American History II, 1865-
Michael Clapper
Fall 2007
This survey course is intended to acquaint you with the major themes of American history after the Civil War. The ways in which the citizens and newcomers to this nation have grappled with finding work, finding a place to live, and building a fair government will be the primary focuses of our class. While we do have an immense amount of ground to cover, I have tried to select readings that will allow you to see what life was like for individual Americans, and how the struggles to live, survive, and thrive have played out over the past one hundred fifty years.
Assessments
1. Short Paper #1: Due after first quarter of class. You will choose from two essay questions and write a 4-5 page paper using ONLY lecture and class readings.
2. Take home midterm- you will receive 3 short essay questions one week in advance. You will write on two.
3. Short Paper #2: Due after third quarter of class. You will choose from two essay questions and write a 4-5 page paper using ONLY lecture and class readings.
4. Final Exam
This final exam will consist of two essay questions and
twenty short identifications. These
twenty short “ids” will be drawn from a list published on the course website;
these are terms which will come from both lecture and your readings.
5. Final Project: You will choose from the following options
a. Website Review: Utilizing the texts from this class, you will offer a brief assessment of a website. Over 3-4 pages, you should concisely describe the information presented and then critique the content (NOT the appearance.)
b. Museum Exhibit Proposal: Consider the Foner/Mahoney text as a guide and then put together a proposal for one of the other weeks from our course.
c. Theatrical Consultant: You’ve been asked by a major studio to construct a 3-4 page guide of props, language, and daily life for a film set in one of the eras in our course.
Required
1. Who Built
2. Each week will have 2-3 short, academic readings that will be available on this website.
3. There will be 3-4 primary documents available on-line that will be the focus of class that week. You should familiarize yourself with these documents before class.
Week One Introductions -- set forth the thematic linkages for the course.
1. Where do Americans work and where do they live? I believe that a thorough understanding of the kinds of residences available to American citizens, and the ways in which the boundaries of those communities were constructed is crucial to understanding the major issues of the twentieth century. If in the seventeenth century, Americans lived and worked within the same four walls, where did they work by the twentieth century? How did work opportunities shape residential patterns and larger patterns within the country?
2. What will be the role of the government? How do ideas of the government change over time? Individual citizens interact with the government in a variety of ways- some count on the government to provide essential services while others rely on the government to protect them from outsiders. Views of government have shifted profoundly over the past 150 years in American life; this particular period will see the pendulum swing back and forth several times.
As we assess the role of the government in the lives of people, we must also consider how citizenship was defined during these years. Were there groups deprived of basic rights? How did individuals on the margins create modes of expression?
3. Where did Americans buy stuff? The creation of a mass
consumer culture must be understood if we are to try and assess American
lifestyles. The consumer culture has
grown along with the media; newspapers, radio and television have all helped to
shape American lives. I have tried to
have different types of media represented within the primary sources of each
week as a reflection of the significance of the media in
4. In many ways, these three factors- consumerism, the state, and labor markets- have helped to shape notions of race in this country. I believe, however, that we must put the struggles for equality by different groups at the forefront of our study of American history. Immigrants have faced obstacles to employment and residence just as African Americans have; the state has privileged some groups over others. And- the ability of different groups to enter into a consumer culture on their own terms has changed over time in highly significant ways. Yet, even in the face of long odds, trapped within overwhelming structures of unequal power, workers, minorities and other groups have struggled for better lives. Their successes and failures stay with us, emerging at strange and unexpected times. I hope this course will help you to realistically address the present as well as the future.
Lecture 1: "Opportunities Won and Lost: Unfinished Business"
Academic
WBA, pp.1-15
*W.E.B. DuBois, "Of the Dawn of Freedom"
*Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney, “
*David Blight, “Regeneration and Reconstruction,” Chapter 2
of Race and
*Tony Horowitz, “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War”
Chapter 2: Cats of the Confederacy
Primary Sources:
Charles Nordhoff, The
Letter of Governor Chamberlain to William Lloyd Garrison, 1877
Testimony Regarding the Klan, 1877
(The abundance of primary sources in the Foner book should be of great use in understanding Reconstruction; focus particularly on the engravings from popular magazines.)
Lecture 1 Outline:
A.
B. Northerners go South…schools, investments, and ideology
C. The End of Reconstruction; Compromise of 1877
D. The re-organization of the South after Reconstruction
Reading Questions to Consider
1. There are many myths that surround the Civil War and Reconstruction. Perhaps you’ve seen “Birth of a Nation” or attended a Civil War re-enactment. How do Foner and DuBois ask us to consider the role of African Americans in this period?
