20Th Century History

Front 1

Gender and Jim Crow, by Glenda Gilmore

Back 1

* 1996
* Puts black women at center of white supremacy politics at turn of century North Carolina.
* Depicts brief upward mobility with Reconstruction.
* Jim Crow practices new to upper South and major ruptures.
* Black women became diplomats to white community during Jim Crow.
* Black political life shifted to arenas less vulnerable to white attack such as voluntary associations.
* Black women's responses to Jim Crow created foundation for future activism.
* Critque: relied on few and relatively few women to tell story.

Front 2

Decline of Popular Politics, by Michael McGerr

Back 2

* 1985
* Decline of party politics at end of 20th century has been explained by registration requirements, australian ballot, independent press, and one-party domination of many states. 
* He argues that liberal reformers whou sought to prevent voters from blindly supporting parties ended up decreasing the vote. 
* Turned political rallies into civics lessons. 
* New focus on candidates and policies not engaging. 
* Does not want to claim party politics was golden age, but it did allow for radical action as voters were used to active participation. 

Front 3

A Short History of Reconstruction, by Eric Foner

Back 3

* 1988
* Dubois the first to revise catastrophic view of Reconstruction. 
* Places the black experience at the center. 
* Reconstruction was tragically brief, flawed, but ultimately impressive effort at democracy. 
* look for more in book...

Front 4

Republic of Suffering, by Drew Faust

Back 4

* 2009
* Death created modern nation by establishing national structures and commitments. 
* Created a culture of mourning.
* Lincoln's 2nd inaugural claimed that shared death was God's punishment and brought nation together.
* Black death played role in their suffrage.
* Looks at the "work" of death by soldiers and survivors. 
* Such death required construction of meaning. It came to be shared sacrifice rather than emancipation. 

Front 5

Strangers in the Land, by John Higham

Back 5

* 1955
* Foundational work in American prejudice, nativism, and immigration.
* Traces course from Civil War to National Origins Act of 1924.
* Three major branches of American nativism: anti-Catholic, racism, and anti-radicalism.
* Nativism comes from internal problems which seem to threaten the well being of the nation.
* During times of prosperity prejudice exists but nativism remains low.

Front 6

Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

Back 6

* 1955
* Discusses the origin and development of Jim Crow laws.
* Major objective was to unify whites (Morgan).
* Not the necessary result of latent southern racism.
* Woodward shows that there was relatively more racial intermixing between 1865 and 1890, and that notions of incompatibility came later.
* Many opposed Jim Crow for political, social, and religious reasons.
* Jim Crow laws effectively change how people thought.
* It was the economic instability of post Civil War era that caused antagonism (Higham).
* The conditionsright for reimagining of racial relations (northward migration, industrialization, World War II, and Cold War).
* Change is the only constant in the South. Racial relations are changing, again, and this is not a traumatic affront to a static South.

Front 7

American Populism, Robert McMath

Back 7

* 1993
* John D. Hick's had established the understanding of populism in 1931 with The Populist Revolt.
* McMath teams with Lawrence Goodwyn in Democratic Promise to reinvent populism.
* Hicks had seen as them as liberals, Hofstadter as reactionary, and Norman Pollack as proto-socialist.
* McMath describes them as mix of republican and producers with egalitarian values that were antimonopoly but never anticapitalist.
* Shift of focus from People's Party to the Farmer's Alliance movement.
* Populist origins were in post Civil War cultures of protest: the Grange, the Knights of Labor, the cooperative movement, and the greenbackism.
* One crop economies generate cooperative culture and voluntary associations. 
* Could not sustain their movement culture once they entered gritty politics that required compromise.

Front 8

Southern Crossings, by Ed Ayers

Back 8

* 1992
* Most important synthesis since Woodward's Origins of the New South.
* Woodward believes that the South's legacy was change, and that the white elite maintained their power through anti-democratic means. 
* Ayers looks at the common people, while Woodward had looked at the elite.
* Combines quantitative methods with diaries, sermons, novels, and other sources.
* Emphasizes the relationship between the rise of segregation and the new modernizing economy and society of the New South, with its increasingly anonymous social relations and the growing success and assertiveness of black southerners.

