Looking for:
Jobs usa gov federal jobs nearest posterity. Federal Art Project of Works Progress Admin
The Congress of the United States is the legislative (lawmaking) and oversight (Government policy review) body of our National. Government, and consists of two. A regularly updated special edition of the Federal Register, it describes agency activities and programs of the executive, judicial, and.
Jobs usa gov federal jobs nearest posterity. John Adams, Architect of American Government
Grover served as third Archivist until , and today he remains the longest-serving Archivist. Robert H. Rhoads, who had joined the Archives in , succeeded him as fifth Archivist in Having grown and expanded quietly over 35 years, the Archives now was about to take the spotlight, though not necessarily by choice. The decade of the s brought public attention, both positive and negative, to the Archives, as well as some real and public changes in its role.
The agency learned that it was not immune to the kind of fires that had destroyed many early documents of the new nation. Louis on the top floor of the military personnel records facility. In the Pentagon decided to consolidate all the personnel and health records of millions of former soldiers, sailors, and airmen in St.
Louis, and in , the Pentagon turned over management of these records to the Archives. The floor where the fire occurred contained some 22 million Army and Air Force personnel folders. Overall, fewer than 4 million records were saved, either in their entirety or with as little as one identifiable document. Louis handles thousands of requests per year for military service records. A new facility replaced this one in National Personnel Records Center. Since then, NPRC has had an ongoing project to reconstruct these veterans’ files using information provided by the veterans themselves and through medical records on file with the Veterans Administration.
In this way NPRC personnel can verify dates of service for veterans and the status of their separation from the military—information that allows veterans to prove eligibility for government benefits. The following year, after the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of President Richard M.
Nixon , the National Archives found itself in the middle of this historic chapter in American history. Nixon wanted to take all his presidential records with him and had made an agreement with the head of the GSA to do so. However, Congress balked and nullified the deal; the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of authorized the government to seize Nixon’s White House records and placed them in the hands of the National Archives. Over the years, Nixon sought to have the records returned to him but had little success.
The records remained in the Archives’ hands, even after a private foundation opened a Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, in ; it held many personal items and papers of Nixon but not his official papers as President.
The papers now held by the Archives in College Park will be transferred to California when an addition to the library is ready. To take care of matters like this in the future, in Congress passed the Presidential Records Act.
This legislation designated all of the records of U. Presidents, beginning with the President who took office January 20, , as the property of the U. Government and directed that they be deposited with the National Archives at the end of the President’s term. The end of the s also saw, finally, the opening of the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, 16 years after the 35th President’s death.
Gerald R. Ford was also building his library, and one of the people on the site committee was Robert M. Warner , a professor of library and information science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where the library would be located. Since , when the Archives was folded into the GSA, the agency “remained in captivity,” as Warner saw it. Warner recounted this historic time in the Archives history in his book Diary of a Dream: A History of the National Archives Independence Movement, —, and in a Prologue article.
During a November 4, , ceremony, Archivist Robert Warner is presented with a reproduction of the act creating the National Archives and Records Administration.
The three decades within GSA had changed the Archives. Its holdings contained many more records; it now had regional archives and federal records centers and presidential libraries all around the country; and it was facing a future in which it would have to figure out how to preserve records created by computers, which were slowly and haphazardly coming into use in the federal government. Many Archives supporters in and out of government, especially those in the archival and history communities, who had opposed its inclusion in GSA in the first place now felt it was time to move to regain the independence it had enjoyed under Roosevelt.
Warner gathered his top aides and plotted strategy—in meetings conducted in secret because GSA was adamantly opposed to removing the National Archives from its fold.
While they met in secret, professional groups of historians and archivists pushed for independence and found members of the House and Senate to take up their cause. Editorials appeared in major newspapers supporting independence legislation. Effective April 1, , the Archives was free at last, again. Now, the Archivist reported only to the President. Now, the National Archives and Records Administration, as it was newly named, could chart its own future.
The quarter-century that has passed since Reagan signed the National Archives independence legislation has been one in which the Archives, to a great extent, has reinvented itself. Although independence meant that NARA could expand and grow as the leaders and professionals within the agency saw fit, the agency had little time to waste in attacking new problems.
