Notes on links within this page:

  • Many links go directly to the source document on the web.
  • Other links may require you to login with your OUNetID (4×4) and go to a database or journal through OU Libraries’ homepage or to a Canvas site.
  • Report link problems to lscrivener@ou.edu.

If you need to find additional resources see the library research guide.

  • Reconstruction

    1. Reconstruction and Voting Rights

    Primary Source
    Douglass, Frederick. “What the Black Man Wants, April 1865.” Speech reprinted in Dissent in America, 173–75. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Williams, Patrick G. “Suffrage Restriction in Post-Reconstruction Texas: Urban Politics and the Specter of the Commune.” The Journal of Southern History 68, no. 1 (February 1, 2002): 31–64. » Read
    -OR-
    Foner, Eric. “Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction.” The Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (1987): 863–83 » Read

    2.  Reconstruction and Reconciliation

    Primary Source
    Douglass, Frederick. “What the Black Man Wants, April 1865.” Speech reprinted in Dissent in America, 173–75. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Blight, David W. “Reconstruction and Reconciliation.” In Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, 98–139. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. » Read (Navigate to chapter 4)
    -OR-
    Du Bois, W. E. B. “Reconstruction and Its Benefits.” The American Historical Review 15, no. 4 (1910): 781–99 » Read

    3. Reconstruction in the American West: The Washita River Massacre

    Primary Source
    “F.F. Ross to Mr. Chester Lamb, June 19, 1937.” Indian Pioneer Papers. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma Libraries. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Greene, Jerome. “Washita.” In Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867-1869, 116–61. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. » Read

    4. African-American Identity in the New South

    Primary Source
    DuBois, W.E.B. “Niagara Movement Speech, 1905.” TeachingAmericanHistory.org  » Read

    Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise Speech, September 18, 1895.” History Matters. George Mason University. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Capeci, Dominic J., and Jack C. Knight. “Reckoning with Violence: W. E. B. Du Bois and the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot.” The Journal of Southern History 62, no. 4 (November 1, 1996): 727–66. » Read

    5. Racial Violence in the New South

    Primary Source
    Litwack, Leon. “Hellhounds.” In Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, edited by James Allen, 8–37+. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms Pub., 2000. » View  Note:  Primary sources are graphic postcards of lynchings at the end of the chapter. The full book is on reserve in the library. Request call number: HV 6459 .W57 2000.
    Secondary Source
    Litwack, Leon. “Hellhounds.” In Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, edited by James Allen, 8–37+. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms Pub., 2000. » Read  Note: The full book is on reserve in the library. Request call number: HV 6459 .W57 2000.
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  • The Gilded Age

    1. Conservatism and Liberalism in the Gilded Age

    Primary Source
    Sumner, William Graham. “That It Is Not Wicked to Be Rich…” Abridged from What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 43–57. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883. » Read 
    Ward, Lester F. “Mind as a Social Factor (Abridged).” Mind 9, no. 36 (1884): 563–73. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Witt, John Fabian. “Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Crisis of Free Labor.” In The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law, 22–42. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. » Read (Navigate to chapter 1)

    2. Western Settlement in the Gilded Age: The Oklahoma Land Runs

    Primary Source
    “Interview with William Powell, May 25, 1937.” Indian Pioneer Papers. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma Libraries. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Baird, W. David, and Danney Goble. “Promised Land: Oklahoma Territory.” In Oklahoma, A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. » Read

    3. The Allotment of Indian Lands in the Gilded Age

    Primary Source 
    “The Creek Ultimatum of Isparhecher.” And “The Cherokees Reply to Isparhecher.” In Indian Chieftain, November 1897. Isparhecher Collection. Native American Manuscripts Collection. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma Libraries. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Chang, David A. “Raw Country and Jeffersonian Dreams (Part of This Chapter).” In The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929, 79–89. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. » Read

     

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  • Populism

    1. Populist Factions

    Primary Source
    “National Peoples’ Party Platform (Omaha Platform).” In A Populist Reader: Selections from the Works of American Populist Leaders, 1st ed., 90–96. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Frank, Thomas. “Leviathan with Tentacles of Steel: Railroads in the Minds of Kansas Populists.” The Western Historical Quarterly 20, no. 1 (February 1, 1989): 37–54.  » Read

    2. Western Regionalism

    Primary Source
    Turner, Frederick Jackson. “Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In The Frontier in American History, 1–38. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1921. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    White, Richard. “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill Cody.” In The Frontier in American Culture…, 7-66. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. » Read   Note: The physical book is on reserve at the library. Call Number: F 596 .W562 1994.
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  • Progessive Era