Front 9

"An Obituary for the Progressive Movement," by Peter Filene

Back 9

* 1970
* Hofstadter and "status anxiety" in 1955.
* Increasing complexity shows that understanding Progressivism is false dilemma; it never existed.
* Goals: constraints on monopolies, regulation of railroads, lower tariffs, direct primary, initiatives and referendums, direct election of senators, women's suffrage, child and female labor laws, and food and drug regulation.
* Historians themselves divided on whether or not progressives were nativist: Hofstadter, Mowry, Handlin, and Leuchtenburg say yes, while Goldman and Higham say no.
* Mowry and Chandler created progressive profiles in 1950s. 
* Almost all were urban, middle-class, native, Protestant, young, college-educated, professional, and new to politics. Almost no farmers or laborers. 
* These profiles led to Mowry's and Hofstadter's class interpretation: Progressives were battling rich plutocrats and workers and immigrants below.
* Hays and Huthmacher have complicated this view.
* Otis Graham created entirely different profiles: more diverse, poorer, and more rural.
* Other studies have shown that the opponents of progressivism shared their traits.

Front 10

"In Search of Progressivism," by Dan Rodgers

Back 10

* 1982
* Progressivism fell into trouble in the 1970s--Filene's essay.
* Pluralism the new understanding. Progressivism not reform in traditional sense, but explosion of scores of politically active pressure groups who emerged in recession of traditional political loyalties.
* Historians frequently subdivided Progressives: social vs. structural (Holli), western democratic vs. eastern elite Roosevelts (Hackney), social justice vs. social order (Church and Sedlak).
* Problem was individual Progressives actually drew on both sides of these supposed divides. 
* The only way to connect them was to recognize them as partners in competitive, pluralistic politics.
* Dean Burnham argued that progressives emerged at crucial shift in electoral behavior.
* Decline in party politics and rise of issue politics.
* Dominant intellectual themes of time: social bonds and efficiency.
* These combined to form Progressivism's motivation for reform. 

Front 11

"Age of Reform: A Reconsideration," by Alan Brinkley

Back 11

* Hofstadter's Age of Reform the most influential book ever published on 20th century America.
* Critique: while innovative, he used scant resources. 
* Working in shadow of Beard, he disliked economic determinism. Felt there was room or ideas in our understanding. 
* More interested in new interdisciplinary approaches than with politics.
* Drew on the social sciences, particularly those influenced by Freud.
* C. Wright Mills 1951 study White Collar gave him his concept of status.
* Robert Merton showed power of irrationality.
* David Thelen argued that status played no role. Progressives came from all walks of life.

Front 12

"Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era," Robert Johnston

Back 12

* Progressives championed by politicians of both stripes now
* Historians less positive. 
* The largely Leftist academe has concluded that Progressives didn't address fundamental matters of social justice
* Progs weren't interested in race or gender, so they were bad.
* Good historiography, with conclusion that Progressivism was democratic. 

Front 13

Impossible Subjects, by Mae Ngai

Back 13

* 2004
* Ngai contends that 20th-century immigration law created illegal aliens and then racialized them in a manner that had grave implications for non-European immigrants and their descendants. 
* In 1920s technology made immigrants less valuable, nativists worried about the impact of foreigners on government, and the Red Scare posited immigrants were dissidents. 
* 1924 Act racialized Asians and then Mexicans while simultaneously de-racializing Europeans. 
* Europeans categorized by nation while others were by race.
* 1965 immigration reform eliminated racial considerations but was still restrictive. 

Front 14

Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, by Robyn Muncy

Back 14

* 1991
* Muncy traces the growth from Chicago's reform network to the professionalization of reform and women's dominion over child and women's issues.
* Generations of women followed in Jane Addams' footsteps.
* Created female dominion in social work, education, and government reforms. 
* New Deal adopted women's agenda but ended their dominion over reform. 

Front 15

Over Here, by David Kennedy. 