Traditional paper records continued to flow into the Archives in large amounts, so much so that just finding a site to store them was a challenge. National Archives photo. These temporary facilities did not meet the criteria for the storage of archival records set by the National Bureau of Standards. Repeated attempts to find support for a new building in the Washington area failed—until after Planning for a new facility for the newly independent Archives began in the late s, and the University of Maryland donated a acre piece of land for the building.
It became known as the National Archives at College Park. Ground was broken in , and staff began the move in late The 1. It housed a great deal of records processing and storage areas, a five-level research center, conservation and special media laboratories, offices, and conference and training rooms.
The building adhered to the new environmental and storage standards important for the long-term preservation of the records. Today the College Park facility is a model among archives around the world, and foreign delegations often visit it not to examine its holdings but to learn about the building itself, which is an example of a modern archives that meets all the structural and environmental standards required of today’s archives facilities. The College Park facility also became the location for the preparation of work on the next big challenge the Archives faced.
The era of electronic records was on the horizon, and technology was moving quickly. NARA officials had to determine how to preserve computer-created records that very soon would be as difficult to access as 78 rpm recordings, if not impossible. During the s, and especially during the Clinton administration from to , the use of computers to produce official government records skyrocketed.
Text documents, e-mails, web pages, and other kinds of electronic records all posed major challenges for an agency that during its first 50 years had dealt mainly with paper, print photographs, and videotape and film. But technology was moving quickly, and the challenge was clear: figure out how to preserve records created with today’s computer hardware and software so that they will be accessible with the hardware and software in use not just in a few years but many years from now.
An ERA office was officially established in ERA would take years to build and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But the benefits could be far-reaching. The technology developed for the ERA can be scaled down for use by archives smaller than NARA, such as those in state and local governments, private companies, major libraries, and universities.
The President and Congress supported it with generous appropriations, and in , ERA took in its first records, from four pilot agencies. In January it began to take in the electronic records of George W.
Bush’s White House. The Archives also entered into partnerships with several private companies to digitize thousands of traditional paper records, so they too, in time, will be available through the ERA. Even as Archives officials were confronting the problems of storage capacity and the new kinds of records that were soon to come to NARA, events on other fronts were moving quickly.
Richard Nixon Library. Now an independent agency, NARA in its last quarter century has seen a number of Archivists and Presidents come and go, as the need for more space for records increased at a rapid pace and older facilities required extensive renovation. Warner, who had led the battle for independence, resigned shortly after independence went into effect on April 1, , and returned to the University of Michigan.
Don Wilson, director of the Ford Library, was sworn in as the seventh Archivist in December and served until March Carlin , a former governor of Kansas, was sworn in as the eighth Archivist. Several new presidential libraries opened during this period.
The Ford Library opened on the campus of the University of Michigan in early , and the Ford Museum opened in Grand Rapids later that year; it is the only presidential library and museum to be located in two cities. Jimmy Carter opened his presidential library in Atlanta in , and Reagan opened his in Simi Valley, California, in In the Charters of Freedom were removed from their old encasements and treated as part of the extensive renovation at the National Archives Building.
National Archives photo by Earl McDonald. In , the federal government also passed a law permitting Native Americans to become citizens. The law included the federal territory of Alaska where natives had long been fighting for the right to become citizens.
For example, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the Alaska Native Sisterhood had been advocating for citizenship for over a decade before the law was passed. In , the Alaskan government approved a law opening the door for citizenship for natives. However, this process required five whites to testify that an applicant had renounced all traditional ways and was fully assimilated. Much like the Jim Crow South, Alaskan establishments displayed signs indicating that no natives would be served in restaurants.
In the late s, the Brotherhood and Sisterhood joined together using both moral suasion and other more direct methods to protest establishments that discriminated against Alaskan natives. The campaign for civil rights in Alaska peaked during World War II when natives were forcibly removed and arrested for violating the policies of segregated theaters.
