February 23: The Great Depression introduction

      Read: Give Me Liberty 799-806

                my outline on the 1920s and shorter hours solution  

                View  in class: A Job At Ford’s 

              Questions: What caused the Great Depression? What was the reaction of people and officials to this challenge?  What was the shorter hours solution?

 

 

Recommended:

·         Calvin Coolidge on the Spirituality of Commerce

·         “A Man’s Thanksgiving”: A Hymn to the God of Business

·         “Business . . . the Salvation of the World”: Celebrating Big Business

·         Harlan: Working under the Gun Harlan Coal Strike of 1931—harbinger of 1930s labor strife

·         Which Side Are You On? (legendary song from the Harlan County Miners Strike)

·         40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March

·         FBI file on the Bonus Expeditionary Force http://foia.fbi.gov/bonmarch.htm

One of many, many files—see the long list on this Freedom of Information site-- either of groups or famous persons, that historians and activists have forced the FBI to release in the wake of the Freedom of information Act of the 1970s. These files indicate the continued FBI repression against protest movements. The Bonus March, as the chapter indicates, was a group of veterans who were determined to get aid during the Depression. Yet the army was used to repress their movement. Many of the documents from the 1930s shows the enormous courage people took, despite repression, to express their rights.

·         Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression –oral history

·         Unemployed Councils of the 1930s –oral history

·         “Like a Thick Wall”: Blocking Farm Auctions in Iowa

·         SHORTER WORK WEEK AS THE SOLUTION TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The popular solution to the Great Depression was the 30 hour work week, which passed the Senate in 1933, and seemed the destiny of the nation…What happened.?

·         Losing the Business: The Donners Recall the Great Depression

·         Hard Times in Dubuque, Iowa

·         “The Depression has Changed People’s Outlook”: The

·                    Beuschers Remember the Great Depression in Dubuque,

·                                                      Iowa

·         A Woman Remembers Hoboes of the 1930s

·         The Vagrant in Fiction: Emblematic American?

·         SHORTER WORK WEEK AS THE SOLUTION TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION

·         The popular solution to the Great Depression was the 30 hour work week, which passed the Senate in 1933, and seemed the destiny of the nation…What happened.? Site has polemical commentary, but cites historical research.

·         “Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address

·         “The Republic Is Imperiled”: John L. Lewis Warns of Ignoring Laboring People

·         Scottsboro Boys” Trial –dramatic struggle to free the black youth accused of (framed for the) rape of a white woman in Alabama in early 30s

Documents of the “Scottboro Boys” defense

Robin D.G. Kelley, The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”—short synopsis