Back 15

* 1980
* About the different America that emerged from WWI.
* Progressives recognized that laissez-faire would not bring about order; this led to reliance on middle class experts and managers.
* There was optimism and trust in the rationally managed society.
* WWI ended that.
* The War at first compelled America to be uber-progressive. Required massive organization and efficiency. 
* Wilson sought organization but through voluntary rather than coerced means. 
* This approach led to widespread propaganda.
* The propaganda ultimately undermined progressive movements, as soldiers and citizens came to resent the slogans as lies. 
* Disillusion had more to do with the outcome than with the war itself because soldiers arrived late and avoided most of the horrors of the war. 
* Critique: traditional historical methods of minimal look at women, blacks, and labor.

Front 16

Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, by Nan Enstad

Back 16

* 1999
* Immigrant Lower East Side of early 20th century and the shirt-makers' strike of 1909.
* Argues that these women's consumption shaped their labor activism (Breen).
* Distinctive consumption gave them unique identity, distinct from middle class reformers views of ladies and also from working class union views on workers. 
* Inspired by fictional heroines who were strong and virtuous.
* Through consumption of clothing, dime novels, and movies working women constructed identities as ladies, workers, and americans--three categories from which they were often excluded because of their ethnicity, gender, and class. 

Front 17

Fear Itself, by Ira Katznelson

Back 17

* 2013
* Sees southern Democrats wielding tremendous power over the the Democratic Party.
* Result is that racism was built into the New Deal.
* Example: exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from social security.
* Earlier histories showed racist outcomes as an accident.
* Nope. 
* Depression-era politicians scrambled to save democracy and capitalism, and they had to deal with racist new dealers like senator and klan member Theodore Bilbo.
* New Deal still a success; 
* FDR kept americans from turning their fear into dictatorship--no small accomplishment in the global context.
* FDR's success contingent on his ability/willingness to work with anti-democratic racists in South.

Front 18

Making a New Deal, by Lizbeth Cohen

Back 18

* 1990
* Ethnically diverse workers "made" the New Deal, as working culture changed during 20s and 30s to value a moral capitalism shaped by interventionist state and unions.
* After the government's brutal destruction of unions in early 1900s, few workers placed much faith in government or unions. Instead they relied on ethnic organizations and employer paternalism.
* Ethnic elites, through organizations, and paternalistic employers seeking stability through welfare capitalism created a security net which workers depended on. 
* Creation of mass culture in the 1920s fostered a class consciousness that stretched beyond traditional ethnic boundaries.
* 1920s consumer culture created standards and expectations that workers sought during the crisis of the Depression.
* With the crisis of the Depression the working class loyalty to these authorities disintegrated. 
* Instead, they turned to the Democratic party, the federal government, and an emerging movement of industrial unions. 

Front 19

Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, by William E. Leuchtenburg

Back 19

* 1963
* New Deal more theoretical than supposed.
* Sees Roosevelt as resilient rather than conservative.
* Leuchtenburg thinks the concept of two New Deals is overblown
* Roosevelt's program rested on assumption that you could secure a just society by imposing a welfare state on capitalist foundation.
* Many of FDR's policies failed or were at least flawed, but he asked the right questions and remade presidency to be more responsive to the will of the people.
* Sees broad links to the Progressives

Front 20

The Dust Bowl, by Daniel Worster

Back 20

* 1979
* Southern Great Plains had worst environmental disaster at same time as Great Depression
* Argues that more than nature responsible for the Dust Bowl.
* The area originally was full of buffalo grass, which does not require a great deal of moisture.
* The wheat farmers brought into area at turn of century ushered in disaster.
* We can avoid future calamities only by working within limits of the environment.
* New Deal did not successfully shift the values that caused the Dust Bowl
* Therefore, despite the new techniques, dust bowls returned in 50s and 70s.

Front 21

The Great Depression, by Robert McElvaine

Back 21

* 1984
* Sympathetic view of Hoover's struggle.
* Hoover paved way for New Deal bc his volunteerism experiments failed.
* Also pioneered programs of relief and aid.
* Argues that values changed as result of GD
* workers and intellectuals developed greater respect for cooperation.
* Working class pushed for the reforms (New Deal from below).
* FDR had no theory guiding him and was increasingly taken in by anti-business advisors.
* Critique: doesn't situate Great Depression in international context. 