Efforts of activist Elizabeth Peratrovich and many others would ultimately lead to the passage of an Alaskan law banning segregation in However, both formal and informal segregation within establishments would persist until statehood, especially in areas where natives lacked economic power precisely because of their exclusion from employment opportunities. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested in May following an attempted robbery of a Massachusetts factory that had left two men dead.
Although very little evidence linked them to the crime, both men were radicals who had expressed support for anarchist violence in the past. Each of these immigrant groups had grown increasingly concerned by the reactionary climate of the s. They sought to demonstrate how the convictions of these two men demonstrated the injustice of the criminal justice system for immigrants and radicals.
Over the next six years, these groups filed a number of appeals that raised serious doubts about the guilt of the two men but failed to reverse their death sentences.
Several witnesses described the burglars in ways that conflicted with the appearance of both Sacco and Vanzetti. Both men were supporters of Italian anarchists who advocated anti-Capitalist revolution through violent tactics such as bombings and assassinations.
The trials also demonstrated the unlikelihood that either man would have been convicted of the original burglary had it not been for their radical beliefs. Despite international protest ranging from Buenos Aires to Rome, both men were executed on August 23, Most recent immigrants from central and southern Europe, along with other minority groups who were no strangers to police discrimination, were less likely to sustain the decision of the court.
As a result, the Sacco-Vanzetti Trials A highly publicized series of trials and appeals seeking to overturn the execution of two Italian immigrants who had been arrested in connection with a robbery and murder.
Although little evidence connected the two men to the crime they were eventually executed for, both were known to support radical anarchists who advocated the use of violence. It also renewed questions about whether the US justice system tried defendants for their actions or their political beliefs and background.
The election featured a solidly Democratic South. La Follette carried only his home state of Wisconsin and the Republican Calvin Coolidge easily won a second term. Harding in Coolidge was perhaps the most enigmatic leader of the early twentieth century. Many conservatives spoke out against the growing power and size of government yet sought to expand certain aspects of government authority.
However, Coolidge was consistent in believing the federal government should defer to the states. He also demonstrated deference to the Supreme Court and Congress, believing that a president should not be too involved in the day-to-day business of government. At other times, Coolidge demonstrated support for progressive goals. For example, Coolidge outlined a broad legislative agenda full of specific goals, such as child-labor laws, improvements in health care, and environmental protection during one of his addresses to Congress.
He was governor of Wisconsin and would later poll nearly 5 million votes as a third-party candidate for the presidency in And yet it was Coolidge and not Franklin Delano Roosevelt FDR who was the first to use regular radio addresses to the nation, even if FDR would later be credited with originating the idea.
Coolidge would also decline running for reelection in , despite the near certainty of victory. A leading biographer suggests that Coolidge may have suffered from clinical depression. Although it is tempting to apply this explanation to his decision to leave public life as well as his insistence on sleeping twelve hours per day while president, no one really understood what drove Coolidge to abandon the hard work and ambition of his earlier years.
Coolidge conducted most of his reelection campaign from the White House through correspondence. His vice presidential candidate, Charles Dawes, was an enthusiastic campaigner and attacked the third-party candidacy of Robert La Follette A Republican politician from Wisconsin who was deeply influenced by the Progressive Movement of the early s, La Follette enacted a number of reforms as governor of Wisconsin; these laws were aimed at increasing the power of government to regulate corporations.
La Follette ran for president in as a third-party candidate and received one in six votes, despite the fact he had little chance of winning the general election. The Democrats nominated a corporate attorney named John W. Davis after several days of balloting. Southern conservatives and northern progressives vied for control of the Democratic Party in ways that ensured a Republican victory short of some major scandal or economic disaster.
The Democrats of the North tended to be urban, recent immigrants, Catholic or Jewish, supporters of progressivism, and opponents of Prohibition. The Democrats of the South were white Protestants, old-stock Americans opposed to immigration, and supporters of Prohibition. As long as Coolidge stayed in the White House and the economy did not implode, the election had already been decided unless the Democrats could find a way to unite.
Meanwhile, La Follette entered the race under the banner of the Progressive Party. His platform demonstrated that Progressive ideas about governmental reform had not been forgotten during the relative prosperity of the s.
