As millions of men lost their jobs during the Great Depression, many began to argue that women (particularly married women) should not be occupying the scarce jobs that remained. When women could find jobs, employers routinely paid them less than…

This account from the Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide, an African-American newspaper, describes the CCC's response to the dishonorable discharge of an African-American corpsman who refused to fan flies off of a white officer. After a protest by…

This newspaper account tells about how the NAACP successfully intervened in the case of an African American member of the Civilian Conservation Corps who was dishonorably discharged after he refused to fan flies off an white officer.

In his 1941 State of the Union address to Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt identified "four freedoms" (freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech, and freedom to practice religion) that the U.S. needed to defend by entering into…

California passed two laws that established a system of Indian apprenticeship. The laws made it easy for any white person to claim young Indian laborers by taking a list of names to a judge and getting the judge’s signature. Sympathetic…

The Staunton Spectator, a Virginia newspaper, reported on the "miserable" treatment faced by fugitive slaves who had been "abandoned" by abolitionist supporters in the U.S. North and Canada. Using quotes from northern papers, it described a fight a…

The Staunton Spectator, a Virginia newspaper, frequently used material printed in northern newspapers in order to defend the southern institution of slavery. In this, and many similar articles, it detailed the unfortunate circumstances that…

In 1965, Mexican and Filipino farmworkers joined together as the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) to strike against poor working conditions and low wages in California's grape industry. Months on the picket line, however, took their toll, and…

This 1855 newspaper account of election day in lower Manhattan is filled with the reporter's assumptions about the Five Points immigrant neighborhood and its residents. Irish immigrants had by this time garnered a reputation for disorderliness and…

In the American South, slaves were typically dispersed among large populations of armed and vigilant whites. As a result, there were few large-scale, armed slave rebellions there. This was not the case in the West Indies, where plantation owners…