U.S. Highway Map, Explained
Although this video is informative on its own, teachers creating lessons on suburbs of the 1950s and the exodus from inner cities can take just section from it to embellish their lesson
National Security Act Amendments of 1949, 10 August 1949
This is the law that shows Congress naming the Department of Defense
Search Results: "kubrick stanley" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress)
The celebrated film director Stanley Kubrick was a photographer for Look Magazine in the late 1940s. His pictures from the University of Michigan are great material for a history lesson - what do these photographs tell us about what it was like to live in that era? How are they more informative than a textbook? Less?
1963 - 6/20: Hotline Agreements | Arms Control Association
The first "hotline" was not a telephone that linked the White House and the Kremlin, it was a telex in the Pentagon. The first time it was used was the assassination of President Kennedy
1952 | Timeline of Computer History | Computer History Museum
On election night, November 4, CBS News borrows a UNIVAC computer to predict the outcome of the race for the US presidency between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. Opinion polls predicted strong support for Stevenson, but the UNIVAC´s analysis of early returns showed a clear victory for Eisenhower.
American Rhetoric: Newton Minow -- Address to the National Association of Broadcasters (Television and the Public Interest)
The chairman of the FCC chastised broadcasters at the National Association of Broadcasts telling them that TV was a "Vast Wasteland"
Watch The Quiz Show Scandal | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
Although I Love Lucy gets most of the attention, the Quiz Show scandals of the 1950s might tell us more about America at the time - and now
Opposing Communism in 1947 - Lesson from Council for Foreign Relations
Rear Platform and Other Informal Remarks in Michigan | Harry S. Truman
Reading the highlighted sections of this speech will reveal a fundamental element of politics in the first third of the 21st century
Deterrence 101 - Nuclear Network
Deterrence is a data-point in AP US History and is also included in many US History lessons - a bullet point described by a teacher whose only knowledge of the policy is a couple of data points. Even a quick scroll through these videos and a couple minutes watching exposes the vast breadth and depth of the topic
JFK's Grades Choate, 1931-1935 (folder 2 of 2) | JFK Library
Teachers may like this more that students, but many of JFK's grades, progress reports and notes home from teachers are in this collection
The Problem with Public Education : The John Birch Society
Perfect for the last few people who teach students that .org sites are more trustworthy - or even for teachers exposing students to the ultra-conservative fringe of the Republican Party
How Beatnik Style Made the Underground Mainstream | Another
Teachers should put this alongside the Donna Reed 50s housewife stereotype. If your teaching of the past is to have any authenticity, you have to at least try to include everyone
Science: One Big Greenhouse - TIME magazine 1956
Teachers should somehow throw this into their Early Cold war/Fifties culture lesson sequence to show how important ideas and messages don't get attention but should. The reality of Global Warming was presented to Americans in the 1950s
PTA History 1940-1949 - Committee against Comic Books
Teachers and students facing challenges to their learning in the form of censorship should know of the deep history of censorship in America, even the PTA was recommending that books be taken away from children in the late 1940s
How Your House Makes You Miserable - by Anne Helen Petersen
Many teachers in their mid twenties and early 30s might be teaching about 1950s surburbia just when they are in the process of buying their first home as well. This essay raises interesting questions about commercialization of the home
America’s National Churchill Museum | Garry Kasparov - 2022
Pairing Kasparov's speech in Fulton Missouri with Churchill's Iron Curtain speech is a perfect set up for a relevant Cold War Lesson
Broken Arrows: Nuclear Weapons Accidents | atomicarchive.com
Teachers tell students about Atomic bombs in World War II, they show Bert the Turtle videos and perhaps a picture of a fallout shelter - but they never tell students about accidents involving nuclear weapons. Unless they've made an effort to learn on their own, teachers may not even know how many accidents there were
James Howard Kunstler: The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs | TED Talk
Instead of teaching the tired old conformity lesson of the taught narrative canon - which is inaccurate to begin with, change it up with this 18 minute indictment of suburbs in America. Kuntsler calls suburbs the "greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the human race"
Report, A Study of "Witch Hunting" and Hysteria in the United States
This study was prepared at the request of Harry Truman in 1949. It not only provides insight into the propensity of "witch-hunting" hysteria to appear in the United States over time, but it shows concerns for it resurfacing right before Joseph McCarthy made a career of it
Policing the Comics: CQR
This provides valuable background to teachers using the Comic Book scare of 1949 lesson. from 1949 through 1954 there was a national movement to bad or censor comic books.
Opinion | This Is What It’s Like to Witness a Nuclear Explosion - The New York Times
Careful consideration might result in the conclusion that students doing the "Should the USA have dropped the bomb" learn far, far less than students who read an article like this. Students, and their teachers who grew up after 1990 may have no idea what a nuclear weapon can do.
1955 CONFIDENTIAL FILE - "Horror Comic Books" - Estes Kefauver - YouTube
25 minute video of 1955 television broadcast decrying the evils of comic books, great addition to a lesson on the comic book censorship wave of the early 1950s
Newsweek archives - for free range primary doc searching
A Crisis of Innocence - Comics Books and Children's Culture 1940-1954
Although the taught narrative canon privilages MCCarthyism and the Red scare (and has just discovered the Lavender Scare), the anti-comic book movement of the late 40s early 50s can teach students about culture wars in a way that is more engaging to them
Isaiah Nixon – The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project
This is one of those stories that never made it into the taught narrative canon. A young black man was shot dead on the porch of his house in front of his wife and children for voting in the Democratic presidential primary of September 1948. This site shows how a group of Emory college students helped Isaiah Nixon's daughter find his grave in 2015. The video her giving thanks to them deserves to be shown to high school students
Memo, "Analysis of the Southern Democratic Revolt" | Harry S. Truman
Long before Kevin Philips came up with Nixon's "southern strategy" the Democrats knew the political landscape of the south was changing. This state-by-state analysis shows the cleavage in the "solid south" that had been Democratic since the Civil War
The 1948 Election Campaign | Harry S. Truman
Possible free range primary source lesson,. This collection focuses on the presidential election of 1948. The collection includes 95 documents totaling 872 pages covering the years 1946 through 1981. Supporting materials include photographs, oral history transcripts, political cartoons, audio recordings and Truman Library museum objects.
United States Census, 1950 • FamilySearch
Atomic Alert (Elementary version) 1951 Encyclopaedia Britannica Films on Vimeo
10 minute "public service" film shown to students in 1951 explaining atomic weapons and what families can do to protect themselves. Interesting alternative to "Duck and Cover"