Dr. Albert Sterne was presented with a great challenge. In charge of placing recent graduates of the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), he had to convince a hesitant group of Indiana physicians to accept them into their clinics as interns. As the first chairman of student affairs at the newly established Indiana University School of Medicine, Sterne was determined to see more of IUSM’s...
During the early 20th century, reformers and activists worked to encourage a variety of social reforms by using communication tools, including photography. Jacob Riis’ photographed tenament houses in New York city, documenting the living conditions of immigrants and the poor. Lewis Hine photographed young workers for the National Child Labor Committee. These men focused on dangerous and unhealthy...
The whiny dulcets tones belonging to presidential hopeful William Howard Taft argued his stance on American Imperialism from a recorded speech given on September 05, 1908 in Hot Springs, Virginia. The recording known as, “Our Foreign Dependencies: Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines” comes from the Library of Congress National Jukebox. Recorded on a Victor Talking Machine the recording lasted...
Two men stand between the ropes among a crowd of blood thirsty white faces. In the United States, a black man physically assaulting a white man would have resulted in a lynching; however, when colorful trunks and padded gloves are added to the skirmish, the event becomes a spectacle.
Late Victorian culture identified the powerful, large male body of the heavyweight prizefighter...
In 1907, the parents of a Native American child Lizzie received a heartbreaking letter. The letter was from the superintendent of the Flandreau Boarding School where Lizzie attended. The Superintendent wrote that Lizzie had died from slow tuberculosis days before the letter was written. In the letter he claimed that he had been away at the time of Lizzie’s death, and was unable to write her mother...
By 1907, the old wooden casino on Belle Isle, built in the late nineteenth century, was set to be torn down, and a new one erected elsewhere. The citizens of the city of Detroit were upset and did not want to see that historic building disappear from the landscape completely. They proposed moving it to the northern section of the island. Officials, on the other hand, opposed this plan. The actual...
A flyer stating “Colored Citizens Mass Meeting” describes the movement of African-American pastors to change the view of the “Negro Race.”. The flyer describes the place and time that congregations would meet and the objectives of the meeting. The meeting was called in an attempt to “protest against colored women visiting barrooms and barroom premises [and] also against children visiting...
In October 1907, an article appeared in the Journal of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of Mechanical Arts entitled “The Development of the American Locomotive.” The article describes details of the designs and patents for locomotives which were manufactured by, and vital to the success of, the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...
Everyday, people take their morning jogs and overlook the countless trees, rock formations and other scenic landscapes they pass by. John Muir during the early twentieth century admired the scenes that nature provides us all, especially around the Hetch Hetchy Valley in California. At the same time, talk of damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley to create a reservoir for San Francisco residents was...
The immigrant women working in Triangle Shirtwaist Factory called it a "prison." Its safety and working conditions were abysmally low, but these conditions were not unique: New York was an epicenter for industrialization, containing thousands of unsafe factories filled with recent immigrants. In 1909, many factory workers organized a strike to protest unsafe conditions, and most factories met their...