History
Mississippi Liberal
Instead of turning toward hatred after his father was murdered by a black man in 1926, Frank E. Smith (1918-1997) committed himself to help his racist state move toward integration and racial harmony. ...
Prejudice Across America
The experiences of a teacher and his white students on a nationwide trek toward racial understanding
In 1998 James Waller took twenty-one white college students from Washington state on a month-long journey. ...
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial
An analysis of the Leo Frank case as a measure of the complexities characterizing the relationship between African Americans and Jews in America
In 1915 Leo Frank, a northern Jew, was lynched in Georgia. ...
German Boy
What was the experience of war for a child in bombed and ravaged Germany? In this memoir, the voice of innocence is heard.
“This is great stuff,” exclaims Stephen E. Ambrose. “I love this book. ...
Jazz in American Culture
The family of musical styles known as jazz came into being around 1900 as several popular black musical idioms coalesced. This free-flowing, spontaneous music based in improvisation emerged primarily ...
Obituaries in American Culture
“Within the short period of a year, she was a bride, a beloved wife and companion, a mother, a corpse,” reported The National Intelligencer on the death of Elizabeth Buchanan in 1838.
Such obituaries ...
Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine
There was a time when birth was treated as a natural process rather than a medical condition. Before 1800, women gave birth seated in birth chairs or on stools and were helped along by midwives. Then ...
The WPA Guides
In 1935 the FDR administration put 40,000 unemployed artists to work in four federal arts projects. The main contribution of one unit, the Federal Writers Project, was the American Guide Series, a collectively ...
A Spiral Way
Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence
Best Research in the General History of Recorded Sound (2000)
The invention of the cylinder phonograph at the end of the nineteenth century ...
Shenandoah Valley Folklife
Bordered by the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains, the Shenandoah Valley forms a natural corridor to the western parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Early American settlers followed ...