Tuesday, December 6, 2011

American History II: First Trimester Suggested Reading Books

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (Chapter 28 and 29)
 
Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper Jr. (Chapter 30)
 
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent (Chapter 32)
 

Monday, October 3, 2011

PBS Documentary: Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Airs October 2nd, 3rd & 4th at 8 PM on PBS

PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.
The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

Airs October 2nd, 3rd & 4th at 8 PM on PBS

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

THE FIRST KENNEDY-NIXON 1960 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

On 26 September 1960, 70 million U.S. viewers tuned in to watch Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice President Richard Nixon in the first-ever televised presidential debate. It was the first of four televised "Great Debates" between Kennedy and Nixon. The first debate centered on domestic issues. The high point of the second debate, on 7 October, was disagreement over U.S. involvement in two small islands off the coast of China, and on 13 October, Nixon and Kennedy continued this dispute. On 21 October, the final debate, the candidates focused on American relations with Cuba.

The Great Debates marked television's grand entrance into presidential politics. They afforded the first real opportunity for voters to see their candidates in competition, and the visual contrast was dramatic. In August, Nixon had seriously injured his knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. By the time of the first debate he was still twenty pounds underweight, his pallor still poor. He arrived at the debate in an ill-fitting shirt, and refused make-up to improve his color and lighten his perpetual "5:00 o'clock shadow." Kennedy, by contrast, had spent early September campaigning in California. He was tan and confident and well-rested. "I had never seen him looking so fit," Nixon later wrote.

In substance, the candidates were much more evenly matched. Indeed, those who heard the first debate on the radio pronounced Nixon the winner. But the 70 million who watched television saw a candidate still sickly and obviously discomforted by Kennedy's smooth delivery and charisma. Those television viewers focused on what they saw, not what they heard. Studies of the audience indicated that, among television viewers, Kennedy was perceived the winner of the first debate by a very large margin.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Chapter 37: Desegregating the South

President Eisenhower brought to his presidency in 1953 a deep commitment to egalitarian values, nurtured by his heartland upbringing, and an abiding belief in the law of the land, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. He will use U.S. Supreme Court to improve Black Civil Rights.
Earl Warren, appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (By Eisenhower), actively assailed Black injustice and ruled in favor of African-Americans.

On May 17, 1954 the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the previous 1896 ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks inspires the Montgomery, Alabama Bus Strike.  The newly arrived 25 year old preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. will lead the non violent movement to success. Please click on the following link:
 
Emmett Tills ghastly murder will bring national attention and awareness to the despicable practices of prejudice and injustice in the Jim Crow South.  Please click on the following link:
On September 1957, when Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine Black students from enrolling in Little Rock’s Central High School, Ike sent troop sot escort the children to their classes. Please click on link:

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Chapter 37: "Checkers Speech"


 
The “Checkers speech” showed the awesome power of television..watch speech on link below:
 
 
Civil Rights Timeline
 

Brief Civil Rights Timeline

1896
Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision establishes the Separate but equal doctrine
1903
In The Souls of Black Folk , W.E.B. DuBois breaks with Booker T. Washington over the latter's emphasis on graduation and vocational education. DuBois wants the college educated Talented Tenth to lead the masses of the Negro people to political and social equality.
1909
DuBois' Niagara Movement joins with whites outraged by the Springfield Riot of 1908 to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Its strategy relies on legal action, protest, and education.  William Edward Burghardt
1934
Southern Tenant Farmers Union
1954
U.S. Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling.
!955
Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus as required by city ordinance; boycott follows and bus segregation ordinance is declared unconstitutional.
1957
SCLC Founded in Atlanta “To redeem the soul of America: Dr. King
1957
Desegregation at Little Rock:, Governor Orval Faubus
1957
Civil Rights Act (first since 1875) created a commission on Civil Rights to investigate denial of voting rights
1960
Civil Rights Act – Federal penalties imposed on anyone resorting to violence to obstruct the Civil Rights Act
1960
Sit-in Campaign: After having been refused service at the lunch counter of a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, Joseph McNeill, a Negro college student, returned the next day with three classmates to sit at the counter until they were served (Greensboro 4).
1960
Nashville, Tenn. – became the first major Southern city to de-segregate public facilities
1963
Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is killed by a sniper's bullet
September 1963
Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four little girls who, dressed in the “Youth Sunday” best, this murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement.
July 2, 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Congress passes Civil Rights Act declaring discrimination based on race illegal after 75-day long filibuster.   
1964
Three civil rights workers (Scherner, Goodman, and Chaney) disappear in Mississippi after being stopped for speeding; found buried six weeks later.
1965
Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits literacy tests and poll taxes which had been used to prevent blacks from voting. According to a report of the Bureau of the Census from 1982, in 1960 there were 22,000 African-Americans registered to vote in Mississippi, but in 1966 the number had risen to 175,000. Alabama went from 66,000 African-American registered voters in 1960 to 250,000 in 1966. South Carolina's African-American registered voters went from 58,000 to 191,000 in the same time period.