WPA poster by Erik Hans Krause, ca. 1936–39.
Source: Library of Congress PPOC, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98516190/.
Tag: American history
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Speaking of imagined walls, here’s one from 1916, courtesy of the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006681433/.
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WYCA Poster, ca. 1918, Library of Congress, PPOC, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/00652158/.
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World War I poster advertising savings stamps for the war effort. Source: Library of Congress PPOC. I find this 1917 poster interesting because it seems to target urban, working-class immigrants. Besides the dress of the people waiting in line to lend Uncle Sam some money, there is the American flag held by the child, whose enthusiasm attracts the attention of the adults around her.
Children, whether immigrants themselves or native born, seem to have played a special role in immigrant families, mediating in different ways the adults’ encounter with the culture and institutions of the new country. Certainly the authorities saw such potential in these children.*
* On this last point, see Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (Fall 2016): 29–32.
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Jeet Heer’s provocative commentary in the New Republic is worth a read: “America Has Always Been Angry and Violent.” The historical rhetoric he offers is startling. I definitely need to read more U.S. history.
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Interesting to consider that this was a reality for school kids in the early days of the Cold War. By the 1970s, when I was in school and aware of such things, such an understanding of nuclear weapons would have seemed extemely naive.
In the mid-1980s, in the field artillery, we were taught to drop to the ground, asses to the blast and hands between our legs. That was for tactical nuclear artillery rounds, but it felt just as silly.
Source and further details: Prelinger Archives, https://archive.org/details/DuckandC1951.
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I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity.
Frederick Douglas, quoted in Patrick Young, “When a Ban on the Chinese Was Proposed and Frederick Douglass Spoke Out,” Long Island Wins, February 8, 2017. -
There is an infectious simplicity about this film, which rings true politically in these times, even if the history it tells was more complicated.