2. David Blight and Tony Horowitz discuss the role of memory at great length. What are the competing visions of the Civil War that they offer? Which of these visions seems to have won, i.e., which vision did you encounter in your high school history course?
3. What factors from lecture help you to understand the failure of Reconstruction?
Links on Reconstruction:
Documenting the American South A Project at the University of North Carolina devoted to gathering primary sources on the South during the 19th Century.
Valley of the Shadow Project Historian Ed Ayers is supervising this sublime study of two communities in the years before and after the Civil War.
Link
on W.E.B. Dubois: This site features a number of scholars commenting on The
Souls of Black Folk. Click here.
You will need Real Player to hear the comments.
Lecture 1: "Immigration, Industrialization and the New
Lecture 2: Labor Unions and Populism: Groundswells and Responses
Academic
WBA, Chapter 1 and 2
David Montgomery, “The Manager’s Brain Under the Workman’s Cap” from the Fall of the House of Labor.
Robert Heilbroner, “The Master of Steel: Andrew Carnegie” (from Oates Collection)
Glenda Gilmore, Who Were the Progressives, Introduction and Part One and Two
Primary Sources:
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
Immigrant Tales from American Voices, American Lives (
Henry Cabot Lodge, Literacy Test Testimony
Veto of Literacy Test by President Cleveland
Song: Eight Hours for What We Will here
Testimony of George M. Pullman
Lecture 1 Outline
*Immigration
*Industrialization
*Working Lives (Peiss, Rosenzweig)
*Worker Response: 8 hours
Lecture 2 Outline
*Connection of discontent: 1877, 1886, 1893
*Anarchy and the Knights
*Rural vs. Urban worlds- similarities and differences
*Populist Connections
Questions to Consider
1. How were the new immigrants perceived by native-born Americans? How did immigrants shape their new lives?
2. In thinking about the worker response to various economic downturns, what was unique about each uprising? Why did they not achieve more long-lasting success?
3. We read a number of interpretations about the origins of populism: where would you locate it?
Websites:
Without Sanctuary
Collection of photographs of lynching during the Jim Crow era.
Week Four: Progressivism and the Aftermath of War
Lecture 1: "Will the Real Progressive Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up: Science, Psychology and Efficiency”
Lecture 2: The Twenties, Conservatism and Backlash: Migrations, Strikes, and the State
Academic
WBA: Chapter 5: Radicals and Reformers in the Progressive Era
Gilmore, Who Were the Progressives Book? Part 3 and 4
Alan Dawley, “The Dynamics of Total War” from Struggles for Justice
Dana Frank, Chapter 5: “Boycotts” from Purchasing Power
Kim Phillips, Chapter 7, “
Primary Sources:
Exposing the Meat Packers (1906 Congressional Report)
The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
Jacob
Lawrence Prints The Whitney has put this fantastic collection of prints
on-line.
Lecture 1: Progressives, Professionalization and Institutions
A. In Search of Progressivism
B. Regulatory Impulse
C.
D. Corporate Impact?
Lecture 2: The War: Possibilities?
A. WW I- politicsB. WW I- propandaganda
C. Great Migration
D. 1919 and the End of Labor
Reading Questions
1. How did 1919 and the following years offer a different experience for workers from 1893?
2. Think about the factors that helped create the Great Migration: why didn’t this movement occur sooner?
3. What do you think of the Progressive Response to Big Business? Is it really a response?
Websites:
Kenyon University Study of the African
American Migration
Week Five: Great
Depression/ New Deal
Academic
WBA, 367-418 and 425-477
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 4: Spending and Consumption, from The End of Reform
Lizabeth Cohen, Chapter 3: Encountering Mass Culture from Making the New Deal
Bryant Simon, Chapter 5: “Mr. Roosevelt Ain’t Gonna Stand for This” from Fabric of Defeat
Primary Sources: Frances Perkins, Social Security Act (September 2, 1935)
Robert Wagner, National Labor Relations Act (February 21, 1935)
Letters to FDR from McElvaine Collection
Radio shows: Father Coghlan (mp3) (you’ll need a real player plug-in)
Huey Long (mp3) (you’ll need a real player plug-in)
Fireside Chat (mp3)
Lecture One: Origins of, and Responses to, Crisis
A. Banks
B. Homes
C. Labor
D. Social Security
Lecture Two: Making the New Deal
Labor
Movements:
Populist Movements or Not? Father C, Huey L and Upton S.
Political Re-alignment
New Deal in the South: The Impact of Race?
Reading Questions:
1. Do you really think workers made the New Deal? Why are different groups of workers seemingly so receptive? How do the tactics utilized by workers differ from those we’ve already discussed?
