The Zoot Suit Riots provide students with a case study of social unrest in American history. The influx of Latinos into the Los Angeles area prior to World War II created high levels of social unrest between Mexican Americans, military servicemen, and local residences. With large numbers of soldiers stationed in the area during the Second World…

According to the dominant historiographical narrative, the social reconstructionists were a homogeneous group with a shared social, political, economic, and educational agenda. However, the pages of the journal "The Social Frontier" are replete with evidence that they were not in agreement on significant issues, especially when it came to the…

In this article, the authors describe three specific activities in which they have integrated mini-camcorders in their units on the American Revolution, Civil War, and Post-Reconstruction and Progressive eras that they believe provide outlets for creative middle school students and engage students in authentic intellectual work. The three…

This dissertation critically investigates how Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History textbooks portray key events in Latino/a history. The investigation is made in light of claims made by the College Board, the ACLU, scholars, and federal and state governments that the Advanced Placement program is the path to educational equity for Latino/a…

In this article, the author reflects on the learning opportunities provided by the tragedy at Kent State University forty years ago for educators and learners. Four students were slain and nine students were wounded by the bullets of National Guardsmen who had been sent to quell anti-war demonstrations and vandalism. The events of May 4, 1970,…

Few regions in the U.S. boast a more plentiful array of historically significant sites than the 175-mile-long route between Monticello, Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. From the most venerated of Civil War battlefields to nine historic homes of U.S. presidents and thousands of sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the…

The classic "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969/1991) and other writings of American novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., resonate with young people and are sometimes part of the required curriculum in secondary schools, which necessitates an exploration of the ideas and ideals to which youngsters are exposed. This article explores the Atomic Age…

America's civic community from the end of the Great Depression through the post World War II years was hardly rational or racially neutral in its uneven and unequal treatment of African Americans and other underrepresented groups. Conventional civic scholarship of the era has ignored the complexities of a racially segregated society that in theory…

For nearly a decade, Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez and a small army of students and volunteer colleagues around the country have been aggressively chasing and documenting a rapidly vanishing chapter of American history--the American Latino and Latina experience during World War II. Along the way, they recorded nearly 600 interviews of about two…

This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political…

Because art is a reflection of cultural heritage, a natural affinity exists between art and social studies. In Jacob Lawrence's "The Migration Series," art serves as narrative history, with visual images telling the story of the Great Migration, a movement of African American people from the South to the North around World War I. Social studies…

In conducting research about U.S. homefront children during the Second World War, a professor of history wrote to the 100 largest-circulation newspapers in the United States as well as 75 African-American, Hispanic American, and Jewish-American newspapers and magazines seeking letters from people who experienced the War as children. More than…

This booklet on Pennsylvania covers the state's history through 1960. Chapter 1 provides background on the land, the Native Americans, and the first European explorations while Chapter 2 details the Quaker influence from 1681-1776, the political and economic developments, the settlers, the social and cultural process, and the colonial wars. In…

Provides a comprehensive annotated listing of resources for the study and teaching of "peace history." Resources are divided into nine categories: (1) finding aids and broad surveys; (2) archives; (3) secondary sources; (4) monographs; (5) international studies; (6) individual figures; (7) pacifist organizations; (8) insider accounts;…

An American historian writing about the experiences of American homefront children during the Second World War sought to add authenticity to his book by including in it the personal stories of people who had been children during the war, told in their own words. The writer's letter of appeal, published in about 100 U.S. newspapers and about 75…