03.18.06
UIS Spring, 2006 - Understanding US History
Things of interest from Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel.
- “lace curtain irish”
When those who moved up the ladder of success more rapidly began moving into larger frame houses and taking on fancy airs, they were dubbed “Lace Curtain.” They, in turn, referred to there less fortunate brethren as “Shanty” or “Pig in the Parlor Irish.” From The Cleveland Memory Project - Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland - Chapter 3 - Continued Expansion: Lace Curtain and Shanty Irish
- “tinned bully beef” - canned corned beef usually served in the trenches during World War I
- Memorial Day Massacre
- Bob La Follette, Jr.
- Bernard Baruch
- John L. Lewis
- E.D. Nixon
upon hearing A. Phillip Randolph, founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, speak about rights for the Negro Porters,
“… it was like a light. Before that time, I figure that a Negro would be kicked around and accept what the white man did. I never knew the Negro had a right to enjoy freedom like everyone else.” (Terkel, p. 119) - William Lyon Phelps
- Gordon Baxter
Look, my family came from the Old Country, and my grandfather sold pots and pans off his back, and I’ve moved out to the suburbs, and if my grandfather could do it, what the hell’s the matter with these niggers? (Terkel, p. 127)
Editor’s Note: displays a not uncommon attitude toward those less fortunate with little understanding of events that may keep a person from gaining financial and social status - Mott Foundation
- C. Aubrey Smith
- Alfred P. Sloan
- Helen Hokinson
- Rural Rehabilitation
- Samuel Insull
- NRA - National Recovery Administration
- Christopher Lasch
A crisis in capitalist society doesn’t necessarily produce revolutionary changes or even a sense of alternatives, unless people have an awareness of some other kind of social order in which disasters of this kind wouldn’t happen.
- Father Charles Coughlin
- Oxford Pledge (from Center for Socialist History)
Other links can be found at Logs of the Written Word