I find the 1950s to be a fascinating decade. They have become largely misunderstood, in large part because they came before the 1960s which accelerated profound and dramatic changes in civil rights, women’s rights, and youth culture
Category: Lesson Plans
Primary Source: “One World, One War” Map drawn by Richard Harrison Join Daniel Immerwahr as he explores maps made during World War II and shows how maps changed as people’s sense of the world changed. As he puts it, “We usually see maps as photographs of the world…But cartographers, or mapmakers, make choices…and those choices… MORE
Images of African-American domestic workers in history and popular culture often conjure up acquiescent and docile employees content with their occupational status. Domestics usually worked in solitude in private households, unlike their peers who worked in factories, shops, or offices. Scholars have often assumed that this isolation inhibited the growth of their working-class consciousness and… MORE
Primary Source: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: National Response Team’s Report to the President, 1989 Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the 987-foot tank vessel Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. What followed was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The oil slick has spread over 3,000 square miles… MORE