Yet even if every one of the nearly 5 million supporters of La Follete had joined with the Democrats, Coolidge would still have won the election of in a landslide. The failure of Prohibition led to greater toleration for lawbreakers and demonstrated that American culture was moving away from traditional views. The rise of consumerism had an even greater influence on the culture of the s with its celebration of worldly values such as acquisition and consumption.
Americans had always longed for material security and even a few luxuries; the difference was that during the s, the balance between luxury and security had become skewed. The use of credit for any other purpose, especially luxury items such as appliances and automobiles, was nearly unthinkable. For some, creditworthiness was next to godliness—a symbol that one had been judged as successful and trustworthy.
Alice Joyce was a leading actress of the s. Her dress in this image demonstrates the use of straight lines among flappers. For others, credit appeared to offer the promise of liberation from a life of living paycheck to paycheck. Mass production meant that goods once regarded as luxury items became more readily available at much more favorable prices. Most urban families by the end of the s owned an automobile.
Nearly everyone could afford a radio, and those who could not could at least purchase a homemade radio kit that permitted one to receive signals. Mass marketing spurred mass consumption, democratized desire, and convinced more and more Americans that a life of more goods was indeed the good life. As consumer culture replaced traditional mores in the economic realm, a faster and more secular culture even began to alter notions of gender and sexual morality.
Although changes in gender relations and sexual expression during the s seems modest when viewed from the perspective of the twenty-first century, contemporaries perceived these changes as revolutionary.
The increasing agency expressed by women and the changing fashions of the era were certainly not new, as Victorian modes of behavior had always been challenged. Young men and young women had long engaged in sexual exploration, short of and including intercourse. For most women, gendered notions of modesty remained the highest expression of their virtue. The difference was that the s were host to public acknowledgment that a mutually satisfying sexual connection was a sign of a healthy relationship rather than a warning sign of female insatiability.
At the same time, modern attitudes regarding sex cohabited with antiquated notions about hymeneal purity in ways that continued to reinforce misogynistic attitudes and practices. The fashions of the s were also a continuation of earlier trends toward simpler and more practical attire. This process was accelerated by the need for metal during the war, which led patriotic women to donate their corsets just as they had in the Civil War. Apparently, these metal and leather contraptions were not missed by many women in the s, and corset sales never recovered.
By the s, popular dresses were still quite modest, extending just below the knee. Flappers enjoyed new dance moves that encouraged movement and a few sparks of flirtatious suggestion. Some flappers even attempted to minimize their bust with tightly woven fabric.
Young women were increasingly likely to leave home and experience at least a few years of independence at college prior to marriage. Only 2 percent of young adults attended college at the turn of the century, but only two decades later, that number increased to 7 percent. Colleges doubled in size and then doubled again in this short time, creating virtual cities of youths complete with dormitories and a rapid proliferation of fraternities and sororities. A quarter of students belonged to one of these Greek organizations.
While it was socially acceptable for young men to live alone or with their peers, young women were expected to room with a respectable married family who would also become their chaperones and surrogate parents. By , young women were attending college in nearly equal numbers as young men, leading to a shortage of boarding opportunities for young women. In response, many of the first dormitories were reserved for women.
The team in this photo enjoyed an undefeated season. For most college women of the s, the fashionable lifestyle of the flapper was exciting but little more than a temporary diversion from their goal of marriage and motherhood.
These women were even known to go out at night with other women, eschewing the once-obligatory male chaperone. This independence was more than a rite of passage for future generations. At the same time, the s and colleges were conservative institutions that reflected the political and economic orthodoxy of the era.
Women were steered toward a handful of majors and discouraged from direct competition with men in the classroom or in extracurricular activities. By the mids, women were even discouraged from competition with one another.
By the mids, reformers argued that strenuous athletic activity was both unfeminine and dangerous to reproductive health. The participants were even barred from forming teams that represented their institutions. A trial in the heart of Tennessee came to represent the changing culture of the s, as well as those who sought to preserve traditional views. In , leading public figures such as William Jennings Bryan arose to defend the state law of Tennessee.
