Lynching

Strange Fruit

Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan)
Originally sung by: Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Frederick Douglass

  
     Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.
A brilliant speaker, Douglass was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, and so became recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was publicized in 1845. Two years later he began publishing an antislavery paper called the North Star.
     Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

For more information click here.

Slavery

Slavery

Slavery

Slavery

Slavery

The Erie Canal

How a Canal Works

How canals work


The Erie Canal


The Panama Canal (Timelapse)

Lowell Factories in the North

The Plantation System

All We Got Is Cotton, Slaves, and Arrogance!

How the Cotton Gin Contributed to Slavery

The North and the South Before the Civil War

The North before the Civil War

The South before the Civil War

Northern Cities (Gangs of New York)

Southern plantations (Gone with the Wind)

The Gold Rush

William S Dean Californio Geneaology

A photo essay of this man's (William S. Dean) Californio family ancestors back to c. 1840s; most of the ancestors lived in Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano areas of Southern California.

The Last of the Californios

Lewis and Clark

From left to right: French fur trapper and Sacagawea's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau;  York; Clark's slave; Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea

CHECK THIS OUT

Ken Burns Documentary: The West

Click here and journey through this amazing 8 part mini series.

THE WEST is an eight-part documentary series which premiered on PBS stations in September 1996. This multimedia guided tour proceeds chapter-by-chapter through each episode in the series, offering selected documentary materials, archival images and commentary, as well as links to background information and other resources of the web site.

James K. Polk "Napoleon of the Stump"

James K. Polk

America in Motion

Oregon

Oregon Trail


A Pioneer Story

Pee Wee Herman Visits the Alamo

The Almao

Black Seminoles and the Largest Slave Revolt in U.S. History

Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution

The Louisiana Purchase

Manifest Destiny in 10 MInutes

Archie Bunker Learns Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny in Leggos

Westward Movement

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study, U.S. Capitol)
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816 - 1868)

"This dramatic image of westward expansion is a study for a mural in the United States Capitol, one of the most ambitious statements of cultural nationalism during the mid-nineteenth century. Leutze combined pioneer men and women, mountain guides, wagons, and mules to suggest a divinely ordained pilgrimage to the Promised Land of the western frontier. In the border, medallion portraits of explorers Captain William Clark and Daniel Boone flank a vista of the San Francisco Bay -- the ultimate western destination. Above, a bald eagle holds a scroll on which is lettered Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way -- while Native Americans escape in a maze of winding plant tendrils."

Manifest Destiny

John Gast - "American Progress," (1872)

"...To state the truth at once in its neglected simplicity, we are free to say that were the respective cases and arguments of the two parties, as to all these points of history and law, reversed - had England all ours, and we nothing but hers - our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us." 

~  John L. O' Sullivan, "Manifest Destiny" editorial, New York Morning News on December 27, 1845