Here's a basic overview of the Great Depression in the United States.

Here's a little more detail about the Dust Bowl.

For more context, see this worldwide overview of the Great Depression.

Here's a link about World War II.

Jacob Lawrence was the first African-American visual artist to gain recognition in the white art world. This multimedia exhibit from the Philips Collection in Washington, DC, gives a good overview of his life and work.

Here's a brief interview with Jacob Lawrence from PBS.

Here's a close look at one painting from Jacob Lawrence's work -- about working women.

And this painting of Southern Injustice links with the 1898 race riots in Wilmington.

Here's one more painting to look at.

And here's one that depicts the kind of work available to blacks who moved to the North.

Here's a statement about history from Jacob Lawrence.

Look at the whole Migration Series.

For context about immigration to the US, see this Ellis Island timeline.

Use the online resources to find a picture that speaks to you. Please print the painting out and write a paragraph or so about what it means to you/makes you think about.

For instance, I like the perspective of this picture. I feel like I am on stage, addressing a group of English men -- all white -- and the expressions on their faces are "oh my goodness." I particularly am drawn to the middle figure in the seventh row back on the left side of the hall. His side profile, talking to the person next to him with his mouth agape with astonishment, sort of says "I can't believe this is happening!" I also notice several figures with their hands over their ears, as though they do not want to hear this story (perhaps they do not want to hear -- or think about -- the British role in financing the slave trade). Those audeince members with their hands next to their ears also remind me of the famous painting The Scream.

I also did some quick research, and found this context from the life of Frederick Douglass.

Here are some background links if you want to learn more...

You can start with a Timeline from The Washington Post

Here's a PBS show titled A Third Rate Burglary

Here is a blurb about the hearings in the Senate to investigate the break-in and cover-up, from an article in Wikipedia.

The hearings held by the Senate Committee, in which Dean was the star witness and in which many other former key administration officials gave dramatic testimony, were broadcast from May 17, 1974 to August 7, 1974, causing devastating political damage to Nixon. Each network maintained coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85 percent of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings.^[1]

Perhaps the most memorable question of the hearings came when Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee asked "What did the President know, and when did he know it?", which focused attention for the first time on Nixon's personal role in the scandal.

On July 13, 1974, Donald Sanders, the Assistant Minority Counsel, asked Alexander Butterfield if there were any type of recording systems in the White House. Butterfield answered that, though he was reluctant to say so, there was a system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office. The shocking revelation radically transformed the Watergate investigation. The tapes were soon subpoenaed by first special prosecutor Archibald Cox and then the Senate, as they might prove whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth about key meetings. Nixon refused, citing the principle of executive privilege, and ordered Cox, via Attorney General Richardson, to drop his subpoena.

This is that PBS Jazz site I mentioned in class.

Rita found this great clip of people dancing the Charleston.

Here's some background about the dance's history, from Wikipedia:

The Charleston is a dance named for the city of Charleston, South Carolina. The rhythm is a traditional one from West Africa, popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States of America by a 1923 tune called The Charleston by composer/pianist James P. Johnson which originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild and became one of the most popular hits of the decade.

While it developed in African-American communities in the USA, the Charleston became a popular dance craze in the wider international community in the 1920s. Despite its black history, Charleston is most frequently associated with white flappers and the speakeasy. Here, these young women would dance alone or together as a way of mocking the "drys," or citizens who supported the Prohibition amendment, as Charleston was then considered quite immoral and provocative.

Charleston was one of the dances from which Lindy Hop developed in the 1930s, though the Breakaway (dance) is popularly considered an intermediary dance form. A slightly different form of Charleston became popular in the 1930s and 40s, and is associated with Lindy Hop. In this later Charleston form, the hot jazz timing of the 1920s Charleston was adapted to suit the swing jazz music of the 30s and 40s. This style of Charleston has many common names, though the most common are 'Lindy Charleston', 'Savoy Charleston', '30s or 40s Charleston' and 'Swing(ing) Charleston'. In both '20s Charleston' and 'Swinging Charleston' the basic step takes 8 counts and was danced either alone or with a partner.

And linking with the present... here's an intersting story about members of U2 helping people in New Orleans who lost their instruments, from the BBC.

Here's a good PBS resource, with some animations that set the scene.

Here's a better map.

Here are the alliances in more detail.

This is a good explanation/diagram of the Schlieffen Plan.

The moral: Try not to fight a two-front war

Here are more resources from Wikipedia.

Casualties from World War I

The influenza virus of 1918 in the United States (see the map)

Worldwide, the flu probably killed 20-40 million people.

When we get to the Great Depression, please listen to at least three interviews, available at this site maintained by Studs Terkel.

