparalleled collections of the Library. American Memory's collections include materials ranging from the papers of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, to Civil War photographs and early films of Thomas Edison, to panoramic maps and sound recordings, and to documents relating to the women's suffrage and civil rights movements.

Prohibition: In 1869 members of the temperance movement in the United States formed the Prohibition Party. Its primary objective was to secure the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks The party reached the peak of its vote in 1888 and 1892 at just over 2 per cent of the popular vote total. However, its greatest success was in persuading Congress to pass the 18th Amendment in 1920. This website includes background information on America's third oldest political party and a collection of cartoons published on the subject of prohibition.

Frances Perkins: In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins as his Secretary of Labor. Perkins, America's first woman cabinet member, was a controversial choice. The former chairman of the New York State Industrial Board (1926-29) was a well-known radical and campaigner for women's rights, unemployment insurance, child welfare and better working conditions. This website, produced by the Social Security Administration, is dedicated to the achievements of this remarkable woman.

Labor Hall of Fame: Elevation to the American Labor Hall of Fame is arrived at by a selection panel composed of distinguished historians, academicians, trade union officials and government leaders, past and present. A single honoree is chosen each year, and so far the website includes biographies of Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, James P. Mitchell, Terence V. Powerly, A. Philip Randolph, Francis Perkins, Sidney Hillman, Mother Jones, John L. Lewis, Walter P. Reuther, Robert F. Wagner, William Green, David Dubinsky and Cesar E. Chavez.

Watergate: This amazing website is the work of Malcolm Farnsworth, a secondary school teacher from Loreto Mandeville Hall in Melbourne, Australia. It covers in great detail the complex web of political scandals in the United States between 1972 and 1974. The material is organised under the headings: Chronology, Richard Nixon, The Tapes, Impeachment, Gerald Ford, Aftermath, Writings on Watergate, Watergate Links and Watergate News.

Watergate Revisited: Richard J. McGowan, was the chief investigator and chief-of-staff of Senator Lowell P. Weicker, an important figure in the Senate Watergate Committee. In this article from the Barnes Review, McGowan argues that the "Nixon Administration flagrantly and systematically violated constitutional rights, subverted the electoral process through illegal fund-raising and campaign sabotage, abused the federal bureaucratic machinery and willfully obstructed justice."

FBI Electronic Reading Room: These FBI documents have been taken from the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. These FBI documents have been scanned from paper copies as released to FOIPA requesters over the years. The material is organized under the headings: Espionage, Famous Persons, Gangster Era, Historical Interest, Unusual Phenomena and Violent Crime. All of these documents are in PDF (Portable Document Format) and to view them you will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in installed on your computer. The Reader can be downloaded free from Adobe's website.

Wall Street Crash: On 3rd September 1929 the stock market reached an all-time high. In the weeks that followed prices began to decline. Then on 24th October, over 12,894,650 shares were sold. Prices fell dramatically as sellers tried to find people willing their shares. That evening, five of the country's bankers, led by Charles E. Mitchell, chairman of the National City Bank, issued a statement saying that due to the heavy selling of shares, many were now under-priced. This statement failed to halt the reduction in demand for shares. On 29th October, over 16 million shares were sold. The market had lost 47 per cent of its value in twenty-six days. This website provides an overview of the Wall Street Crash, the personal accounts of several people who experienced these dramatic events and a good collection of links.

Wall Street Crash Simulation: The Wall Street Crash led to a World Depression which was partly responsible for the rise of aggressive dictatorships in Europe. In this interactive simulation, lasting about 30 minutes, students are invited to "play the stock market" and in this way learn about how a crash can occur. Students are presented with a variety of situations and have to decide whether each one will lead to share prices rising or to share prices falling.

Without Sanctuary: Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. With essays by Hilton Als, Leon Litwack, John Lewis and James Allen, these photographs have been published as a book – "Without Sanctuary" by Twin Palms Publishers. The online version of this book is now available. Please be aware before entering the site that much of the material is very disturbing. An exhibition of the photographs is currently on show at the Martin Luther King National Historic Site in Atlanta.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library: This website proudly quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt's comments on 27th September, 1938, that "the real safeguard of democracy is education". The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Educational Program website includes biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, a Roosevelt Timeline, Online Documents and Photographs, a Research Guide and Puzzles and Activities.

