“I Will Kill Frick”: Emma Goldman Recounts the Attempt to Assassinate the Chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company During the: Homestead Strike in 1892
Emma Goldman.
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 Berkman decided to murder Frick during the Homestead strike.
Resources Available: TEXT.

“A Perfect Hailstorm of Bullets”: A Black Sergeant Remembers the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1899
Frank Pullen.
The best-known image of the Spanish-American War is that of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback charging with his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba. But not only was the role of the Rough Riders exaggerated, it also displaced attention from the black soldiers who made up almost 25 percent of the U. S. force in Cuba. Indeed, the Spanish troops, who called the black soldiers “smoked Yankees,” were often more respectful of the black troops than were the white officers who commanded them. Here Sergeant-Major Frank W. Pullen, Jr. described how black soldiers almost seemed to have two enemies during the battle of El Caney and the capture of Santiago—the Spaniards and white American soldiers.
Resources Available: TEXT.

Dissatisfied With the Lives They Live: Farm Women Describe Their Work in a 1913 U.S. Department of Agriculture Report
Statistics on women’s work in the early 20th century were invariably misleading: most women worked but only a minority were formally in the wage labor force. Nowhere was the discrepancy between the domestic ideal and the reality of women’s work lives wider than in rural America. In 1913 the U. S. Department of Agriculture decided to investigate and document the lives of farm woman they discovered a vast reservoir of discontent. The report, reproduced here, was culled from letters responding to a questionnaire sent to the wives of farmers and commented on all aspects of rural life, especially the enormous burden of labor that these officially non-working women were expected to carry out.
Resources Available: TEXT.

Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
Densho.
See JAH web review by Allan W. Austin.
Reviewed 2005-06-01.
Over 750 hours of video interviews and 10,000 historic images provide first-hand accounts of Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. Densho uses the accounts of individuals to explore principles of democracy and to encourage tolerance and justice in situations when citizens and legal immigrants are confused with enemies. The website features “Sites of Shame,” an overview of all types of detention facilities that held Japanese Americans, and “Causes of the Incarceration,” an examination of four motivations for the forced removal. Other primary sources found on the site are newspaper accounts, government orders and historical photographs. Teacher resources include social studies lessons (grades 4–12) with multimedia materials and classroom activities. A terminology list and glossary; timeline; and web, printed, and video sources provide interested viewers with further avenues for exploring this significant historical event.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2009-10-06.

Tobacco Archives
Tobacco Archives.
This archive offers more than 26 million pages of documents related to research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising, and sales of cigarettes. It was designed to provide free access to documents produced in States Attorney General reimbursement lawsuits against the tobacco industry. This site consist of links to databases that contain images of documents from the files of Philip Morris Incorporated, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation, Lorillard Tobacco Company, The Tobacco Institute, Inc., and The Council for Tobacco Research. Each company website is separately maintained and provides users with detailed instructions on how to view and print documents. Among the millions of documents, users will find print ads, marketing materials from the early 1900s, correspondence, reports, periodicals, and numerous scientific research studies. Those interested in tobacco use among racial or ethnic groups and women, the health risks of tobacco, and tobacco issues in the media will find this site very informative.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2003-03-01.

Using Oral History to Teach U.S. History
Linda Shopes.
This forum was moderated by Linda Shopes. Linda Shopes is a historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. She has worked on, consulted for, and written about oral history projects for more than twenty-five years. She is co-editor of The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History and is past president of the Oral History Association. She is also the author of “Making Sense of Oral History” in the Making Sense of Evidence section of History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web. (February, 2003)
Resources Available: TEXT.

George Catlin and His Indian Gallery
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery.
George Catlin, a lawyer turned painter, traveled throughout the American West in the early 19th century to chronicle the Native American experience. His paintings of the Plains Indians are the center of this virtual exhibit. From 1830 to 1836, Catlin visited more than 50 tribes from North Dakota to Oklahoma. His original Indian Gallery was designed to document the transformation of Native Americans and “rescue from oblivion” their customs and lifestyle. Thirty-three of Catlin’s more than 400 paintings are presented in this virtual museum, including one of William Clark, the famous explorer of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Designed for middle school and high school teachers the “classroom” section offers lesson plans that incorporate George Catlin’s paintings, Native American artifacts, and primary documents to teach students about early American history, geography, and art appreciation. The lesson plans are thematic and feature scholarly commentaries on the life and work of Catlin. A valuable resource for teaching about the Indian Removal of the 1830s, the transformation of the Western frontier, and the encounter of Anglo American and Native American cultures.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-08.