    1. The March of the Mill Children

    Primary Source
    Mother Jones. “March of the Mill Children, 1903.” In Dissent in America: Voices That Shaped a Nation, edited by Ralph F. Young, 223–27. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Gorn, Elliott J. “Children’s Crusade.” In Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, 117–41. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. » Read

    2. Hull House and the Peace Movement

    Primary Source 
    Addams, Jane. “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.” Originally in Philanthropy and Social Progress. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1893. (Informal Education Archives).  » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Schott, Linda. “Jane Addams and William James on Alternatives to War.” Journal of the History of Ideas 54, no. 2 (April 1, 1993): 241–54 » Read

    3. Progressive Era Conservation

    Primary Source 
    Roosevelt, Theodore. “Publicizing Conservation at the White House (1908).” In American Environment: Readings in the History of Conservation, edited by Roderick Frazier Nash, 84–89. Reading, Mass, Addison-Wesley PubCo, 1968. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Armitage, Kevin C. “Bird Day for Kids: Progressive Conservation in Theory and Practice.” Environmental History 12, no. 3 (July 1, 2007): 528–51. » Read
    Rome, Adam. “‘Political Hermaphrodites’: Gender and Environmental Reform in Progressive America.” Environmental History 11, no. 3 (July 1, 2006): 440–63. » Read

    4. Urban Reform

    Primary Source 
    Riis, Jacob A. [Chapters I, IV, V, IX, X, XIII].” In How the Other Half Lives : Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York: Dover, 1971.  » Read
    Secondary Source 
    O’Donnell, Edward T. “Pictures vs. Words? Public History, Tolerance, and the Challenge of Jacob Riis.” The Public Historian 26, no. 3 (August 1, 2004): 7–26. » Read
    Zipp, Samuel. “The Roots and Routes of Urban Renewal.” Journal of Urban History 39, no. 3 (May 1, 2013): 366–91. » Read

    5. Immigration and Xenophobia

    Primary Source 
    “National Origins Act Text, 1924.” Laws.com » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Ngai, Mae M. “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924.” The Journal of American History 86, no. 1 (June 1, 1999): 67–92. » Read
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  • World War I

    1. World War I and Trans-National America

    Primary Source
    Bourne, Randolph. “Trans-National America.” Atlantic Monthly. 118 (July 1916): 86–97. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    A) Higham, John. “American Immigration Policy in Historical Perspective.” Law and Contemporary Problems 21, no. 2 (April 1, 1956): 213–35. » Read

    B) Ngai, Mae M. “Nationalism, Immigration Control, and the Ethnoracial Remapping of America in the 1920S.” OAH Magazine of History 21, no. 3 (July 1, 2007): 11–15. » Read

    2. World War I and American Governance

    Primary Source 
    “U.S. Espionage Act, 15 June 1917.” Primary Documents. firstworldwar.com » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Kennedy, David M. “Prologue: Spring, 1917.” In Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. » Read

    3. American Indians and World War I

    Primary Source 
    A) “Indian Is Model Doughboy: Choctaw Hero Chosen to Pose for French Artist’s Soldier Painting.” The Washington Post (1877-1922). December 18, 1919. » Read
    B) “Interview with Joe Howard, July 22, 1937.” Indian Pioneer Papers. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma Libraries. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Barsh, Russel Lawrence. “American Indians in the Great War.” Ethnohistory 38, no. 3 (July 1, 1991): 276–303. » Read

    4. World War I Propaganda

    Primary Source
    “[Samples of Four Minute Men Speeches].” In War As Advertised: The Four Minute Men and America’s Crusade, 1917-1918, edited by Alfred E. Cornebise, 60, 72–73, 122. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Bishop, M. Guy. “‘Strong Voices and 100 Per Cent Patriotism’: The Four-Minute Men of Los Angeles County, 1917-1918.” Southern California Quarterly 77, no. 3 (October 1, 1995): 199–214. » Read
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  • The 1920s

    1. Herbert Hoover’s Vision for America

    Primary Source 
    Hoover, Herbert. “American Individualism.” Chapter 1 in American Individualism. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1922. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Hawley, Ellis W. “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’ 1921-1928.” The Journal of American History 61, no. 1 (June 1, 1974): 116–40. » Read

    2. Harlem Renaissance

    Primary Source 
    Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes : The Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation. » Read

    McKay, Claude. “If We Must Die, 1919.’” History Matters. » Read

    Cullen, Countee. “Black Christ.” In The Black Christ & Other Poems. New York ; London: Harper & Brothers, 1929. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Hutchinson, George. “Staging a Renaissance.” In The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, 389–95. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995.  » Read

    3. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s

    Primary Source
    Evans, Hiram. “Klan’s Fight for Americanism.” [Abridged.] North American Review, May 1926. » Read 
    Secondary Source 
    Blee, Kathleen. “Ku Klux Klan in Indiana.” In Social Fabric, edited by Thomas L. Hartshorne, 10th ed., II: American Life from the Civil War to the Present:137–53. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. » Read

