HISTORY 250/ FALL 1999 MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY PROF. FRIEDHEIM

Driving the Golden Spike to complete the 1st Transcontinental RR, 1869/ National Archives

September 1 - 28:  Two Photos; Many Stories

September 29 - October 6:  Expansion and Race

October 20: Roosevelt Corollary

October 27 - November 10:  TVA - Electricity For All

November 17 - December 1:  "Instructions to all People of Japanese Ancestry"

September 1 - 28: TWO PHOTOS/ MANY STORIES

Activity. You will work with a partner and then share and discuss what you did with a larger group.

click picture   click picture          

 For homework, due in class on Wednesday, September 29, you will read:

• Albert Beveridge, The March of the Flag (1898)
• Albert Beveridge, from The Congressional Record, 56th Congress (1890)
• Josiah Strong, from Our Country (1885)

You will complete a worksheet asking you to consider the following: 

1. What is the link Strong and Beveridge make between territorial expansion and race?  
2. Give specific examples of language and arguments that reflect the views of Strong  and Beveridge about racial superiority.
3. How do they use race to justify expansion?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:  Put these ties about race and expansion in the context of time and place.  In other words, why in the late nineteenth century did continental expansion accelerate in the Trans-Mississippi West and overseas expansion in the Philippines and Caribbean?  What were the political, economic and cultural factors driving policies of continental and overseas expansion and racial domination at this particular point in history?  For example, could this same expansion at the expense of Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West and Filipinos in Southeast Asia have happened thirty years earlier?

In class on Wednesday, September 29.

• You will view the video Savage Acts.(30 minutes)
• You will break into groups to discuss the questions (25 minutes):

How does the video reflect the themes about expansion and race that you initially examined in the Strong and Beveridge documents?  Give examples.

Based on your reading of the documents and viewing of the video, what do you see as the late nineteenth century links between (1) continental expansion, (2) overseas expansion, and (3) racism?  Between the political, economic and cultural forces driving policies of expansion and racial superiority.

• As an individual, you will post a response in the Speakeasy Cafe to the following question.  (20 minutes)

What connections do you see between the two Indian photos you examined (see the "Two Photos/ Many Stories" exercise above) and the themes you explored about race and expansion in the video Savage Acts and the Strong and Beveridge documents?  Be as specific as time permits. 

In class on Wednesday, October 6

You will be assigned to work in one of four groups.  Each group will work on one of the assigned documents below. The instructions for your group are:

• Thoroughly examine your document
• What connections do you see between your document and the themes you explored about race and expansion in the video Savage Acts and the Strong and Beveridge documents?
• Go to the Speakeasy Cafe and post, as a group, the connections you see between your document and the themes you explored about race and expansion in the video Savage Acts and the Strong and Beveridge documents.  Include specific analysis of your document in your group's post.

1. Pears Soap Ad
2. Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden
3. American Progress (lithograph)
4. Soldier's Letters

October 20 - ROOSEVELT COROLLARY

Go to the "Google" search engine at:

http://www.google.com

Bring the cursor to the box with the heading "Search the Web Using Google". Click and type:

Roosevelt Corollary

Then click "Google Search". Your search will yield lots of sites. Take fifteen minutes and visit a few that seem interesting. Gather information about the Roosevelt Corollary and its consequences. Then go to the Speakeasy Café <http://morrison.wsu.edu/studio/>. Log in and go to event 3 (Roosevelt Corollary), table 1 (Was the United States justified in establishing the Roosevelt Corollary?).

Step one. Write your response to the question (Was the United States justified in establishing the Roosevelt Corollary?).

Step two. Respond to the answers of a few classmates. You can disagree with one another, but you must be respectful and constructive in your responses. The intent here is to create a number of lively threaded discussions.

October 27 - November 10: TVA - ELECTRICITY FOR ALL

(This activity was created by Stanlee Brimberg, Bank Street School)

You will do this exercise with a group.

