Postwar America (1946-1975)

October 15, 2020

Every election is consequential and determining who has the right to vote has been a struggle since the founding of the nation. Over the course of U.S. history, the stakes of some elections have been higher than others, especially in times of a national political, social, economic, or health crisis. Elections can also indicate the vitality of democracy itself, testing the structures of government as well as the public’s embrace of democratic principles. For those wanting to better understand this history, the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning has gathered a number of documents and teaching resources related to elections in the United States.

Some of the collected materials describe the efforts of men and women to expand voting rights in order to realize the nation’s ideals of freedom and democracy, for example, the campaign to win women’s suffrage. The movement to secure voting rights for African American and Mexican American residents showed the bravery, tenacity and patriotism of activists. All of these voting rights campaigns also reveal persistent efforts to constrict the electorate in order to maintain white supremacy and keep political power in the hands of those with race and economic privilege.

Other materials focus specifically on past elections, highlighting moments when the media and political campaigns developed new ways to persuade voters or to forecast election outcomes.

Finally, given the contentious 2020 Supreme Court confirmation process, a section addresses the issue of Supreme Court nominations and how the composition of the Court became politicized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an attempt to advance the New Deal. At the bottom of the page, we share links to other digital archives and resources that examine these, and many other issues, in more depth.

Click here to explore Understanding Elections in U.S. History.

In October 2017, ASHP’s CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) received the Award for Archival Achievement from the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. Founded in 1979, A.R.T. is a not-for-profit organization representing a diverse group of more than 400 archivists, librarians, records managers and those who support archival efforts in the New York metropolitan area. It is one of the largest local organizations of its kind in the United States with members representing approximately 375 repositories.

A.R.T.’s award citation stated: “Designed both as a collections portal and a grassroots collecting endeavor,” the award citation read, “CDHA offers a compelling and ambitious model for institutional digital archiving projects, particularly those projects that involve multiple institutions and stakeholders. CDHA seeks to fill collecting gaps in existing CUNY history collections and has established a collections and digital infrastructure that will allow it to grow over time.” The award ceremony was held at the New York Junior League on October 19, 2017, during New York Archives Week.

[Photo: ASHP and CDHA staff at award ceremony: (l to r) Marco Battistella, Pennee Bender, Peter D’Antonio, Andrea Vásquez, Stephen Brier, Ellen Noonan, and Gerald Markowitz (CDHA contributor).]

Reading Area Community College in Pennsylvania, in partnership with ASHP/CML, was a awarded a two-year National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) professional and curricular development grant focusing on Latino history and culture. Conexiones: Linking Berks County Latino Communities to a Larger World, aims to build faculty participants’ competency in Latino history and culture, and help them develop Latino-based humanities content for Reading Area Community College’s (RACC) general education and other courses. ASHP will conduct four seminars featuring noted scholars and archive and museum professionals. In addition, teaching workshops featuring active learning pedagogies will focus on advancing student learning with primary source documents (text, visual art, audio, film), and help faculty create new and updated teaching modules.

Conexiones builds upon efforts begun by RACC faculty during ASHP’s 2013-2015 NEH-funded Bridging Historias program, which introduced thirty-six community college faculty to Latino histories and cultures and provided curriculum design support. RACC faculty participants designed three program courses: “Latino Literature and Writing,” “Latino Community Scholars,” and “Spanish for Heritage Speakers.” Conexiones will focus on the three most dominant Latino groups in the Reading area: Dominicans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. The first college to be federally designated as an Hispanic-serving institution (in 2015), RACC will collaborate with local cultural, historical, and social service organizations to strengthen ties between campus and community-based activities. By the end of fall 2018, RACC will have a collection of digitial teaching resources, a Latino Studies Associates of Arts program, and a dedicated network of educators and community leaders promoting Latino scholarship in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

As higher education is increasingly a subject of contentious debate, one way to explore the history of our own public university system is to visit the onine CUNY Digital History Archive. This online participatory archive and portal is a work-in-progress and we welcome your contributions. Focused on stories and material that document the struggle to build and sustain the democratic mission of the university and its colleges, this growing resource will inform and involve teachers, students and the general public. Visitors to the website can do keyword searches, browse all items (now over 300), or search by subject, date, or collection.

