Episodes Nearest to January 1, 1910 to December 31, 1911: 1 through 25 of 25

  1. Triangle Factory Fire
    date March 25, 1911map New York, New Yorktags Immigration, historical memory

    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...

  2. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911
    date March 25, 1911map New York, New Yorktags Bureau of Fire Prevention, New York City 1900s

    The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911

    By: Louis Daleandro


    Within fifteen minutes, a massive fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City in 1911.  Dubbed a model of modern efficiency, the Triangle factory was large in scale as were the specially designed bins that held hundreds of pounds of scrap cotton and tissue paper.   The blaze that ensued...

  3. The Catastrophic Triangle Factory Fire: A Catalyst for Progressive Reform
    date March 25, 1911map New York, New Yorktags Catastrophic event, Labor Reform, Progressive Era

    The dreadful sounds of death hit the ground as smoke poured from the ten-story building.  William Shepherd, journalist for Milwaukee Journal, describes moment by moment the horrible events he witnessed on that tragic day in Washington Square, New York when fire engulfed the factory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.  It was Saturday, March 25, 1911 just around 4:30 PM, closing time, when fire...

  4. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
    date March 25, 1911map New York, New Yorktags factory fire, Triangle Fire

    On March 26, 1911, the New York Times reported on a disastrous fire in a Manhattan building.  According to the article, the previous day, a fire had broken out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Asch Building located near Washington Square in Manhattan.  Although the building had been declared fireproof, contents within the buildings 8th, 9th, and 10th...

  5. Banner Mine Tragedy
    date April 8, 1911map Jefferson, Alabamatags banner mine, Convict Labor

     

    On April 8, 1911 the Banner Mine ignited killing 128 convict laborers.  The actual cause of death was attributed to blackdamp asphyxiation.  Blackdamp is a mixture of unbreathable poisonous gases which displaces oxygen.  "Clark McCormick, accompanied by former miner J.R. Baird, went into the mine.  Their first discovery was less than reassuring.  Not far from the mine entrance...

  6. African-American Pastors Develop the ‘Black Temperance Movement’
    date August 14, 1910map Jefferson, Alabamatags Church/Religious-Activity, Temperance Movement, Prohibition, african americans, Race Relations

    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...

  7. The Brute vs. the Uncle Tom: Fighting for American Respect
    date July 4, 1910map New York, New York, Washoe, Nevadatags African American, Sports, Boxing

         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...

  8. Tenement Homework and the Exploitation of Child Labor
    date 1910map New York, New Yorktags Child Labor, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    The image of a mother, father, and their three young children huddled around a small table in a dimly lit, overcrowded tenement tediously sewing garments into the early hours of the morning is not unique to the photographs captured by Lewis Hine. Hine's work often demonstrated the dignity of the worker, but reflected the purposes of those who hired him. Hines was surrounded by and influenced...

  9. Seminole Indian churches
    date 1910map Brevard, Floridatags Church

    Edward P. Hooker is the chairman of the State Congregational Association in Florida. He organises the churches help towards the Seminoles. He helps provide for the Seminole Indians educationally and religiously. Edward P. Hooker is a Christian but unlike many white southerners he is open to many other religions and does not force Christianity upon the Indians who get help from his missionaries....

  10. Advertising Cookbook - Sunkist
    date 1910map Santa Barbara, Californiatags Cookbooks, Advertising

    During the turn of the 20th century, a curious artifact began to emerge on the publication scene, a document known as an advertising cookbook.   These were published by any number of manufactures and were meant to highlight the specific uses of their product in everyday cooking.  “Recipes for Dainty Dishes: Culinary, Toilet and Medicinal Hints”, published in 1910 by the California...

  11. Jane Addams takes a look back at Hull-House, twenty years later.
    date 1910map Cook, Illinoistags Immigrants, Women, Jane Addams, Hull House, Social Movement, Social Settlement

    In Twenty Years at Hull-House, Jane Addams reflected that after twenty years, Hull-House held true to its charter: “To provide a center for the higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.” However, she realized some changes had taken place at Hull-House. ...

  12. Middle-Class Blacks on Lynching
    date August 31, 1911map New Hanover, North Carolinatags middle-class, Lynching, african americans

    “The key to success for our race depends not on uprising and quarrels, but on the obedience to law and order.” Doctor W.M. Alexander echoed these words throughout a congregation of 500 prominent African American men at a conference in Wilmington. During the discussions on lynching and the crime rate among African Americans, Alexander argued to his constituents that submission to law was the...

  13. Lumbee Education in Segregated North Carolina
    date September 5, 1911map Robeson, North Carolinatags Normal school, Lumbee, Segregation, Indians

    “The State is in earnest in her effort to educate all of her children” declared H. L. Edens on September 5, 1911. The remark was made in an announcement that declared the Indian Normal School of Robeson County, which would later become the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, had been accepted “as a State institution.”

    In a time in which the South was entrenched deeply in the...

