Keywords: Popular Culture
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Displaying 1-20 of 257 results.
"A Black Joke."
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Abstract: Free African Americans living in the North before the Civil War suffered enormous disadvantages and discriminations. Forced to sit in separate and inferior sections in theaters, public transit, and churches, free blacks were also barred from all but the most menial jobs and denied entrance to white trade ... More »
"A Damaging Impression of Hollywood Has Spread": Movie "Czar" Eric Johnston Testifies before HUAC
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Abstract: The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held hearings in October 1947 on Communist activity in Hollywood. In the following testimony, Eric Johnston, a successful businessman who in 1945 succeeded Will H. Hays as President of the Motion Picture Association of America--the industry's institution ... More »
A. F. of L. Delegates.
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Abstract: Faced with stiff business opposition, a conservative political climate, hostile courts, and declining membership, leaders of the American Federeration of Labor (AFL) grew increasingly cautious during the 1920s. Labor radicals viewed AFL leaders as overpaid, self-interested functionaries uninterested ... More »
"A German Beer Garden on Sunday Evening."
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Abstract: Between 1820 and 1860, 1,500,000 immigrants arrived in America from Germany. Many of the new arrivals who settled in cities such as New York worked as shopkeepers and skilled tradesmen, although many more worked as employees in construction, brewing, and manufacturing. Although German immigrants did ... More »
"A harvest of death, Gettysburg, July 1863."
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Abstract: Photographers covered the Civil War, following the Union Army in wagons that served as traveling darkrooms. Their equipment was bulky and the exposures had to be long, so they could not take action photographs during battle. But photography was graphic; this picture taken on the morning of July 4th, ... More »
"A Make-Believe World": Contestants Testify to Deceptive Quiz Show Practices
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Abstract: Television had become the nation's largest medium for advertising by the mid-1950s, when the Revlon cosmetics corporation agreed to sponsor The $64,000 Question , the first prime-time network quiz show to offer contestants fabulous sums of money. As Revlon's average net profit rose in the next four ... More »
"A Most Awkward, Ridiculous Appearance": Benjamin Franklin Enters Philadelphia
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Abstract: When Boston native Benjamin Franklin entered Philadelphia in 1723, he had few coins in his pocket and scarce entrepreneurial skills. However, Franklin did have valuable training as a printer, and he came armed with some significant introductions to local printers. Printers and other craftsmen relied ... More »
"A Nave and Self-Taught Artist": John Frazee Sculpts Daniel Webster, 1833
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Abstract: Many artists working in the decades after the American Revolution came from the ranks of artisans and mechanics. In a republic that dispensed with aristocratic patrons and royal academies, art came to be supported by a middling populace more interested in portraits than grand history painting. Sculpture ... More »
"A Rale Boost to Lithrachoor": A Humorist Lampoons Libraries
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Abstract: The founders of the great libraries of the 19th century were often ambivalent about whether their goal was to disseminate or conserve knowledge. They were also uncertain about the intended audience. John Cotton Dana of the Newark Public Library was atypical in his populist stance that "it is a proper ... More »
"A Regular Row in the Backwoods."
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Abstract: The 1841 issue of the Crockett Almanac , named after the Tennessee backwoodsman, Davey Crockett, made famous by his self-serving tall tales, portrayed a rough rural sport." The inexpensive comic almanacs combined illustrated jokes on topical subjects with astrological and weather predictions. While ... More »
A Royal Disaster: Cortissoz Critiques the Armory Show
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Abstract: In February and March 1913, thousands of New Yorkers poured into the 69th Regiment Armory for an "International Exhibition of Modern Art." By the time the so-called Armory Show had completed its tour of the U.S., a half million people had seen the exhibit--one of the most influential in American art ... More »
A Shoemaker and the Tea Party
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Abstract: George Robert Twelve Hewes, a Boston shoemaker, participated in many of the key events of the Revolutionary crisis. Over half a century later, Hewes described his experiences to James Hawkes. When Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, colonists refused to allow cargoes of tea to be unloaded. In the ... More »
"A Sop to the Public at Large": Contestant Herbert Stempel Exposes Contrivances in a 1950s Television Quiz Show
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Abstract: Television had become the nation's largest medium for advertising by the mid-1950s, when the Revlon cosmetics corporation agreed to sponsor The $64,000 Question , the first prime-time network quiz show to offer contestants fabulous sums of money. As Revlon's average net profit rose in the next four ... More »
"A Sweepstakes Attracts Attention": Corporate Executives Defend Sweepstakes Promotions
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Abstract: In the 1960s, lottery-like contests designed to publicize products through sweepstakes competitions spread rapidly. In the 19th century, every state banned lotteries--defined as competitions in which chances to win prizes were sold÷to protect citizens. In 1868, Congress prohibited the distribution of ... More »
A Voice of Moderation: Roosevelt on the Armory Show
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Abstract: In 1913, an "International Exhibition of Modern Art," eventually seen by a half million people, rocked the American art world. First mounted at New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, it became known as the Armory Show, and its self-consciously "modern" approach challenged the dominance of conservative, ... More »
"A Well-Mannered Bandit and a Killer": Little Berta Ballard Remembers Billy the Kid
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Abstract: The New Deal tried to end the Depression by spending government money to employ the jobless. One of its most ambitious efforts, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), put 8.5 million people to work between 1935 and 1943, mostly on projects that required manual labor, but also on projects for artists, ... More »
"A Youngster Needs a Knowledge of the Present": A Popular Magazine Urges Tolerance for the Distractions of Youth
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Abstract: In the 1950s, parents, educators, religious leaders, and moralists expressed intense concern over the perceived harmful effects of modern life on the nation's youth. This concern was not new, however. Fears of corrupting influences on youth have periodically flooded the public discourse, from child-rearing ... More »
"After the Ball": Lyrics from the Biggest Hit of the 1890s
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Abstract: The 1890s witnessed the emergence of a commercial popular music industry in the United States. Sales of sheet music, enabling consumers to play and sing songs in their own parlors, skyrocketed during the "Gay Nineties," led by Tin Pan Alley, the narrow street in midtown Manhattan that housed the country's ... More »
Against Isolationism: James F. Byrnes Refutes Lindbergh
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Abstract: The interwar peace movement was arguably the largest mass movement of the 1920s and 1930s, a mobilization often overlooked in the wake of the broad popular consensus that ultimately supported the U.S. involvement in World War II. The destruction wrought in World War I (known in the 1920s and 1930s as ... More »
Air Waves "are in the Public Domain": Public Television Advocacy in the 1950s
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Abstract: Although educational radio stations flourished in the early 1920s--more than 200 existed prior to the introduction of network radio in 1926--most faltered shortly thereafter. One reason was the alignment of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), created by legislation declaring that the airwaves belonged ... More »
