Overview STUDENT COMMENT: This week’s reading in American YAWP covered racial, social, and political tensions, the strain of the Vietnam War abroad and at domestically, the crisis of 1968, and the rise of Richard Nixon. The 1960’s, particularly 1968, is … Continue reading
There are many effective ways to organize an oral history-based essay. Here is one sample outline: I. Introduction Narrative vignette (with quotation from interview) Thesis statement and interpretive overview II. Background Personal history (subject’s story) General context (focused on secondary … Continue reading
Esther Popel (1896-1958 was a teacher, poet, editor, activist and the first female African American graduate of Dickinson College (Class of 1919). She married a chemist named William Shaw in 1925. The couple had one daughter. Popel used her married … Continue reading
This was how the statue of Roger Brooke Taney looked on the grounds of the Maryland State House in Annapolis until about midnight, August 17, 2017. Then it looked this: It was a metaphorical hanging for a man … Continue reading
Image Gateway For more information, see Freedom’s Legacy at Dickinson & Slavery and watch this video with the descendants of Henry Spradley and Robert Young. Discussion Question Did the Second Founding of the Constitution (1865-70) succeed in transforming American society? … Continue reading
Many white Southerners labeled the return of “home rule” following the Radical era of Reconstruction as a period of “Redemption.” That word, however, contained a very bitter note for anybody who believed that the aftermath of the Civil War promised … Continue reading
David Blight, a history professor at Yale University, is one of the nation’s leading experts on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. This week, students in History 118 will be reading an article of Blight’s that appeared in the Journal … Continue reading
Southerners were not the only Americans whose lives were transformed during the decades immediately following the Civil War. Northerners did not face the same challenges of political reconstruction or economic transition in the aftermath of slavery, but they did face … Continue reading
Political life in the South during Reconstruction kept changing at a rapid pace. In his book, A Short History of Reconstruction, Eric Foner charts a remarkably complicated set of factors that elevated some groups over others at different times across various states during the … Continue reading