When is preemption justified?

Here's the new (as of 2002) National Security Strategy of the United States.

Here's an article from the PBS show Frontline assessing this new strategy.

Give some thought to how justified you think it is for a nation to launch a preemptive attack on another nation. What conditions, if any, justify a preemptive attack?

Consider this article from a Yale Law School professor, who is critical of preemption.

Then consider this article from a legal advisor to the Department of State, who supports preemption.

Finally, below is an article about the meaning of the word "imminent" from the February 8, 2004 New York Times.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 2-8-04: ON LANGUAGE; Imminent

'I have always been against George Bush's war in Iraq,'' Gen. Wesley K. Clark said the week before the New Hampshire primary. ''Not because Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat. But because Saddam wasn't an imminent threat.''

Next day, in a televised debate, Dr. Howard Dean, prefacing a statement with ''my words are not always precise, but my meaning is very, very clear,'' stated, ''Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States.''

That adjective has emerged as central to the charge being made by those critical of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq that there was no urgent reason -- no triggering impetus in international law -- to justify our pre-emptive military action to overthrow Hussein's regime.

(In my other columnar life, I am an unreconstructed Wilsonian interventionist; in On Language, however, I knock myself out to play it straight.)

First, let's handle the easy part: the difference between immanent and imminent. The one with the a means ''inherent,'' rooted in the Latin for ''remaining within''; you can believe that God is immanent in humans.

Imminent means something else entirely, rooted in the part of a mountain that projects overhead, threatening those below. ''Overhanging'' is its essence -- an immediate threat, a sinister event close at hand -- unlike impending, which is not so near in time. It looms ominously, with none of the hopeful connotation of the voguish upcoming. (Vermont Royster, the late editor of The Wall Street Journal: ''If I see upcoming in the paper again, I'll be downcoming and someone will be outgoing.'') Imminent is alarming, its menace nigh: ''something bad is on the way and soon.''

Now to the political controversy surrounding the word. On Sept. 17, 2002, just after the first anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11, the Bush White House issued a white paper spelling out the need for ''preemption'' (not hyphenated) in the national security strategy of the U.S. ''For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack.'' The legitimacy of ''preemption'' was often conditioned ''on the existence of an imminent threat -- most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies and air forces preparing to attack.'' Because rogue states and terrorists strike without such warning, ''we must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries.'' Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, brought this bureaucratese down to earth with ''new technology requires new thinking about when a threat actually becomes 'imminent.'''

Did Bush ever apply that adjective to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein? Two weeks after the white paper, the president in a radio address on Sept. 28, 2002, said of Hussein's regime, ''The danger to our country is grave, and it is growing.'' He said that Iraq ''could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes,'' but he did not use the legal trigger word imminent.

Evidently Bush had been briefed on the weight of that word. On Oct. 21 of that year, asked by Ron Fournier of The Associated Press whether North Korea was ''an imminent threat to the U.S.'' in its nuclear buildup, the president replied carefully: ''You know, that's an operative word. . . . I believe we can do it peacefully.''

A White House spokesman used the word in February 2003 in the context of NATO protecting Turkey from retaliation, but Bush used it in his 2003 State of the Union address in a way that disputed its necessity: ''Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?''

Pentagon reporters aware of the trigger word followed that up in asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld if Hussein's threat was imminent. He answered with a question of his own: ''At what moment was the threat of Sept. 11 imminent? . . . Was it imminent a week before, a month before, a year before, an hour before? Was it imminent while you could still stop it, or was it imminent only after it started and you couldn't stop it?'' Though pressed further, he would say only that the Hussein regime, with weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist activities, was ''a danger to the United States and a danger to the region.''

Senators supporting and opposing the president's girding for war showed their understanding of the operative word. ''The threat posed by Saddam Hussein may not be imminent,'' Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, said on Oct. 10, 2002, ''but it is real, it is growing and it cannot be ignored.'' John Kerry, basing his judgment on the intelligence supplied him and on the Bush address, picked up Daschle's adjective on Jan. 23, 2003: ''So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real . . . .'' At the same time, Ted Kennedy saw that the president had deliberately avoided the use of the trigger word and demanded ''convincing evidence of an imminent threat'' before committing troops to war, although a resolution authorizing the use of force had been passed months before.

So . . . did Bush claim an imminent threat? Interrogated in detail on this by Tony Snow of Fox News, Senator Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who said in 2002 that ''I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat,'' replied about the Bush address in 2003: ''If the word imminent threat wasn't used, that was the predicate, that was the feeling that was given to the American people and to Congress.''

In case you've been wondering why this adjective has been the focus of so much attention, such careful use and nonuse -- you've just seen why. It's a word that issues a warning that marches a nation to war.