2. How has the notion of the state begun to shift? Who are the constituencies supporting individual pieces of legislation?
3. Who was excluded from the New Deal? What are the mechanisms of exclusion?
Websites:
American Life
Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project
New Deal Network: Tremendous
Collection of Resources
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt Library
Novels and Other Documentary
Sources
5-6th Grade: Nelda by Pat Edwards
Elderberry Thicket by Joan Zeier
7th-8th Grade: I Remember Valentine by Liz Hamilton
No Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt
Lackawanna by Chester Aaron
Tracks by Clayton Bess
Older: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Ill Fares the Land by Carey McWilliams
Hard Travelin' Woody Guthrie
Pare Lorentz Documentaries:
The River and The Plow that Broke the Plains
Lecture 1: Winning the War at Home: seeds of another conflict
Lecture 2: Winning the War Abroad: seeds of another conflict
Academic
WBA: 483-534 (JUST THE PICTURES)
Opening chapter from Chafe, The Unfinished Journey
John Dower, War Without Mercy, Chapter 7 “Yellow, Red, and Black Men”
R.Kelley et al, “To Make Our World Anew,” pp. 445-454.
Nelson Lichtenstein: “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Post War Era” (From Rise and Fall of NDO)
Primary Sources:
Northwestern Library Poster Collection
Warner Brothers Cartoon: “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips”
“Executive Order 9066”
Excerpts from Nisei Daughter
Lecture One:
A. The Good War?
B. A Race War?
C. Endings in
D. Endings in the
Lecture Two:
A. Labor Strife amidst population shifts
B. Unions and the fighting/end of the war
C. Rosie at Work
D. Double V for Victory
Reading Questions
1. Is the internment of Japanese Americans an aberration in American life?
2. World War Two is seen as a crucial turning point in American history. Without looking forward (you all know what’s coming) what changes do you see being set in motion by the War? How do those changes relate to the Great Depression? The Progressives? Reconstruction?
Lecture 1: Dominos and Anti-communism
Lecture 2: Suburbs, Cities and New Spaces
Academic
Elaine Tyler May, Chapters 4,5, and 7 of Homeward Bound
Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, Part One (Introduction) and 2,3,4,7,8 and 11 (brief documents)
Tom Sugrue, Chapters 7 and 8, from the Origins of Urban Crisis
Kenneth Jackson, “Federal Subsidy
of the Suburban Dream” and “Drive in Culture of Contemporary
Suggested
Primary Sources:
NSC-68
Long Telegram
Desegregation Order from Truman
(Documents from Schrecker)
Lecture One: Dominos and Anticommunism
A. Fears: Real or Otherwise
B. HUAC and Joseph McCarthy
C. Korea and the Spies
D. Domestic Impact: Catalyzing Consumption
Lecture Two: Suburbs and Cities
A.
B. Suburban Culture
C. Who’s Left Behind?
D. Who’s Arriving?
Reading Questions
1. What are the connections that you see between domestic and foreign policies in the age of anti-communism?
2. How do you see the relationship between anti-communism and suburbanization?
3. Not so much a
question as a reminder- how does anti-communism affect the civil rights movement? The labor movement? The War in
Lecture 1: Court Cases and Resistance
Lecture 2: Organizing in the South and Among the Students
Academic
James Patterson, Chapters 2-4, Brown vs. Board of Education
Robin Kelley, “
Charles Payne, Piece from Women in the Civil Rights movement
CK Lee, For Freedom’s Sake, pp.23-60 and 85-102
Barbara Ransby,
Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement,
Eyes on the Prize (not sure which episode)
Primary Sources
*Read any three narratives from the
*E.D. Nixon piece from “My Soul is Rested”
Anne Moody, “The Jackson Sit-In”
*Footage of F.L. Hamer (1964)
Lecture One: Court Cases
A. The Legacy of WW II
B. Desegregation Order
C. Brown and Its Impact
D. E.D. Nixon, Rosa Parks and Montgomery
Lecture Two: Local People
A. Greensboro and the Sit Ins
B. The Origins of SNCC
C. Mississippi
D. The Heat Rises: Television
1. How does the media change the Civil Rights Movement?
2. How does a local focus change your ideas of the civil rights movement?
3. Can you hypothesize
about the connection between this week’s readings and developing suburbia?
