San Francisco's first public school for Chinese immigrants, known first as the Chinese School and then as the Oriental School, began operating in 1859. The school was designed to segregate (separate) Chinese children from white children in the city's…

The British parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765. The act required that colonists buy a stamp from the government for most printed items, such as newspapers, contracts, books, playing cards, and court documents. Popular protests against the new…

Jim Mitchell, who joined the CCC in 1933, recalls how joining the program gave him a sense of purpose and pride, as well as skills. This document includes text supports, including definitions.

During the 1870s and 1880s, San Francisco's Chinatown included as many as four theater companies that regularly performed Chinese operas and other entertainment. Tickets to evening performances usually cost 20-25 cents for Chinese (50 cents for…

Founded in 1903, the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) was an organization that brought together working-class women, reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. The WTUL believed that the best way to help women workers was to help…

Many English settlers arrived in the colonies as indentured servants. Because poor men and women could not afford the cost of travel to North America, they bound themselves for four to seven years’ labor in return for passage across the…

William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic party candidate for President in 1900. He opposed U.S. expansion into the Philippines and often criticized U.S. imperialism in his speeches during and after the 1900 campaign.

This Wall St. Journal article acknowledges some of the problems that accompanied early-twentieth-century immigration—urban overcrowding, the strain on local resources, threats posed by foreign anarchists—but argues that immigrants should…

In this letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Works Progress Administration workers in Michigan ask him to continue the program, claiming that it makes them feel more American. This version includes tax supports.

Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force.…