Overview When Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office as president on March 4, 1933, the nation’s economic crisis had become the most severe in its history. Not only was unemployment rising and poverty widespread, but the banking system appeared…
Category: Poverty
1920s
No matter how you try to capture the spirit of the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, nothing looms larger in a discussion of that fast-paced decade than the Great Crash of 1929. The collapse of Wall Street stock prices on…
1890s
Overview The nineteenth century had always been an age of certainties, but by the 1890s, some of the post-Civil War consensus about American civilization and progress was beginning to fragment as it had never quite done before. Populists challenged the distribution…
EXHIBIT –Remembering America Since 1945
In spring 2015, Dickinson students in History 118 (US Since 1877) conducted oral histories and produced essays with multi-media appendixes (such as podcasts or videos). Several of these extraordinary projects have been featured in this Storify essay summarizing their work.…
MAP –Growing Up
This map built from snippets from Russell Baker’s memoir Growing Up (1981) offers a vivid snapshot of life in early twentieth century America. Additional resources for this map can be found at the US Since 1877 course site. Growing Up resources