Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people:  the Great Depression and World War II.  We will spend the next few weeks telling the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity.  As we will vividly demonstrate, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s.  For nearly a century before 1929, America’s unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike.  Now was the fabled prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays.  Countless Americans, especially if they were farmers, African Americans, or recent immigrants, eked out threadbare lives on the margins of national life.  For them, the Depression was but another of the ordeals of fear and insecurity with which they were sadly familiar.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal wrung from the trauma of the 1930s a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, including the Social Security Act, new banking and financial laws, regulatory legislation, and new opportunities for organized labor.  Taken together, those reforms gave a measure of security to millions of Americans who had never had much of it, and with it a fresh sense of having a stake in their country.

We will tell the story of the New Deal’s achievements, without slighting its shortcomings, contradictions, and failures. It is a story rich in drama and peopled with unforgettable personalities, including the incandescent but enigmatic figure of Roosevelt himself.

                Calendar of Events

03/21/11

Pass-out Text

Review -- Constitution of A221

Seabiscuit (1:30 minute clip)

Lecture – #1 Republican Consumer Era

Business in the 1920s

Homework -- Cornell Notes ("CN" hence forth) on (Chapter 17 / Section 1)

Homework – Read and answer questions to the Harvest Gypsies (due 03/28)

03/22/11

Review (Chapter 17, Section 1)

Lecture – #1 Causes of the Great Depression

Read and Discuss Crash of 1929

Homework -- CN (Chapter 17 / Sections 2 and 3)

03/23/11

Great Depression film

03/24/11

Review (Chapter 17 / Sections 2 and 3)

Lecture -- #1 Depression Life and Hoovers Response

ACT Reading on causes

Homework -- CN (Chapter 18 / Sections 2 & 3)

03/25/11

Study of children riding the rails during the Great Depression

03/28/11

Finish Riding the Rails

Review Harvest Gypsies

Lecture -- #2 1932 Election (Different governing philosophies)

Read, “Roosevelt Readings”

03/29/11

Review (Chapter 18 / Sections 2 & 3)

Fireside Chat activity

Homework – CN (Chapter 18 / Section 4)

03/30/11

Review (Chapter 18 / Section 4))

Lecture -- #2 The New Deal

Critics of the New Deal

FDR toolbox

03/31/11

Lecture -- #3 The New Deal Legacy

America Series – Great Depression

04/01/11

Exam Review

04/04/11

(Unit I) Great Depression Exam

04/05/11

Post Mortem (Unit I) Great Depression Exam

Class work-time

Homework -- CN (Chapter 19 / Section 1)