Huey P. Long: In February, 1934, Huey P. Long launched his Share Our Wealth Society. He told the Senate: "Unless we provide for redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed." He added the nation faced a choice, it could limit large fortunes and provide a decent standard of life for its citizens, or it could wait for the inevitable revolution. Long's plan involved taxing all incomes over a million dollars. On the second million the capital levy tax would be one per cent. On the third, two per cent, on the fourth, four per cent; and so on. Once a personal fortune exceeded $8 million, the tax would become 100 per cent. James Farley, they man who ran Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential campaign in 1932, estimated that Long, running as a third-party candidate in 1936, would win between 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 votes. Long looked like he would prevent Roosevelt from winning a second-term until his assassination in 1935. This website looks at the life and career of one of the most interesting political figures of the 20th century.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Seventy-five years ago Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists living in Boston, were executed for allegedly murdering two men during a 1920 bank robbery. The controversial verdict at the end of their six-year-long trial incited international protest - the evidence seemed to point away from Sacco and Vanzetti, and it was clear that both the judge and jury were prejudiced against immigrants with radical political beliefs. The Atlantic Monthly website includes three articles about the case. In "The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti" (March, 1927) Felix Frankfurter laid out the saga of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial from the day of the defendants' alleged crime to the day of their execution. As he interpreted it, the trial represented a tragic failure to uphold the American ideals of tolerance, equality, and justice for all and was ultimately a travesty of justice. "Vanzetti's Last Statement: A Record," by W. G. Thompson (February, 1928), consists of a transcription by Sacco and Vanzetti's lawyer, William Thompson, of the final conversation between himself and Vanzetti on the day before his clients' scheduled execution. Finally, in "The Never-Ending Wrong" (June, 1977) Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Katherine Anne Porter described the Sacco-Vanzetti verdict as the event that destroyed her idealism.

Crime Library: Mark S. Gado is a police detective with the City of New Rochelle Police Department, where he has been employed for 23 years. He is also a freelance writer and over the last 20 years his articles have appeared in many publications, including Strange Days magazine and The Law Enforcement Journal. This Crime Library website includes articles such as, The Ku Klux Klan, The History of Lynching, Lynchings in America and Lynchings in the Press.

William Bauchop Wilson: In his unpublished autobiography, William Bauchop Wilson wrote about how as a child he attended lessons with his father at Hugh Kerwin's cobbler shop. "As I look back on the group of men that formed our little circle in the early days at Arnot, many of them classed as illiterate, I am still amazed at the knowledge they possessed of many religious, social, economic, political, historical and scientific questions, their wisdom and tolerance in discussing them, and their wide acquaintance with good literature. It was a splendid school for any boy to attend." It certainly was and Wilson, as America's first Secretary of Labor, helped shape the modern United States. This excellent website is devoted to the life and work of this great man.

Triangle Factory Fire: This website provides a detailed look at the fire that took place at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City on 25th March, 1911. The fire claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers. This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. This outstanding website provides a detailed account of the disaster as well as a large collection of relevant documents and photographs.

Bill Haywood Trial: In 1905 Bill Haywood was charged with taking part in the murder of Frank R. Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho. Steunenberg was much hated by the trade union movement after using federal troops to help break strikes during his period of office. Charles Darrow, a man who specialized in defending trade union leaders, was employed to defend Hayward. This comprehensive website includes a chronology of trial related events, biographies of the main characters involved, the testimony of Harry Orchard, the prosecution and Darrow's summation and the Supreme Court decision on the case.

Rose Pastor Stokes: Near the end of May 1918, federal prosecutors tried and a jury convicted Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. The trial occurred in the United States District Court of the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City. The United States government indicted nearly two thousand people and successfully convicted about one-half of them under the Espionage Act. Relatively few were political agitators. The conviction of Stokes was important to the United States district attorney, Francis Murray Wilson, because Stokes was both a wealthy socialite and prominent socialist. This web page by Michael P. Donnelly provides a detailed account of this famous case.

Kennedy Assassination: It's the most controversial case in modern American history. Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy by himself, or did a conspiracy do it? And if a conspiracy did it, did the conspiracy include Oswald? This web site is dedicated to debunking the mass of misinformation and disinformation surrounding the murder of Kennedy. The author claims that if you are believer in Oswald as a lone gunman, you are likely to enjoy this web site, since most of that misinformation and disinformation has come from conspiracists.

Secrets of Homicide: For nearly 35 years, much of the physical and photographic evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been subjected to analysis - both professional and amateur. At the top of the list is Abraham's Zapruder's 8mm home movie, arguably the most scrutinized strip of celluloid on the planet. In early 1993, work began on a computer project aimed at adding a new level of clarity to the assassination of President Kennedy. The concept was intriguing; take motion geometry from the Zapruder film and apply it to a full-scale, 3D computer model of the assassination scene. Examples of the work can be found on this website.

