American Decades Primary Sources: 1910-1919

The United States in the 1910s grappled with war over there, womens suffrage, and the Great Migration of African Americans. Domestically, African Americans left the strongly segregated and racially divided South in search of more opportunities in the North, though not necessarily more acceptance. While industry was booming in the North, working conditions were unregulated and unsafe, a point brought home by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. By the decades end, the Girl Scouts of America were formed, women had achieved the right to vote, and the temperance movement had succeeded in putting a proposal to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol before Congress.

The following documents are just a sampling of the offerings available in this volume:

Norman Rockwells first Saturday Evening Post cover President Woodrow Wilsons Declaration of War message, April 2, 1917 The Zimmerman Telegram Letters to the Chicago Defender by African Americans during the Great Migration from the South to the North Pioneer in Pro Football by Jack Cusack, a memoir of the beginnings of professional football The Mind of the Primitive Man, by Franz Boaz, groundbreaking work in cultural anthropology Letter to U.S. Archbishops from Cardinal James Gibbons regarding the Catholic Welfare Conference, May 1, 1919
Excerpt from Painless Childbirth describing the new method of twili