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Nineteenth-Century United States

Twentieth-Century United States History

Fall Semester, 2010

The College of Saint Rose

HIS-223 E1 Tuesday 6:00-8:30 pm Saint Vincent 5

Professor: John Williams-Searle

Email: [email protected]

Office: Mandelbaum Hall (441 Western Avenue)

Office Hours: Monday 10:30-11:45 am

Tuesday 11:30-1:30 pm and by appointment

Course Description

During the twentieth century, the United States established a corporate model of industrial capitalism that propelled it to the rank of superpower. Some writers have even called the twentieth century the “American Century.” Celebrations of American power, the extension of that power internationally, the creation of previously unimaginable economic affluence, and the development of a consumerist model of citizenship, however, often allowed Americans to overlook significant national problems. Some of the ongoing costs of the American Century were economic inequality and exploitation, racism, sexism, and nativism. Throughout the twentieth century there were always people who tried to solve these problems, demanding that the United States more fully embrace our founding ideals of freedom, democracy, justice, and equality. The twentieth century also saw a burgeoning American culture in the form of new mass entertainments, such as film, recorded music, radio, professional sports, and, finally, television. As we shall see, the contested values that helped to shape the United States during this time were often reflected in these new cultural forms. This course will examine how the intertwined voices of celebration and dissent shaped the events of the “American Century” as the nation attempted to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Reading Materials

The following books are required for this course and are available for purchase at the campus bookstore located in the Events and Athletics Center, 420 Western Avenue.

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History, Seagull Edition, Volume 2,

Second Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009. (ISBN: 978039392560)

Foner, Eric. Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, Volume 2, Second Edition.

New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008. (ISBN: 9780393931082)

Williams, Robert F. Negroes with Guns. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

1998. (ISBN-13: 9780814327142 pbk.)

Assignments and Due Dates

Evaluation in this course will consist of two quizzes, a midterm exam, a final exam, and consistently participating in class discussions. Quizzes and exams will consist of several types of questions designed to sharpen analytical and critical thinking skills, as well as assess content mastery. These could include identification questions, short and long essays, multiple-choice and true-false questions, as well as placing historical events in chronological order. Students’ regular attendance and active participation in class discussions is mandatory. A few extra credit assignments will be offered during the semester.

Quizzes: September 21 and November 2

Midterm Exam: October 12

Final Exam: December 14

Grade Breakdown

10% – Quiz 1

15% – Quiz 2

30% – Midterm Exam

30% – Final Exam

15% – Participation and attendance

Academic Integrity

Students at The College of Saint Rose are expected to be honest in every aspect of their academic work. Plagiarism, cheating, academic misconduct, or any other submission of another's work as one's own is unacceptable. Students working in groups are each individually responsible for the academic integrity of the entire group project. In a situation where the course instructor determines that, more likely than not, a breach of academic integrity has occurred, the incident will be reported according to the College’s Policy on Plagiarism and Academic Integrity.

Disability Accommodations

If you are a student with a documented disability and require academic accommodations please register with Lynn Cantwell, the Director of Services for Students with Disabilities, located in the Academic Support Center on the 2nd floor of St. Joseph Hall (campus extension 2335 or 337-2335, off campus) for disability verification and for determination of recommended reasonable academic accommodations. After you have made arrangements with that office, please see me to discuss your accommodations. Please remember that timely notice will help avoid a delay in your receipt of accommodations.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Readings must be completed for the day they are assigned (Except for class one’s assignments, which should be completed during the first week.). Please check the Blackboard site for course announcements, as well as the occasional supplementary reading. It is not uncommon for me to make slight changes to the course syllabus during the semester. Be sure to consistently check your email and visit the Blackboard site during the semester to make yourself aware of any changes.

1) August 31: The Problems and Promises of the New Century

The United States Emerges as a World Power

Read: Give Me Liberty! 556-636.

Read: Voices of Freedom, 30-81.

View: Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs, and Empire

What economic, political, and social crises did the United States face during the last decades of the nineteenth century? How would these crises shape the first decades of the twentieth century?

Additional Resources:

H. Roger Grant, Self-Help in the 1890s Depression (1983)

Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age,

1860-1920 (1985)

Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an

Industrial City, 1870-1920 (1983)

Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919

(1987)

C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951)

Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender

Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1998)

(Friday, September 3 – Last day to add/drop classes)

2) September 7: The Progressive Era



View: A Lively Affair (ca. 1912)

View: On to Washington (1913)

View: Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl

View: Woodrow Wilson (Excerpts)

What seem to have been the features of Progressivism shared by most

progressive reformers? Explain the motivations of the progressives – are there any ideas about progressivism that appear more persuasive than others? In what ways did the Progressive era ultimately give rise to a new

American state?


Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age

(1998)

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (1960)

Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1967)

Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870-1920 (1990)

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)

Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)

Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-

Century New York (1986)

Stephen Meyer, The Five-Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in

the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (1981)

Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (1983)

Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998)

Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive

Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (2006)

Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920 (1985)

David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State,

and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (1987)

(Tuesday, September 14 – Last Day to apply to take a course pass/fail)

3) September 14: The Great War, Internationalism, and Domestic Upheaval



View: Woodrow Wilson (Excerpts)

View: 100% American (1918)

View: Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War

In what ways did the United States’ participation in World War I change domestic culture and politics in the US? How did the war influence the United States’ role in international affairs?