Charles A. Lindbergh: In 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh became the first man to fly across the Atlantic. Over 4 million people lined the parade route in New York and the mayor, Jimmy Walker, pined the city's Medal of Valor upon him. Lindbergh became the most popular man in the United States. On 1st March 1932 Lindbergh's baby son was kidnapped from his home in Hopewell, New Jersey. He was later found dead and Bruno Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, was executed for the crime on 3rd April, 1936. Lindbergh returned to the country's front pages when he became one of the leaders of the America First Committee, a lobbying group that was determined to keep America out of the war with Germany. Lindbergh's views were highly popular until the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941. This website by PBS provides a detailed account of the rise and fall of Charles A. Lindbergh.

History Matters: Designed for high school and college teachers of U.S. History courses. This site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers useful materials for teaching US history. The website includes Many Pasts (primary documents): Making Sense of Evidence (guides for analyzing primary sources); Past Meets Present (articles and resources that link the past with current ideas and events); Reference Desk (links to resources); Digital Blackboard (teaching assignments using web resources): Students as Historians (examples of student work on the web) and Secrets of Great Historians (distinguished teachers share their strategies and techniques).

Digital History: This website was designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in schools and colleges and is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston. The materials on this website include a US history textbook; over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library, supplemented by primary sources on slavery, Mexican American and Native American history, and US political, social, and legal history; succinct essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; and reference resources that include a searchable database of 1,500 annotated links, classroom handouts, chronologies, glossaries, an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: In 1962 the world came close to nuclear war when America discovered that the Soviets were building a nuclear missile base on Cuba. President Kennedy ordered a blockade of the island and demanded that the missiles were withdrawn. No event in the Kennedy era tested the President more fully than the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Kennedy's management of this Crisis remains highly controversial. When the crisis ended many observers applauded Kennedy for standing up to the Soviets. He was hailed as a hero in the States but others have seen him as a villain. This Public Record Office website allows you to decide for yourself.

Warren Commission: After the death of John F. Kennedy, his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, was appointed president. He immediately set up a commission to "ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts relating to the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy." The seven man commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and included figures such as Gerald Ford, John J. McCloy and John Sherman Cooper. Ten months later the Warren Commission reached the conclusion that the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. The online version of the report allows you to discover how the Warren Commission came to this decision.

House Select Committee on Assassinations: In 1978 a committee in the United States was set up to look into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The report is now available on the web and includes the testimony of John Connally, Nellie Connally, Marina Oswald, Earl Ruby, Santos Trafficante, Richard Helms, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, Gerald Ford, John J. McCloy, John Sherman Cooper, Nicholas Katzenbach, Richad Helms, Thomas J. Kelley, J. Lee Rankin, Dr Charles S. Petty, Jacqueline Hess and Jack Revill.

Prouty Reference Site: Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty spent 9 of his 23 year military career in the Pentagon. In 1955 he was appointed the first "Focal Point" officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council. In this capacity Prouty was at the nerve center of the Military-Industrial Complex at a time unequalled in American History. He has written on these subjects, about the JFK assassination, the Cold War period, and Vietnamese warfare, and the existence of a "Secret Team". This website is a focal point where researchers can locate and retrieve articles, books, videos, and tapes on a variety of subjects which Fletcher has written and participated in.

The Murder of President Kennedy: Nearly 40 years later, the historical truth of the assassination of President Kennedy remains unresolved. While the passage of time has certainly muted the urgency of the debate, there are still few historical questions which engender as much interest and passion as the proverbial question: Who killed JFK? In this article by Rex Bradford looks at some of the evidence that has become available since the passing of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. Bradford ends his excellent article with the words: "In the end, the question "who killed JFK?" is not the most important question anyway. How our society has failed itself miserably by never even attempting to find the real killers, and how it has failed to come to grips with the obvious reality of a powerful conspiracy and subsequent cover-up—these are the real issues which matter nearly forty years later."

JFK Assassination Testimony: This website is an attempt to collect together the testimony of those who appeared before the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The material is organized under the following headings: Autopsy, Ballistics, CIA, Dallas Police Department, Dealey Plaza, FBI, Media, New Orleans, Oswalds, Parkland Hospital, Presidential Limo, Secret Service, State Department, Tippit Shooting and the U.S. Marine Corps.