    4. The 1920s Ku Klux Klan at the University of Oklahoma

    Primary Source
    DeBarr, Edwin. “Reminiscence, March 1935.” Lida White Collection, Box 9, Folder 2. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma Libraries. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Levy, David W. “Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Edwin (‘Daddy’) DeBarr.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 88, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 288–315. » Read

    5. The Oklahoma Legislature’s Battle with the Ku Klux Klan

    Primary Source 
    “Memo from Mrs. James A. Wilson, Realm Commander, to All Grand Officers, Regents, Excellent Commanders and Klanswomen, regarding chartering of Klanhaven, February 11, 1926.” Ku Klux Klan Women’s Organization Collection, Box 1, Folder 23. Western History Collections. University of Oklahoma. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Neuringer, Sheldon. “Governor Walton’s War on the Ku Klux Klan: An Episode in Oklahoma History.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 45, no. 2 (Summer 1967): 153–75. » Read
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  • The Great Depression

    1. The Great Depression and the New Deal

    Primary Source 
    Roosevelt, Franklin. “First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.” The American Presidency Project. » Read
    Roosevelt, Franklin. “Fireside Chat on Banking, March 12, 1933.” The American Presidency Project. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Romer, Christina D. “What Ended the Great Depression?” The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 4 (December 1, 1992): 757–84. » Read

    2. The Nation Confronts the Great Depression

    Primary Source 
    Steinbeck, John. [Chapter 2]. In Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, 26–31. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988.  » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Bird, Caroline. “Nation Confronts the Great Depression.” In Social Fabric, edited by Thomas L. Hartshorne, 10th ed., II: American Life from the Civil War to the Present:189–99. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. » Read

    3. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma

    Primary Source 
    “Guymon Prepares to Shame ’Grapes.” The Daily Oklahoman, March 17, 1940.  » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Shockley, Martin Staples. “The Reception of the Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma.” American Literature 15, no. 4 (January 1, 1944): 351–61. » Read

    4. The Dust Bowl

    Primary Source
    Dust Bowl Photographs. Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information – Black and White Negatives. Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/.
    Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, 1936 » View
    Dust Bowl Refugee from Chickasaw County, Oklahoma by Dorothea Lange, 1934 » View
    One of the Pioneer Women of the Oklahoma Panhandle by Arthur Rothstein, 1936 » View
    Dust Bowl Farmer Raising Fence, Cimarron County, OK by Rothstein, 1936 » View
    Abandoned Farm, Dust Bowl OK by Rothstein, 1936 » View
    Squatters along Highway near Bakersfield by Lange, 1935 » View
    Oklahoma Dust Bowl Refugees, San Fernando, CA by Lange, 1935 » View
    Home of Dust Bowl Refugee, Imperial Valley by Lange, 1937 » View
    Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm, Cimarron County by Rothstein, 1936 » View
    Secondary Source 
    Worster, Donald. “Hard Times in the Panhandle.” In Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, 25th anniversary ed., 138. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.  » Read
    Continue reading →

  • World War II

    1. World War II: What Our Boys Are Fighting For

    Primary Source 
    Wallace, Henry A. [Speech  articulating the goals of the war for the allies.] In Century of the Common Man. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.  » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Westbrook, Robert B. “‘I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James’: American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II.” American Quarterly 42, no. 4 (December 1, 1990): 587–614 » Read

    2. World War II and the Home Front

    Primary Source 
    “Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese, February 19, 1942.” Today’s Document from the National Archives. National Archives » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Kennedy, David M. “Cauldron of the Home Front.” In Freedom from Fear. Part Two, The American People in World War II, 321–56. The Oxford History of the United States; v. 9; 2004. » Read

    3. World War II in Oklahoma

    Primary Source
    “Lynchers Hanged.” The Washington Post. July 12, 1945. » Read
    “Prisoner From Oklahoma Is Captured in France.” New York Times. August 9, 1946. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Warner, Richard S. “Barbed Wire and Nazilagers: PW Camps in Oklahoma.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 64, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 36–67. » Read
    Continue reading →

  • The Cold War

    1. Asymmetric Conflict and the Cold War

    Primary Source
    Truman, Harry S. “Truman Doctrine: President Harry S. Truman’s Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947.” Avalon Project. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Mack, Andrew. “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict.” World Politics 27, no. 2 (January 1, 1975): 175–200. » Read

    2. The Cold War at Home, Part I

    Primary Source 
    Smith, Margaret Chase. “Declaration of Conscience, 1950.” In Dissent in America: Voices That Shaped a Nation, edited by Ralph F. Young, 223–27. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Halberstam, David. [Chapter 3]. In The Fifties, 49–61. New York: Villard Books, 1993. » Read

