Resources

Progressive Era

Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film, American Memory, Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/troosevelt_film/

Roosevelt’s life, from the Spanish-American War in 1898 to his death in 1919, is documented in 104 different films available on this site. The films include scenes of Roosevelt with world figures, politicians, monarchs, friends, and family members. Special presentations on this site include: a film chronology offering a timeline with outlines of each period in Roosevelt’s life covered in film; a text-based timeline from Roosevelt’s birth in 1858 to his death in 1919; four sound recordings that Roosevelt made for the Edison company in 1912; and an image of “Theodore Roosevelt: The Picture Man,” an article from a 1910 moving picture magazine.

Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850–1920, American Memory, Library of Congress

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html

This site documents the formation of the movement to conserve and protect America’s natural heritage through published works, manuscript documents, images, and motion picture footage. Site visitors can view such holdings as Alfred Bierstadt paintings, period travel literature, a photographic record of Yosemite, and Congressional acts regarding conservation and the establishment of national parks. The site provides an annotated chronology of selected events in the development of the conservation movement, with links to pertinent documents and images.

Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963, University of Illinois at Chicago and Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/urbanexp/index.htm

This site offers more than 700 items for exploring the settlement house aspect of Progressive Era reform. Resources include articles, letters, memoirs, reports, maps, and photographs. Materials are embedded within a historical narrative that illuminates the life of Jane Addams and the history and legacy of Chicago’s Hull House. The site covers more than 70 topics on life at Hull House, Progressive reform, immigration, and the effects and consequences of urbanization.

Pluralism and Unity, David Bailey, Michigan State University, and David Halsted, H-Net

http://www.expo98.msu.edu/

Visitors to this site may explore pluralism and unity in early 20th-century American thought and life through a wide array of materials. The site also links to major sites on such topics as ethics, politics, culture, sociology, anthropology, religion, economics, imperialism, hegemony, world systems theory, League of Nations, Jim Crow laws, eugenics, the Niagara Movement, NAACP, KKK, unions, strikes, modernism, the genteel tradition, localism, and ragtime. This website also outlines the perspectives of important public figures of the era.

Temperance and Prohibition, K. Austin Kerr, Ohio State University

http://prohibition.osu.edu/

Organized local and national campaigns to reduce the drinking of alcohol in the United States are documented in this site, along with efforts of those opposing Prohibition laws. The website also includes dozens of contemporary images, speeches, newspaper and journal articles, advertisements, reports, statistical charts, and accounts. Specific topics include the Woman’s Crusade of 1873–74, the Anti-Saloon League, the Ohio Dry Campaign of 1918, the evolution of the brewing industry, and Prohibition in the 1920s.

Earliest Voices: A Gallery from the Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University Department of History, Vincent Voice Library, and MATRIX

http://www.historicalvoices.org/earliest_voices/

This collection includes 19 audio clips of speeches recorded by seven turn-of-the-century public figures—William Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, Booker T. Washington, and William Howard Taft. The clips last between one and seven minutes each; all but one were made between 1900 and 1920. Subjects of the speeches include politics, reform, socialism, isolationism, trusts, the gold standard, U.S. military force, labor issues, and race relations. The site includes transcripts of the speeches as well as 150-word biographies and photographs of each speaker.

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party, American Memory, Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp

This combined archive and exhibit offers a selection of 448 photographs from the Library’s National Woman’s Party (NWP) collection that “document the National Woman’s Party’s push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later campaign for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.” Photographs span the years 1875 to 1938, but most date from 1913 to 1922. Visitors can browse photographs by title or subject or search the descriptive information. The site has a photo gallery of more than 50 photographs depicting NWP activists who were arrested and imprisoned for their role in suffrage protests.

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848–1921, American Memory, Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html

This site consists of 167 books, pamphlets, handbooks, reports, speeches, and other artifacts totaling some 10,000 pages dealing with the suffrage movement in America. Carrie Chapman Catt, the Association’s longtime president, donated much of the larger collection. Also included are works from the libraries of some of the organization’s officers and members, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, and Mary A. Livermore. Formed in 1890, NAWSA secured the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 through a series of well-organized state campaigns.

American Family Immigration History Center, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation

http://www.ellisisland.org/

This site provides a searchable database containing records on the more than 22 million passengers and ship crewmembers that passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. In addition to a basic passenger record (name, ethnicity, place of residence, date of arrival, age, marital status, ship of travel, and place of departure), users can view a copy of the original ship manifest, and a picture of the ship. The site includes two well-done presentations: “Family Histories,” shows how six Americans of diverse ethnic backgrounds traced their ancestors; and a timeline, “The Peopling of America,” covers six periods from pre-1790 to 2000, with graphs, photographs, immigration statistics, and an essay on immigration history.