Maritime Heritage Program
National Park Service.
The National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program is dedicated to advancing awareness of the role of maritime affairs in the history of the United States. The Maritime Heritage Program Web site provides detatiled information about their susbtastial preservation programs, including indices of historic ships (searchable by state), lighthouses, and life-saving stations within the United States and its territories.
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The Works of Edgar Allen Poe
The remarkable writings of Edgar Allen Poe are faithfully collected on this easy-to-navigate website. Here, visitors will see complete text versions of almost all of Poe’s poems and short stories. Each piece begins by indicating the year of its first publication and the publication in which it appeared. An extended biographical essay about Poe’s life is available, as well as a helpful resource page that contains links to the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore and the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site.
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Website last visited on 2004-06-22.

The Joe Fishstein Collection of Yiddish Poetry
McGill University .
“In poor homes there is so much beauty” reads the preface to this online exhibit and catalogue, which speaks much about the life and times of Joe Fishstein, a garment worker from the Bronx who had a great love for Yiddish literature, particularly poetry. After his death in 1978, his family willed his entire collection of over 2300 books to the McLennan Library at McGill University, where they still reside. The online collection has two major components: a catalogue of the collection, searchable by topic and indices (such as author and title), and a thematically organized exhibit dealing with the life and passions of Mr. Fishstein. For anyone with an interest in Yiddish literature and culture, this Web site will be quite engaging and helpful.
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Center on Religion and Democracy
James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia Library.
This site was designed to promote “academic study concerning religion and public life." It offers an extensive electronic library made possible by the Center’s partnership with the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia. The library section is divided into five parts, including classical, historical, religious, and legal works as well as The Hedgehog Review, an interdisciplinary academic journal. “Social Theory” contains 29 texts, including writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Karl Marx, and Plato. “Historical Texts” contains writings by 11 authors, including nine works by Frederick Douglass, five by W. E. B. Du Bois, five by Harriet Beecher Stowe, twelve by Booker T. Washington, and the complete 39 volume The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources. Within “Religious Texts,” users will find The Koran, The Book of Mormon, two versions of the Bible, and texts by John Calvin and Martin Luther. “Legal Documents” contains 23 works, including the Constitution of the Iroquois Nation, and writings by James Madison and George Mason. Documents are searchable by keyword and available in several formats, including web, ebook, and PDAs.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2003-11-21.

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb
Peter Bacon Hales, Art History Department, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Part of a larger project, this site presents the social, cultural, and visual history of Levittown, a postwar American suburb. Archetypal of post-World War II suburban living, Levittown was built to provide affordable single-family housing to returning soldiers and their families in Long Island, New York. Utilizing the photographic collections of former residents of Levittown, different sections of the site address various facets of the neighborhood’s existence. The first section, “Building Levittown: A Primer” is a descriptive essay (approximately 2,300 words) of the way the homes in the community were built and arranged. This introductory section features seven pictures and four floor plans of the first model homes. The other sections present 31 photographs donated by Levittown residents Charles F. Tekula and Carl Arnesen. Taken during the 1950s and 1960s, the pictures reveal family and community life. The final section, “Levittown’s Transformations,” is a reexamination of Levittown in the early 1990s and its evolution over the past 50 years from a homogeneous subdivision into a complex, heterogeneous neighborhood.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2002-11-24.

Alabama Maps
Department of Geography, University of Alabama.
This site contains more than 3,500 scanned and digitized maps divided into two indexes—historical and contemporary. The historical maps index contains several sections. The most voluminous section, “Alabama,” is divided into time periods, geological features, Alabama counties, rivers, and state highways. Another section indexes 13 other southeastern states, including Texas, the Carolinas, and Florida. There are also maps of the Western Hemisphere, North America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, some dating before 1700. An especially valuable feature of the historical index is the “Special Topics” which contains maps of the Civil War, including the battles in Gettysburg and Antietam, railroad routes, and ten Native American maps, mostly illustrating the boundaries of Cherokee territories. The contemporary map index is divided into eighteen themes, including education, housing, politics, federal expenditures, climate, and recreation. There are more than 100 world maps of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the South Pacific. Users will also find links to the University of Alabama’s Department of Geography and the publications of the Cartographic Laboratory. Created for educators and the business community, this is valuable resource for those researching the history of Alabama or contemporary themes in Alabama, the United States, and the world.
Resources Available: IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.