History Matters Archive: This excellent reference site brings to the electronic realm scanned images of paper reports, transcripts, and other documents, along with streaming audio and photographs. Much of this material has been declassified since the passage of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. These new documents contain a wealth of surprising material which will change the debate about the Presidency of John F. Kennedy as well as his murder. Two main categories of electronic documents and related materials are now available. The first is records directly relating to the assassination of President Kennedy and its subsequent investigations, and includes much new material released by the Assassination Records Review Board. The second set consists of records related to Vietnam foreign policy during the Kennedy administration, which contain surprising "new" facts regarding 1963 policy.

Deep Politics: Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has been called the "dean" of JFK assassination research, having engaged in scholarly research and writings on the topic for three decades. Books such as Deep Politics and the Death of JFK focus on the "deep politics" of the assassination and the Kennedy era. Dr. Scott excels at putting the assassination into the larger and too-often obscured political context, tracing the hidden political connections between relevant figures in the case, and dissecting motives for cover.At his website you can access a lot of his writings on this fascinating subject.

Ku Klux Klan: The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. This website looks at the history of the Ku Klux Klan from the period when it helped restore white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia to May 2002 when Bobby Cherry was convicted for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing.

JFK Link: An ongoing, growing archive of documents relevant to the life, administration, death and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. It also serves as a searchable archive of the Public Papers of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, James E. Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and William J. Clinton.

Famous Trials: Douglas Linder, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, started to develop his fabulous website in 1996 as an adjunct to his academic work, which includes teaching legal history. Trials covered by Linder include those of Socrates (399 B.C.), Jesus (c.30), Galileo (1633), John Peter Zenger (1735), Aaron Burr (1807), Amistad (1839-1840), Susan Anthony (1873), Oscar Wilde (1895), Bill Haywood (1907), Joseph F. Shipp (1907), Sacco-Vanzetti (1921), Black Sox ((1921), Leopold and Loeb (1924), John Scopes (1925), Dr. Ossian Sweet (1925-26), Scottsboro Boys (1931-1937), Bruno Hauptmann (1935), Alger Hiss (1949-50), Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951), Mississippi Burning (1967), Chicago Seven (1969-70), William Calley (1970), Charles Manson (1970-71), John Hinckley, Jr. (1982) and O. J. Simpson (1995).

World History: This website includes narrative on trends from pre-history to the 21st century - trends in religion, attitude, technology, philosophy and political organization. It includes ninety text maps. The site has a section of book reviews to supplement narrative. The author tries to tell a story while presenting the positions of various sides of conflicts with accuracy, leaving his commentaries for a third section of his site. Since this site went online in 1997 it has benefited from much scrutiny. Errors have been found and corrected. Pages have been rewritten, and the author is keen on continuing the struggle for accuracy and realistic descriptions. He has used primary sources, but, as have others who write broad sweeps of history, he has drawn from the works of numerous historians who have devoted their professional lives to a more narrow focus of study. And he aims at avoiding distortion through omission.

Ronald Reagan: "We called it the Cold War, and we won it without firing a single shot. Who deserves credit for that? The credit belongs to a man who has been abused by the press. A president who is much greater than history is willing to portray him, because he was not their kind of guy... President Reagan did it, by establishing something that he has been denounced for. Criticized for. Castigated for. Star Wars." So said the prize-winning journalist, Jack Anderson on 22nd September, 1999. Mikhail Gorbachev was also quick to praise Reagan last week. However, not all political commentators agreed with Gorbachev. William Rivers Pitt wrote: "Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye." On this website you can read why so people are disagreeing about the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Marc Bloch: In 1919 Bloch became Professor of Medieval History at Strasbourg University. Most of Bloch's research concerned medieval history and the relationship between freedom and servitude. Books by him included Kings and Serfs (1920), Magic Working Kings (1924), Original Characteristics of French Rural History (1931) and Feudal Society (1939). On the outbreak of the Second World War Bloch joined the French Army. When France surrendered he joined the French Resistance and by 1942 he was one of the leaders of the Francs-Tireur group. Bloch was captured by the Germans on 16th June 1944, and after being interrogated and tortured was executed with 27 other members of the resistance in a field outside Lyons. This website provides a detailed look at the life of this amazing man.

Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial: Was the Chicago Seven Trial merely, as one commentator suggested, "a monumental non-event"? Was it, as others argue, an important battle for the hearts and minds of the American people? Or is it best seen as a symbol of the conflicts of values that characterized the late sixties? These are some of the questions that surround one of the most unusual courtroom spectacles in American history, the 1969-70 trial of seven radicals accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. You can explore these issues in this excellent website produced by Douglas O. Linder.

 

 

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