This worksheet helps students undertake a close reading of the 1936 cartoon "A Mad Tea Party," about President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. It also asks them to write a paragraph explaining the cartoon's argument.
This worksheet helps students to analyze three pieces of evidence about Social Security (a government poster, a letter about the program, and Congressional testimony about the program) and write a paragraph explaining the evidence's different points…
Use this graphic organizer to help students chart how people's attitudes towards the federal government changed because of the New Deal. This worksheet is part of the activity "A "Great Cause for Better Citizens"? Attitudes towards the New Deal."
In this activity students read letters from ordinary people to government leaders in the Roosevelt Administration. Then they interpret the range of attitudes about the changing role of the federal government during the New Deal. The letters for…
In this letter to President Roosevelt, the writer provides his own definition of a "real American." His frustration regarding inadequate government relief is expressed alongside racist, anti-semitic, and nativist sentiments. The letter is signed…
This 1934 letter to Senator Robert F. Wagner protests President Roosevelt's New Deal policies. The writer argues for stimulating private business to create employment, and against increasing the role of the federal government. Since the 19th…
As the Great Depression dragged on through the 1930s, critics on the left blamed the Roosevelt Administration for not going far enough. They maintained that New Deal measures had mostly shored up banks and industries without sufficiently providing…
Although Franklin D. Roosevelt never endorsed anti-lynching legislation and condoned discrimination against blacks in federally funded relief programs, he still won the hearts and the votes of many African Americans. Yet this support and even…
American Social History Project · Center for Media and Learning