American Experience: Jimmy Carter
PBS.
This well-designed website, companion to the PBS documentary, offers a wide variety of secondary material on the Carter presidency. “People and Places” offers short profiles of Carter, his wife Rosalynn, his brother Billy, Carter’s White House staff (collectively known as “The Georgia Mafia”), Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, and Vice-President Walter Mondale. It also offers short essays on key events of Carter’s presidency, including the election of 1976, the Egyptian-Israeli peace talks at Camp David, the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter’s July 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, and the election of 1980. Many of the essays link to special features, such as the extensive media coverage of the Iranian hostage crisis and the text of the “Crisis of Confidence” speech. “Teacher’s Guide” offers nine suggestions for classroom learning activities in four categories: economics, civics, history, and geography. The site also includes a detailed chronology of Carter’s life and a small photo gallery with 16 images. This site provides a useful overview of Carter’s life and the political and diplomatic history of his presidency.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2006-02-08.

Museum of Contemporary Art—Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago .
Founded in 1945, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago features contemporary photography, video, film, sculpture, and other visual arts, both in its galleries and its extensive onsite performance series. For persons considering visiting the museum the site contains informatino on current and upcoming exhibitions, which have featured artists from the scultper Alexander Calder to Gilian Wearing, the British artist perhaps best known for her video installations. The Web site also contains “Website Insights,” which is the online searchable archive of the MCA’s holdings of approximately 6,000 objects. The search engine for the collection is quite flexible, allowing visitors to search by artist name, nationality, title of work, medium, and the decade in which the work was produced. For educators, the site also contains lesson plans to use with different age levels and with different pieces of art from their collection.
Resources Available: IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2002-11-25.

Jack London’s Ranch Album
Jack London Educational Research Foundation, Inc..
Of primary value to literature specialists rather than historians, this site is nonetheless a potentially useful resource for those interested in the life of Jack London. It includes a chronology of the major events in London’s life, as well as a 1,000-word essay on the circumstances surrounding his death. Also included is a 2,500-word biography of London. The site features 11 digitized short stories and novels, including “To Build a Fire” and Call of the Wild.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

Atlanta 1906: A Race Riot
Public Broadcasting Atlanta.
Produced by Public Broadcasting Altanta, in conjunction with the PBS series “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,” this visual history of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot is a useful education tool that offers an introduction to this traumatically violent event in the city’s not-so-distant past. The online exhibit and timeline are divided into six chapters; an introduction offers some perspective into race relations and the status of the African-American community in Atlanta. The exhibit is an effective blend of both descriptive text and historical photographs that rotate as the visitor progresses through the material. The exhibit concludes with an examination of the reforming of the Ku Klux Klan after the riot, along with a helpful timeline that highlights turning points in Atlanta’s history from its founding in 1847 to the present.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-11-25.

The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairy Tale
Library of Congress.
This well-designed exhibit is composed of three galleries focused on the cultural impact of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Each gallery contains multiple panels with one or more images and explanatory text. “‘To Please a Child’: L. Frank Baum and the Land of Oz” uses 16 panels to examine various aspects of the book, including W.W. Denslow’s artwork, Baum’s original copyright application, and an early review of the book appearing in the October 1900 issue of The Literary Review. “To See the Wizard: Oz on Stage and Film” uses 21 panels to look at 2 of the most famous productions of Baum’s book, the 1902–1903 stage play that became one of Broadway’s greatest successes and the classic 1939 MGM movie. The panels on the stage play include 2 color posters published in 1903 to promote the show and the 16 panels on MGM’s version examine the cast, production, and music, including a full-page color advertisement placed in the September 1939 issue of Cosmopolitan. “To Own the Wizard: Oz Artifacts,” with 18 panels, examines the varieties of Oz-related novelties that have appeared over the years, including The Wizard of Oz Monopoly game by Hasbro, a Wizard of Oz stamp, and “The Royal Bank of Oz” rebate check from MGM. This exhibit is of interest to anyone studying popular culture or the history of the arts in 20th-century America.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-09-24.

Hoover Institution: On War, Revolution and Peace
Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who later became the thirty-first president of the United States, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy research center devoted to the study of political, economic and social change in the 20th century. This site features the Institution’s library, archives and publications. Researchers and scholars may access detailed information about the Institution’s library, its voluminous collections on Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Russia and over 850 finding aids. In addition researchers will find the diverse set of original research papers freely accessible in the Hoover Institution Newsletter, The Hoover Digest, and The Hoover Weekly invaluable. There are also many pdf versions of books published by the Institute and full transcripts, RealAudio and streaming video of the Institute’s weekly television series Uncommon Knowledge. This is a rich site for anyone interested in American public education, campaign reform, freedom of expression, property rights, biowarfare, Iraq, national security and global cooperation.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-11-16.