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Activities: Context Activities
Core Contexts
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Taking a Stand: The Southern Agrarians Respond to a Changing World
Many of the most prominent American writers of the early twentieth century responded to the social and cultural upheavals of the period by rebelling against them; however, that rebellion often took vastly different, even contradictory, forms. For example, one of the most influential literary rebellions of the period was that of the group of... 
Separate Is Not Equal: Enforcing the Codes of the Jim Crow South
Although the Civil War officially settled the status of African Americans as free individuals, many Americans--especially in the South--remained unconvinced even decades later. In the immediate chaos following the war, southern whites gradually assumed the responsibility of governing the former confederate states, taking as their greatest immediate concern the problem...
Mass Culture Invasion: The Rise of Motion Pictures
In New York City, on April 23, 1896, Thomas Edison projected the first motion picture on a public screen in the United States. At the time, few foresaw the dramatic effects motion pictures would come to have on American culture in the coming decades. Beginning as a technological novelty, motion pictures soon became popular attractions in amusement parks, music...
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Extended Contexts
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Hitting the Road: How Automobiles and Highways Transformed American Life
In 1900, Americans rarely moved or traveled beyond a radius of a few miles from where they were born. However, the introduction and rapid adoption of the automobile as America's primary means of transportation, combined with the development and construction of reliable roads on which those cars could travel, quickly transformed the traditional rootedness...
Promises Unfulfilled: Sharecropping in the South
In the tumultuous South in the decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction, four million freedmen (former slaves) found themselves faced with choices many had scarcely imagined would ever be theirs: How should we make our way in the world? At the same time, while the war had ravaged the southern economy, that economy remained dependent on the production of...
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