Designed by Emily Strocher

FIRST LADIES AS A POLITICAL TOOL

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“It is a pleasure to talk about the 36 women who married the 35 men who became our Presidents. They were a talented and varied group of wives who enlivened our history from May of 1789, when Martha Custis Washington rode up the Eastern Seabord amid great fanfare to join her husband in the first capital city, until now -- when Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson keeps reporters in trim by her trips about the country in behalf of beautification and education. Four of the 36 did not live to become First Ladies. Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren and Arthur were widowers when they reached the White House. Another, Anna Symmes Harrison, was ill and did not come to Washington while “Old Tippecanoe” was President for a month. (She outlived him by many years and lived to see her grandsons, including Benjamin Harrison, our 23rd President, march off to the Civil War.) We have elected two bachelors, Buchanan and Cleveland, to the Presidency but the latter chose to remedy his solitary state by marrying Frances Folsom, 21-year-old daughter of his former law partner, in the Blue Parlor at the White House. She was our youngest First Lady to date and, in the campaign for his second term, became the first one to have her photograph used on campaign ribbons and posters. Two Presidents, Tyler and Wilson, had two wives while President. The second Mrs. Tyler, the former Julia Gardiner, was only 24 and the second youngest First Lady to date. The second Mrs. Wilson, the former Edith Bolling Galt, lived to be the oldest ex-First Lady. She lacked a few days of being 90 when she died. Three

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InstructionsAs you proceed through this section of the book, answer the multiple choice questions about what category each photograph should be placed in. Keep in mind what photographs you have placed in each category. After examining each of the photos, create a 1-2 page response for each category in which you answer each of the corresponding questions, making references to as many of the photos as possible in your argument.

Overarching Questions-Why did you choose to place the images in the categories that you did?

-What is the importance of these themes? Why would photos that support these ideas be important to have?

-How do you feel these photos illustrate how the First Lady and First Family can be used to spread an idea?

- What do you notice about where the First Lady is standing in each of these photos? Do you think this photograph was staged or candid? If it was staged, why would the individuals in it be posed as they are?

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FamilyWhat differences do you notice over the passage of time?

Which of these images do you find the most relatable, and why?

How do these images perpetuate the idea of the ideal American lifestyle and family?

DiplomacyHow can a president make a statement about an issue by being seen with a particular individual?

Based upon these images, what would you say the relationships were like between the people in them? Do you feel these images are accurate representations of the relationships between the people pictured in them?

EducationWhat differences do you notice about the racial makeup of these photos?

Why do you think it is the First Lady, not the President himself being shown in these pictures?

Theme Questions

First Lady Barbara Bush at the White House7/24/1990Collection GB-WHPO: Records of the White House Photograph OfficeNational Archives Identifier: 5730826

GALLERY 1.1

REVIEW 1.1

Question 1 of 4What category would you place “First Lady Barbara Bush at the White House” in?

A. Family

B. Diplomacy

C. Education

Tap to enlarge and answer question

Carter Family Christmas Portrait12/25/1978Collection JC-WHSP: Carter White House Photographs CollectionNational Archives Identifier: 182893

GALLERY 1.2

REVIEW 1.2

Question 1 of 4What category would you place “Carter Family Christmas Portrait” in?

A. Family

B. Diplomacy

C. Education

Photograph of Lady Bird Johnson Visiting a Classroom for Project Head Start3/19/1966White House Photo Office CollectionNational Archives Identifier: 596401The photograph shows Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, reading to children enrolled in Project Head Start at Kemper School in Washington, DC.

GALLERY 1.3

REVIEW 1.3

Question 1 of 4What category would you place “Photograph of Lady Bird Johnson Visiting a Classroom for Project Head Start” in?

A. Family

B. Diplomacy

C. Education

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Reflection

In addition to being practice in how to go about making a DBQ, this assignment has also been a solid lesson in how not to create a DBQ. I feel that as an actual practicing teacher, this will be easier as I will have a better idea of what I want and need the DBQ to do. I will have a topic in mind, and a message that I am trying to convey to the students, or messages that I want them to come up with on their own. There will be more structure in place. Creating a DBQ in the manner that we did for this class allowed me too much freedom, I feel. I needed a more concrete goal, as my DBQ turned into doing whatever I wanted to with it, not trying to meet specific requirements for student learning.

Going along with that, I decided early on that I wanted to create an image based DBQ. I found my resources, and shaped my DBQ around what I had discovered. If I were to do this again, I would reverse my work flow. The topic would come first, and then I would find documents that fit with it. There would be more diversity in the sorts of documents that I included, rather than just using images.

While I do like my DBQ, and feel that it would get students to think about something that wouldn’t normally cross their minds, I am less pleased with the process that I went through to create my DBQ. My problems aren’t so much with my content as with my process. If anything, I became too attached to my content, and struggled to make changes because of that.

~ Emily Strocher Twitter/ @emilystrocher AboutMe

Complete iBook available free at iTunes

FROM - EXPLORING HISTORY: VOL II

This eBook is a collaborative project of Peter Pappas and his Fall 2014 Social Studies Methods Class School of Education ~ University of Portland, Portland Ore.

Graduate and undergraduate level pre-service teachers were assigned the task of developing an engaging research question, researching supportive documents and curating them into a DBQ suitable for middle or high school students.

For more on this class, visit the course blog EdMethods For more on the assignment and work flow tap here.

Chapters in chronological order1. The American Revolution by Scott Deal

2. The Pig War by Andy Saxton

3. Cesspool of Savagery by Michelle Murphy

4. Chemical War by Erik Nelson

5. Americans’ Perceptions of Immigration in the 1920s by Ceci Brunning and Jenna Bunnell

6. The New Deal and the Art of Public Persuasion by Kari VanKommer

7. Combat Soldiers in Context by Kristi Anne McKenzie

8. The Marshall Plan: Altruism or Pragmatism? by Sam Kimerling

9. Little Rock Nine: Evaluating Historical Sources by Christy Thomas

10. First Ladies as a Political Tool by Emily Strocher

EXPLORING HISTORY: VOL II

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Engaging questions and historic documents empower students to be the historian in the classroom.

Cover image: Replica of old French globeDate:1 January 1, 2013Petar Milošević

Peter Pappas, editor School of Education ~ University of Portland

His popular blog, Copy/Paste features downloads of his instructional resources, projects and publications. Follow him at Twitter @edteck. His other multi-touch eBooks are available at here. For an example of one of his eBook design training workshops tap here.

CC BY-NC 3.0 Peter Pappas and Emily Strocher, 2015

The authors take copyright infringement seriously. If any copyright holder has been inadvertently or unintentionally overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to remove the said material from this book at the very first opportunity.

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