Front 22

War Without Mercy, by John Dower

Back 22

* 1986
* Racism was powerful element on both sides of Pacific War.
* Dower recreates the racism of the time through an analysis of archives, cartoons, movies, and personal letters.
* Connects this racism to the ruthlessness of that war.
* Japanese didn't denigrate others as much as build themselves up: Americans were decadent, superficial, immoral, and arrogant.
* Stereotypes quickly reversed after war.

Front 23

American People in World War II, by David Kennedy

Back 23

* 1999
* Not really a people's history.
* The New Deal's emphasis on security and stability saved devolatized capitalism and provided foundation for growth of 40s and beyond.
* Years 1929-1945 are depicted as transition from paralysis to prosperity.
* Also, a repudiation of isolationism.
* The big impact for Kennedy was not the cold war but globalization.
* Sympathetic to Hoover, who was intelligent and energetic Quaker.
* FDR less international in scope of understanding of war, which cost the world a thin but possible path away from war.
* Doesn't think first years of FDR warrant being called a New Deal, as too pragmatic and opportunistic
* FDR sought to shift Democratic Party to northern urban rather than southern rural.
* Massive party realignment.

 

Front 24

The Best War Ever, by Michael Addams

Back 24

* 1994
* Attempts to dismantle the myth of WWII as a "good war."
* Revisionist of Chamberlain. He bought time for Brits to install radar net.
* Challenges myth of ordinary hero soldier. Most didn't fight. Alcoholism and sexual licentiousness rampant and many men became "broken."
* Traditionally a glorified war. 
* Dower, Fussel, and Terkel have complicated that to some extent. 

Front 25

Homeward Bound, by Elaine May

Back 25

* 1988
* Sources: psychology surveys of 200 couples from 1930 to 1955.  
* May sees correlation betwen foreign policy of containment and the ideology of family in the 1950s.
* Family was supposed to contain sexuality to keep America morally sound and safe from communist subversion.
* Women needed to stay at home to contain explosive issues of sex and discontent.
* Traditional interpretations of 1950s domesticity based on enthusiasm for family after difficulties of depression and war.
* May offers alternative: the Cold War created anxieties and the home provided safe area and also means to prevent dangerous social changes.
* Critique: Cold War also happening in 60s, 70s, and 80s but with changing family patterns.
* Critique: couples about 15 years too old to be truly representative.

Front 26

Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War, by K.A. Cuordileone

Back 26

* 2005
* Rabid anti-communism of 1950s cast Democrats as too soft to beat USSR.
* Masculinity came to define Democratic candidacy.
* This gender insecurity shaped policy by compelling liberal leaders to prove their potency.
* Manchurian Candidate 1962 showed that communism would work through the maternal emasculation of men. 
* Lonely Crowd showed that capitalism had turned men soft, pliable, and seeking approval of others.
* Kennedy the result: military, Irish, womanizing, etc...
* Kennedy was an "Adlai Stevenson with balls" said Alsop.
* Historiography: builds on but critical of Schlesinger's Vital Center.

Front 27

The Cold War and The Color Line, Thomas Borstelmann

Back 27

* 2001
* By 1950s domestic and international relations challenged State Department and White House to reconsider race.
* Officials promoted end of white supremacy more out of geopolitical concerns than quest for justice.
* Eisenhower not interested personally, but recognized importance. 
* Sent troops to Little Rock in 1957 due to international concerns.
* Caught between need to engender support from former colonies and whites at home who sought to preserve white supremacy
* Process was slow and convoluted, much to the chagrin of black activists who desperately sought immediate relief.
* Critique: thinks southern politicians more willing to be progressive because they "understood" but what about not having to fear losing the southern vote?

Front 28

Freedom is Not Enough, by Nancy MacLean

Back 28

* 2006
* How did blacks and women come to leadership roles in society, and how did white men come to see this as progress?
* Legislation and court rulings not enough; public activism necessary.
* Black struggle forced women and latinos to rethink their place in society.
* Reinterprets civil rights era as movement with workplace equality playing a central role.
* Title VII and protests crumbled white privilege in the workplace.
* The drive to secure diverse workplace has not been given much attention by historians because it was largely conducted by mainstream organization and lacked the drama of militant political activism.
* Affirmative action was key.
* Mainstream women's organization NOW followed the lead of the NAACP.
* Mexican activists had previously tried to obtain privileges by arguing that they were white. After black successes of 60s, they began to emulate their models.
* Conservative opposition shifted from massive resistance to color-blindness.