    3. The Cold War at Home, Part II

    Primary Source 
    Robeson, Paul. “I Take My Stand.” In Here I Stand, 28–47. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Beeching, Barbara J. “Paul Robeson and the Black Press: The 1950 Passport Controversy.” The Journal of African American History 87 (July 1, 2002): 339–54. » Read

    4. Cold War Censorship in Oklahoma

    Primary Source 
    “Letter from E.R. Christopher to Tom, August 17, 1950.” E.R. Christopher Collection, Box 13, Folder 2. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Robbins, Louise S. “Racism and Censorship in Cold War Oklahoma: The Case of Ruth W. Brown and the Bartlesville Public Library.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 100, no. 1 (July 1, 1996): 18–46. » Read
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  • Civil Rights

    1. Civil Rights and the Cold War

    Primary Source 
    Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Dudziak, Mary L. “Brown as a Cold War Case.” The Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (June 1, 2004): 32–42 » Read

    2. Segregation at the University of Oklahoma

    Primary Source 
    “Negro to Apply Again for Entry as OU Student.” Daily Oklahoman, January 19, 1948. » Read
    “Class Railings to Segregate Negroes at OU.” Daily Oklahoman, June 17, 1949. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Hubbell, John T. “The Desegregation of the University of Oklahoma, 1946-1950.” The Journal of Negro History 57, no. 4 (October 1, 1972): 370–84. » Read

    3. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement

    Primary Source 
    King, Jr., Martin Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” April 16, 1963. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Kosek, Joseph Kip. “Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Strategy of Nonviolence.” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 1, 2005): 1318–48. » Read

    4. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Memory

    Primary Source 
    King, Jr., Martin Luther. “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” April 3, 1968. YouTube.  » Watch

    King, Jr., Martin Luther. “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” [Text of Speech.] Our Union. History. AFSCME and Dr. King. » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Chappell, David L. “Legalizing the Legacy: The Battle for a Martin Luther King Holiday.” In Waking From the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King Jr, 91–123. New York: Random House, 2014. » Read

    5. Mass Incarceration in Modern America

    Primary Source 
    California’s “Three Strikes” Law (March 1994) and Prop. 184 (November 1994). » Read
    Secondary Source 
    Thompson, Heather Ann. “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History.” The Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (December 1, 2010): 703–34 » Read
    -OR-
    Alexander, Michelle. “Excerpt from the Introduction | Newjimcrow.com.” In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. NY: New Press, 2010.  » Read
    Continue reading →

  • Vietnam

    Primary:
    “Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State. Saigon, January 13, 1968.” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume VI, Vietnam, January–August 1968. Office of the Historian, Department of State. » Read
    “Walter Cronkite’s ‘We Are Mired in Stalemate’ Broadcast, February 27, 1968.” Digital History. » Read
    Secondary:
    Pach, Chester J., Jr. “TV’s 1968: War, Politics, and Violence on the Network Evening News.” South Central Review 16/17 (December 1, 1999): 29–42. » Read
    Continue reading →

  • The 1970s

    1. Richard Nixon

    Primary:
    Nixon, Richard. “Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations. April 30, 1973.” American Presidency Project » Read
    Secondary:
    “The Watergate Story [Parts 1-4].” The Washington Post.
    Part 1 » Read
    Part 2 » Read
    Part 3 » Read
    Part 4 » Read

     2. Post War Environmentalism

    Primary Source
    Carson, Rachel. “And No Birds Sing.” In Silent Spring, 103–27. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1962. » Read
    Secondary Source
    Rome, Adam. “The Genius of Earth Day.” Environmental History 15, no. 2 (April 1, 2010): 194–205. » Read

     3. Environmental Justice

    Primary Source
    Gibbs, Lois. “It Does Affect You: Women at Love Canal and Three Mile Island.” Edited by Celeste Wesson. Radical America 17, no. 2–3 (June 1983): 29–36. » Read (scroll to page 29)
    Secondary Source
    Blum, Elizabeth D. “Gender at Love Canal.” In Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism, 31-62; 154-161. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2008. » Read
    Blum, Elizabeth D. “Race at Love Canal.” In Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism, 63-85; 161-165. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2008. » Read
    Continue reading →

  • The Reagan Era

    Primary:
    Reagan, Ronald. “Evil Empire Speech, March 8, 1983.” Voices of Democracy. The U.S. Oratory Project  » Read
    Secondary:
    Deudney, Daniel, and G. John Ikenberry. “Who Won the Cold War?” Foreign Policy, no. 87 (July 1, 1992): 123–38. » Read
    Continue reading →