Overview: The controversy surrounding the Tennessee Valley Authority
was profound and complicated. It raised constitutional, economic, social,
philosophical and ethical issues. Once students become familiar with the
facts and the issues by reading and studying the material in the collection
and other material you provide, they will be in an excellent position to
debate these issues.

Objectives -- to help students: In this activity you will:

1.Acquire information about TVA
2.Understand that, depending on a person's identity and situation
(social, educational, economic), he or she would have a different
opinion about TVA
3.Develop understanding for all the points of view about TVA
4.Learn to make compromises to resolve disputes.

Resources: Documents from "TVA: Electricity for All" and the Image and
Document Libraries of the New Deal Network (http://newdeal.feri.org).

Collection Background: Materials concerning TVA in the Image and
Document Libraries of the New Deal Network include editorial cartoons,
advertisements, the Tennessee Valley photographs of Lewis Hine,
dramatizations, and articles from The Nation and Opportunity Magazine.

Exercise:


Step One.  Meet briefly with your small group. Each individual should quickly choose an identity from the list below. (In a classroom setting, you would divide the class into seven sections and assign each section one of the characters.)

• A TVA Head Administrator. Although you have been appointed to your post by the Roosevelt Administration, you may not agree with your co-administrators.
• The head of a privately owned utility or coal company in the region. 
• A poor white tenant farmer living in the Tennessee Valley who will have to move because of dam construction. He may or may not find a new home.  He may or may not find work with TVA.
• A poor African-American farmer who may or may not find work with the TVA.
• A Congressional representative who believes that government ought to stay out of people's lives, whether they are rich or poor. 
• The owner of a company that manufactures electrical appliances.
• A woman whose husband has been hired to work on the construction of the Norris Dam. Her family now has electricity and can now afford to buy several electrical appliances, including a stove, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, several light fixtures, and a radio.

Step Two.  Working as an individual, use the resources available in the TVA collection to find information that clarifies the point of view of your character. Look for facts, opinions, reasons, and explanations, including testimony (oral history). You might want to develop a chart listing the pros and cons to TVA from the perspective of your character.

Searching tips: Useful information can be found in three separate areas:

TVA: Electricity for All (http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/index.htm) presents an
overview.

The Image Library (http://newdeal.feri.org/library/index.htm).

The Document Library (http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/subject.htm). 

Resources in the two libraries are often cross-referenced by subject. You may find helpful information by pursuing a subject other than "Tennessee Valley Authority."

Although the site does not have global keyword searching capabilities, remember that your Internet browser can search a given document for keywords.  This may speed your search. 

Step Three.  Review your evidence and prepare and post a short statement on the Speakeasy Cafe about the TVA, from the point of view of your character. Your statement should include a concluding segment that expresses support for TVA, or opposition to it, or a combination of support and opposition.

Step Four. Meet again with your small group to share your presentations and discuss the activity.

Step Five.  The whole class will meet (face-to-face and online in the Speakeasy Cafe) to share presentations and sum-up what we learned and what questions still need to be explored. 

November 17 -  : "INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PEOPLE OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY"

Step One.  In class, on Monday, November 15, you will be given a hard copy of this poster.   Do some detective work to place the poster in time and historical context.  Make notes in the margins and underline passages that you think provide clues.  Then, write a few sentences explaining as best you can what the document is about.  Bring your hard copy of the poster and what you write to the computer lab on Wednesday, November 17.

Step Two. You will be assigned to a group of four or five students.  Meet with your group.  Share what you wrote (as instructed in step one).  Assess what else you now need to find out in order to:

1. Fill out the story,
2. Put it in context of time and place, and
3. Give it a human face.

Step Three.  Working at computers next to one another, you will gather information to fill out the story.  Start by exploring the Japanese-Interment Site http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/main.html.  Follow the links to other sites.  Try to create a division of labor so that not everyone is looking at the same sites

Step Four.  As a group, share and discuss the information you found. 

Step Five. By the end of class on Wednesday, November 24, post two items at the Speakeasy Cafe on the following questions:

Item one.  What did you learn?

Item two.  What do you think is the most importance lesson for the U.S. to learn from this experience?  Explain your answer.