Front 29

Civilities and Civil Rights, by William Chafe

Back 29

* 1980
* Thin veneer of progressivism in Greensboro blinded black and white activists from a conservative reality.
* City announced it would comply with Brown in 1954 but six years later nothing and the sit-ins started. 
* Only after riots in 1969 did white businessmen join with black to bring real change (and only then to protect their city's image).
* It was elite whites who were responsible for holding off progress toward racial justice, although they fostered the myth that is was poor whites.
* There were no police dogs, fire hoses, or bombings in North Carolina, but for two decades after Brown there was no integration either. 
* In crises after crises the white elites silenced protestors by putting civilities ahead of civil rights.
* After 1963 blacks realized that whites would only relinquish power when made to and that emphasis on civility was instrument for white supremacy.
* Conclusion: civility and civil rights not compatible.

Front 30

At the Dark End of the Street, by Danielle McGuire

Back 30

* 2010
* Grounds civil rights movement in decades-long struggle to protect black women from rape.
* Civil Rights typically seen as struggle between black and white men.
* From perspective of black women, the civil rights movement was largely about protecting their bodies' integrity.
* Rosa Parks was anti-rape advocate before patron saint of bus boycott.
* Focuses on interracial rape but one chapter one rape within Black Panthers shows how sexual assault led to the formation of women-led organizations. 
* Rapes led to campaigns for justice that would later serve as foundation for civil rights movement.

Front 31

A Life in the Struggle, by George Lipsitz

Back 31

* 1988
* Portrays Perry as what Gramsci calls an "organic intellectual" who espouses values of class even though not official intellectual.
* Helped form class consciousness and stimulate opposition to the hegemonic culture even though he had no formal position as intellectual or leader. 
* Provides rare portrait of mid-level activist.

Front 32

I Am a Man, by Steve Estes

Back 32

* 2005
* Title adopted from slogan from striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968
* White supremacy gendered, but this book demonstrates the gendered component within the civil rights movement.
* Early movement leaders, such as MLKJ and the SNCC, embraced manhood through non-violence, which was a more radical approach.
* Malcolm X and Black Panthers championed militant, and more traditional, masculinity.
* Militant masculinity effective because it allowed men who felt powerless to assert power over other men and women. 
* Masculine rhetoric contradictory: inspired a powerful collective identity that emphasized strength and pride, yet also fostered violence and obscured deeper, progressive issues latent in the movement.
* Critique: too complimentary of gender relations within SNCC and early activists. 

Front 33

New Day in Babylon, by William Deburg

Back 33

* 1992
* Looks at militant black culture from 1965 to 1975
* From perspective of black power advocates
* Black Power was a psychological. emancipation from constraints of white racism and new sense of collective worth.
* Commonality throughout was attempt to bolster racial pride.
* More a cultural than a political movement.
* Critique: a work of celebration than academic analysis.

Front 34

The Trouble Between Us, by Winifred Brienes

Back 34

* Examines 2nd wave feminism from mid-1960s through late 1970s.
* More homogenous than typically depicted. 
* Civil Rights movement the progenitor of feminist movement.
* There were attempts by both black and white activists to form coalitios but tensions remained.
* Challenges notion that feminists were privileged racists.
* What women wanted universal sisterhood and to diminish racial differences.
* Black women rejected this idea, believing that race was integral to their condition. 
* Early feminists who had experienced interracial community and antiracist ideals in civil rights movement encountered fierce rejection from black women.
* White women attacked families, not recognizing that the family was a key refuge for black women in a racist society.
* Division among white radical women: those who saw capitalism as the root of oppression and remained allied with Leftist men, and those who added patriarchy to the dominant oppression.
* Socialists preferred women's liberation and saw 19th century feminists as bourgeois, and the feminists saw themselves as inheritors of a tradition.
* Unfortunate shift from dealing with large issues to simply trying to work out political relationships with black women