This summer we completed “Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-1942,” contributed and curated by former City College of New York faculty member Carol Smith. This collection contains images, articles, fliers, and more detailing the fight that CCNY faculty and students waged during the 1930s and early 1940s in opposition to the New York State legislative Rapp-Coudert Committee’s attacks on left faculty and in support of their freedom of speech on campus.This and all collections contain an introductory essay plus an assortment of primary documents, many never before published.

Also recently posted (with more to come) are items from the “Save Hostos!” collection, contributed by former Hostos Community College professor Gerald Meyer. Articles, documents, fliers, and images reveal the fierce community/college/ union battle that ultimately saved the college in the 1970s.

Explore the Archive and get involved in building and disseminating these important materials!

Over the summer we received news of funding that will allow ASHP to build two additional “missions” in the award-winning Mission US series of online adventure-style games in which players take on the role of young people during critical moments in U.S. history. In June, the National Park Service awarded our project partner public television station WNET-Thirteen a grant to create “Prisoner in My Homeland,” which will place students in the role of a Japanese American teen-aged boy who must make choices as he and his family are forced to leave their home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, for one of the “temporary detention centers” and then to one of ten WRA incarceration sites during World War II. In July, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced funding for “No Turning Back,” a mission that will take place in Mississippi during the summer of 1964 and explore the fight for voting rights undertaken by young people there.

Bridging Historias: Latino/a History and Culture in the Community College Classroom
Friday, May 8, 2015 9:30 am – 5:00 pm
Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue, NYC

Since fall 2013, ASHP-CML has been working with thirty-eight community college faculty and administrators to assist them in incorporating material on Latino history and culture into their community college curricula. This project has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Join us for an exciting culminating full-day conference, in which we will hear from top scholars in the field, further our learning, and share classroom approaches and activities on this important topic. The keynote speaker will be Vicki Ruiz, Dean, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine. Faculty participants will offer panels, roundtable discussions, workshops, and poster sessions. Bring your lessons, your curiosity, your creativity and join in this conversation.
Click here for full program and registration.

The CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) is an open, participatory, digital repository and portal that gives the CUNY community and the broader public online access to a range of archival materials related to the history of the City University of New York. This effort involves coordination and collaboration with college libraries and archives that house significant historical collections. The CDHA will conduct and collect oral history interviews as well as accept historical materials and records held by individuals who have, in diverse ways, contributed to CUNY. The project involves faculty, staff, students, activists, archivists, librarians, retirees, and alumni. One collection currently being built is on Civil Rights and Open Admissions on CUNY campuses, 1960s – 1970s so let us know if you or your CUNY college have relevant material on the subject. CDHA is conducted under the auspices of the American Social History Project-Center for Media and Learning at the CUNY Graduate Center. Sign up to get involved!

We are very excited to announce the launch of Who Built America Badges for History Education. The site is a free online professional learning community where teachers can work with ASHP/CML history educators to teach and create document-based, Common Core aligned units. While doing so, they earn digital badges that demonstrate their professional learning and help to advance their careers. This project grows out of our decades of work providing professional development to history teachers in New York City and elsewhere and features the engaging social history content ASHP/CML is known for. Please help us to get the word out about WBA Badges to both in-service and pre-service teachers by sharing this announcement with colleagues.

The history of the City University of New York and the championing of public higher education are the focus of a new initiative involving present and past CUNY faculty, staff, and students along with libraries, archives, and collections in and outside of the university. Coordinated by ASHP/CML, the CUNY Digital History Archive will collect the stories in text, sound, and image of the many events, people, and communities that have been critical to the university’s democratic mission. These materials will be made available to the public as an open access repository and also will direct users to valuable records and resources located at CUNY campuses.

A public program on Wednesday, April 9th, at 6:30 pm in the Martin Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center will mark the launch of the CUNY Digital History Archive. Featuring two roundtable discussions−”The Fight for Open Admissions and Its Early Implementation across CUNY, 1968-1976″ and “Student Activism and the Fight against State and City Cutbacks and Attacks, 1985-2014″−the event will involve activists in the struggle for and defense of Open Admissions from the late-1960s to the present, who will describe their experiences and offer insights about the past and its implications for the future. Please mark your calendars and check the ASHP/CML homepage in late February for details about this event.