Week Nine: New Frontiers and Great Societies
Academic
Bruce Schulman, P.3-5 of brief biography in “LBJ and American Liberalism”
Primary Sources
JFK, inaugural speech (mp3)
LBJ, Speech
LBJ, Speech
Lecture One: New Frontiers and Notions of Hope
A. More, more, more
B. JFK
C. JFK and Civil Rights
D. MFDP
Lecture Two: The Great Society
A. Civil Rights and Voting Rights
B. Immigration Act of 1965
C. CAP and Local Efforts
D. The Shadow of
1. What do the events at the 1964 Democratic National Convention tell us about transitions occurring within the Civil Rights Movement?
2. How does LBJ’s vision of a Great Society differ from the New Deal?
3. How is the civil rights legislation of the 1960s related to Reconstruction?
Week Ten: Students
and
Academic
Chapter 2, Christian Appy, Working Class War
Chester J. Pach, Jr., "And That's the Way it Was" from David Farber, ed., The Sixties
From Schulman, Ch.6, “That Bitch of a War”
Primary Sources
Mario Savio An End to History
Four Free Speech Leaflets (on-line)
Bill Clinton Letter to Draft Board
3 Anti-Draft Activities from “Takin’ it to The Streets” (248-252)
Lecture One: Students
A. Students in the South
B. Free Speech:
C. SDS and the Stirrings of Anti-War
D. 1964 Election
Lecture Two:
A. Escalation
B. Working Class War
C. Support at Home
D. Television
1. What do you make of the student vision? How does it differ from John Kennedy’s?
2. How does the portrayal of
3. How does the
mobilization for
Week Eleven: The Center Cannot Hold
Lecture 1: Black Power, Radical Women and Students Out of Control
Lecture 2: 1968
Academic
William Chafe, Unfinished Journey, Chapter on 1968
David Farber, Chapter 1: Making Yippie!
And Chapter 7: The Streets Belong to the People from
To Make Our World Anew, pp.514-542
Primary Sources:
Black Panther Party (what we want, what we believe)
Malcolm X (mp3)
Politics of Housework Broadsheet
Betty Friedan, The Problem that has No Name
Redstockings Manifesto
Portions from Kerner Report
Lecture One:
A. Not so new Black Power
B. Riots as Protest?
C. Women’s Movement
D. Radicalization
Lecture Two: 1968
A. Losses
B. LBJ descends
C. Women Emergent
D.
1. Why are the radical movements fragmenting?
2. What kind of turning point is 1968? Would you put it in the same category as the Second World War?
Week Twelve: The Emergence of the New Right: Don't Call it a Comeback- we've been here for years
"Sometimes the President of the
Lecture 1: Backlash or not? Wallace, Nixon and the New Right
Lecture 2: Malaise and the Grinding, Apathetic Seventies
Academic
Mike Davis, Ch.3: Homegrown Revolution, City of
Dan Carter, ,
Robert Rieder, Chapters 3-7, from Canarsie,
McGirr, Lisa, Chapter 4: The Conservative World View in the Grassroots, from Suburban Warriors
Primary Sources:
Report on Kent State/Jackson State
Lecture One: Rage Rage Rage
A. Accelerating Demographic Changes
B. Wallace and The Southern Strategy
C. Richard Nixon
D. Is it really Backlash?
Lecture Two: So what happens when the economy stops growing?
A. Economic Crisis
B. Deindustrialization
C. Busing and Affirmative Action
D. Crisis of Authority /Watergate
1. Why do you think taxes became such a major issue in the 1960s?
2. What are the similarities between the folks
described by Tom Sugrue in the early 1950s in
3. Can we see the new right as the same kind of social movement as the other rights-based groups we’ve studied? Where are the historical antecedents for these folks?
Academic
Lisa McGirr,
Nelson Lichtenstein, Chapter 6: “A Time of Troubles” from State
of the
Thomas and Mary Edsall, Chapter 9: “The Reagan Attack on Racial Liberalism” and Chapter 10, “Coded Language”
Lecture 1: The Reagan Revolution
A. Taxes
B. Air Traffic Controllers
C. End of Affirmative Action
Lecture 2: The Arc of Race, Space and Citizenship Since Reconstruction
1. How have notions
of the role of the government changed from the Progressives to the New Dealers
to the Great Society to Morning in
2. Why is it that social policy becomes the battleground where racial issues are fought by the 1980s? Why didn’t Reconstruction succeed?
3. How did changes in working life impact both of these questions? In other words, how did the ability to find a decent job influence both racial and citizenship issues?
Websites:
Required
American Social History Project, Who Built America: Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture and Society, V.2.
Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney,
Gilmore, Glenda, Who Were the Progressives Essay Collection
Schrecker, Ellen, McCarthyism Collection
Schulman, Bruce, LBJ and American Liberalism: Brief Biography with Documents