Digital History: The Laboring Poor

Labor Day, its parades and picnics, has become a marker for the end of summer vacation. Introduce kids to the key people and events involved in the creation of this national holiday with a video that provides a brief overview of the...

Read about the strength of labor unions just after World War I and see how the gains were eroded throughout the 1920s.

Not all slaves worked in the fields. Read about the jobs of many skilled workers who were slaves in the South. Read also about the slaves who were field hands and find out about the harsh labor conditions they endured.

Video (7:04) on the IWW from which viewers glimpse the harsh realities and economic hardships of workers during the U.S. industrial age and how those workers fought against poor working conditions, eventually forming the Industrial...

Students investigate child labor during the Great Depression. In this US policy lesson, students evaluate multiple layers of the social, economic, and political affects of policy during the Great Depression. Students will engage in 5...

A unit probing into the progressive development of women, minorities, and the poor as a result of World War II. Pore over documents and images, circumstances, probing questions to understand what might have caused the societal...

With its beginnings along the railroad tracks in Maryland and West Virginia, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the first national strike in response to poor wages and poor conditions. Understand the impact of this strike on the...

The first conflict between a corporation and labor union materialized in Flint, Michigan in the 1930's. Identify the tensions between General Motors and the United Automobile Workers during this time through Context, articles, images,...

Senator Joseph McCarthy did not create the national obsession with communist subversion. It had arisen in the late 1930s, years before McCarthy had come to public notice. Angry that they had been barred from the corridors of power for 20...

This Digital History site provides an informative overview of the Mexican American civil rights movement in America.