James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I (1981)

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1972)

Thomas Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a

New World Order (1992)

Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for Modern Order: A History of

the American People and Their Institutions, 1917-1933 (1979)

David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society

(1980)

4) September 21: Cultural Divisions and the Contradictory Decade

Race, Rights, and Radicalism



View: Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (excerpts)

Quiz 1

What signs emerged at the beginning of the 1920s that signaled the end of Progressivism? What replaced politics as the focus of public concern? Why? What did this development mean for the idea of citizenship in the United States?


Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern

American Culture (1929)

Peter J. Ling, America and the Automobile: Technology, Reform, and

Social Change, 1893-1923 (1990)

Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-

1925 (1973)

Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and

Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1986)

Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots

of Consumer Culture (1976)

Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the

World (1969)

William H. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War

(1982)

William M. Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (1970)

James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925 (1967)

Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981 (1982)

Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society

(1985)

Joe William Trotter, Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of a Black Proletariat,

1915-1945 (1985)

5) September 28: Hard Times and the New Deal



View: Frankiln Delano Roosevelt (excerpts)

Some historians have argued that the New Deal was the culmination of populist and progressive aspirations and policies, while other have looked to the nation’s experience in World War I as a blueprint for the New Deal. What is your take on this debate? How did Roosevelt portray the government’s response to the Great Depression? How would you sum up the legacy of the New Deal?


Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (1984)

Paul K. Conklin, The New Deal (1975)

Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the

Great Depression (1990)

Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970)

Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-

1939 (1990)

Bill V. Mullen, Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural

Politics, 1935-46 (1999)

Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era

(1996)

Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (1983)

Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the

Great Depression (1982)

Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture

in the Twentieth Century (1996)

Listen: Oral Interviews from Hard Times

6) October 5: The “Good War” and New Visions of Freedom



View: The Perilous Fight: America’s World War II in Color (excerpts)

View: The House I Live In (1944)

Despite the sense of finality of the Allied victory, it seems that World War II raised many more questions than it managed to answer. What were these questions and choices and how would they generally influence the big issues that Americans faced for the rest of the twentieth century?

John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986)

Studs Terkel, ed., “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II

(1997)

Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (1987)

Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex

During World War II (1987)

Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II

(1984)

Alison R. Bernstein, American Indians and World War II: Toward a New

Era in Indian Affairs (1991)

Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and

Women in World War Two (1990)

7) October 12: Midterm Exam

8) October 19: The Cold War: An Age of Affluence and Anxiety



View: Make Mine Freedom (1948)

View: The Hollywood Ten (1950)

The pluralistic vision of the war years dissipated during the late-1940s. Why? What did those who were directly affected by this development do about it?


H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993)

Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the

Disillusioning of a Generation (1998)

Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the

National Security State, 1945-1954 (1998)

Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents

(1994)

Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American

Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (1994)

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in

Postwar Detroit (1998)

Barbara S. Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie and the

Defeat of the CIO (1988)

Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New

Suburban Community (1982)

Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine

Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (1998)

Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on

Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (1994)

Peter Biskind, Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop

Worrying and Love the Fifties (1983)

9) October 26: Civil Rights and the Great Society



View: Eyes on the Prize (excerpts)

Did Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society change the meaning of citizenship in the United States?


Tayor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963

(1989)

Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the

1960s (1995)

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

(1994)

Herbert Schandler, The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and

Vietnam (1977)

Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of

the 1960s (1999)

Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1993)

Hugh David Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of

National Policy, 1960-1972 (1990)

Loren Baritz, Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into

Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (1998)

Wallace Terry, ed., Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black

Veterans (1992)

10) November 2: Black Power and the Rights Revolution



Read: Negroes With Guns, vii-86.

View: Eyes on the Prize (excerpts)

Quiz 2

Why did Robert Williams find himself at odds with Roy Wilkins and the national leadership of the NAACP? How did Williams justify his policy of self-defense?

Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie : Robert F. Williams and the Roots of

Black Power (2001)

November 9: Advisement Day – No Class Meeting

11) November 16: The Humbling Decade and the Conservative Ascendency



View: Ronald Reagan (excerpts)

Although Ronald Reagan insisted that his economic policies – massive tax cuts, deregulation, and significant increases in military spending – would ultimately result in a balanced budget, this did not even come close to happening. What were some of the results of Reagan’s economic policies? Were these merely short-term results? Explain.


Sean Willentz The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (2009)

Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1995)

Stanley I. Kutler, Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon

(1992)

Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (1997)

Kenneth E. Morris, Jimmy Carter: American Moralist (1996)

Paul Blumberg, Inequality in an Age of Decline (1980)

Rebecca E. Klatch, Women of the New Right (1988)

William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in

America (1996)

Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of

Leisure (1993)

Susan J. Tolchin and Martin Tolchin, Dismantling America: The Rush to

Deregulate (1985)

November 23 – No Class Meeting

12) November 30: Clintonism and the New Internationalism



The 1990s witness the reemergence of various issues that exacerbated social and cultural divisions within the United States that bore striking similarities with the cultural battles of the 1920s. Why did these cultural divisions reemerge during the 1990s? How would you ultimately describe and assess the 1990s?

13) December 7: An Empire in the Making?: The Next American Century



The policy of preemptive war was a new one for the United States. Explain both the pros and cons of this shift in international policy.

14) December 14: Final Exam

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