  14. Land for African American Schools
    date July 4, 1912map New Hanover, North Carolinatags Education, african americans

    “After a lengthy and at times acrimonious debate, the House today passed a bill conveying to the board of education of New Hanover County, N.C., thirty-four acres of land in the city of Wilmington for the erection of an industrial school for Negroes,” reported the Raleigh News and Observer. African Americans in the early twentieth century faced poverty, joblessness, poor housing, unequal...

  15. The March for Freedom
    date March 3, 1913map Frederick, Virginiatags Women, Women's Rights

    The day was March 3, 1913 in Washington D.C., many women at the time have wanted equal rights, that they were not receiving, so many important women icons decided to act upon their beliefs. The women gathered 5,000 supporters, such as Mrs. Taft. She and other supporters walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in hopes of rallying the crowd and getting as many supporters as possible. The women used decorated...

  16. The New York Milk Committee Preaches Pure Milk by Moving Pictures
    date March 24, 1913map New York, New Yorktags Health/Death, Women, Progressive Reformers, Urban Society, Food Regulation

    Urban infants in the 1840s had only a 50 percent chance of living to the age of five. Progressive reformers believed that high infant mortality was linked to adulterated and infectious milk, a concern that remained even after New York passed regulation laws. On March 25, 1913, the Committee of Women's Organizations of the New York Milk Committee held a meeting to educate mothers living in the...

  17. WilliamHoward Taft Our Foreign Dependencies
    date September 5, 1908map Bath, Virginiatags American Intervention, Foreign Dependencies, William Howard Taft, Political Speech, Foreign Politics

    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...

  18. The Beverly Beacon: Rise of Women's Voice in Media Publications
    date November 1, 1913map Essex, Massachusettstags Women, Politics, women's rights, Media

         In New England at the turn of the twentieth century women took pen to paper to address the struggles among women in the fight for equality. The Beverly Beacon was the first all women published newspaper. Emerging in the early 1900s, it expressed women's opinions about social, economic, and political aspects of life in the rural New England town of Beverly Massachusetts. The women...

  19. The FDR and Lucy Mercer Affair
    date November, 1913 to 1913map Albany, New Yorktags The Great Depression, Affair, FDR, Lucy Mercer

    Franklin D. Roosevelt will forever be remembered for his public contribution to our nation during the Great Depression years. However, the confidence FDR exuded publically was also used in a more private nature. Late in 1913 Lucy Mercer was hired by Eleanor Roosevelt to act as a social secretary and as such she managed any of the paperwork and social affairs of Eleanor. When FDR first saw Lucy,...

  20. Immigrants Who Couldn’t Get on The Train
    date 1914map Cook, Illinoistags Migration/Transportation, Railroad

    In 1914, Stephen Graham, a traveler from Britain, was riding a train towards Chicago. Upon arriving at the station, he was comparing the American rates with the Russian rates and Great Britain rates: “The cost of working is more in America than in Russia, and the trains are twice as fast; but that is not enough to set off against the enormous differences in fares. . . It is absurd to compare the...

  21. America’s Health Threat - The Industrial Revolution
    date 1914map Elkhart, Indianatags Farm Labor, Health, Pollution

    In 1914, Stephen Graham, a traveler from Britain, was tramping along the border of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan, from Toledo to Angola, Indiana. He was entering the West, where fields were wide and square and roads were straight and flat. One evening, he stopped and took a rest at a farm, where he noticed that there was no labor but just the family working in the field. He noted in his journal,...

  22. With poor immigrants to America
    date 1914map New York, New Yorktags European immigrants, America in 19th Century., Immigrants

    In 1914, Stephen Graham, an European, wrote a book describing his first journey in the United States and why he was so impressed. First, he wrote about why he came to U.S., “I came to America to see men and women and not simply bricks and mortar, to understand a national life rather than to moan over sooty cities and industrial wildernesses. Hundreds of thousands of healthy Europeans passed annually...

  23. How the United States Differentiated Itself From England
    date 1914map New York, New Yorktags Differences, Immigrants

    What were people truly gaining from venturing to America? This is what many like the writer below quested to experience and understand.  Stephen Graham, a British traveller, walked about New York City and stopped to converse with an American man in a club. The man opened Graham’s eyes to the American mentality when Graham asked if it was embarrassing to take such great risks such as death and...

  24. Parents learn their child has died
    date 1907map Hennepin, Minnesotatags Health Care, Cultural Assimilation, Boarding Schools, Native Americans

    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...

  25. Industrial competition between Chicago and Pittsburg
    date 1915map Cook, Illinoistags Pittsburg, Chicago, Steel and Iron Industry, Economy

    Internal competition in a country can be a strong force for development and improvements in some industries.  This “American versus American” phenomenon appeared in many industries in the US. In the early twentieth century, the United States was still developing. At that time, many industries were still in their early stage  -- the car industry and aviation industry, for example. Because these...