The resulting trial, known as the Scopes Monkey Trial A highly publicized trial of high school teacher John Scopes who violated a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution. The trial would become emblematic of the culture wars of the early twentieth century between conservative Christian fundamentalists and modernists who tended to be more secular and liberal.
The actual violation of the state law itself was hardly denied, and the trial soon became more of cultural debate than an investigation of the validity of the Tennessee law. The notoriety surrounding the trial led most Americans to hold their own debates about the separation of church and state.
Most urban reporters believed that the brilliant attorney Clarence Darrow humiliated the devoutly religious Bryan. Even if the trial resulted in a moral victory for the forces of modern science and secular education, rural Americans, especially rural Southerners, often relished lost causes. For them, the attack upon a law they believed defended their children from heretical theories represented the way urban America, liberals, the federal government, and an increasingly worldly culture threatened their way of life.
For the rest of the nation, liberal condescension toward evangelicals and rural Southerners appeared inconsistent with values such as toleration for others that supposedly guided American liberalism.
Although the trial was portrayed as a battle of reason and science versus religion and city versus the countryside, most Americans did not draw lines quite so cleanly. Most Americans believed in both evolution and creationism. Many rural Americans feared that banning evolution for religious reasons violated principles that were supposed to separate the church from the government.
In addition, many academics rose to defend traditional views and ways of life against the superficiality of modern culture. The historians sought to defend both the South and rural conservatism. They argued that an agricultural economy was naturally disposed toward more humane, egalitarian, and leisurely societies than that of urban industry. The book mixed an impassioned defense of community, the satisfaction of hard work, and a longing for an Edenic paradise lost. However, these white Southerners also demonstrated some of the most disturbing features of the white South when discussing race.
Demonstrating their own misguided ideas about Africa as a land of savagery, several chose to include a nonhistorical defense of slavery as a positive good for the enslaved. This photo of Marcus Garvey demonstrates his flair for drama but also the pride that Garvey and his followers took in their movement.
UNIA chapters included various ranks and positions which gave members a feeling of importance and belonging.
An African American journalist writing for the Cleveland Gazette may have coined this phrase in Five years later, Booker T. However, the phrase took on a new meaning beyond self-help when Locke began to use it in the s. What they had in common was the refusal to kowtow to those who failed to recognize the dignity of their person or their labor. Du Bois demonstrated this new spirit of willful confrontation to white supremacy by publishing essays that exposed white power organizations.
These reports were based on the investigations of the biracial and blue-eyed Walter White who infiltrated these groups. At the same time, it was a reminder that some other black women and men were still fleeing from their true racial identity. Du Bois believed that the second-class citizenship of African Americans reflected this colonial orientation and remained the prominent voice of the NAACP and black intelligentsia throughout the s.
The goal of the UNIA was to promote black pride and economic self-sufficiency in the near term while working toward creating independent black republics in Africa, Latin America, or the Caribbean. While there, he accepted an invitation to tour Harlem and was particularly impressed with the new attitude of self-reliance he saw in hundreds of small businesses throughout the predominantly black New York neighborhood.
For Garvey, these economic enterprises that were independent of white money and white control represented the key to racial advancement. Garvey believed that lawsuits demanding integration were wrongheaded because he did not believe that white Americans would ever consent to sharing economic and political control with blacks.
Furthermore, Garvey thought that the NAACP was foolish to launch civil rights lawsuits to force white businesses to treat black customers the same as white customers when the result would only mean more business for the white proprietor.
Instead, Garvey believed the goal was to create black-owned theaters that showed films made by and for black people. He wanted black-owned restaurants and stores that would provide jobs for black employees and outlets for the products made by black artisans. He also wanted black voters to select black candidates, but doubted this would ever happen in the predominantly white political world.
As a result, Garvey called for people of African descent to create independent black nations in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa where equality of rights would be recognized in law and deed. The economic ventures of Garvey, however, proved to be epic failures, and the UNIA declined after its national leader was arrested and deported. Garvey established the first UNIA branch in the United States three years later, which was aimed at promoting racial pride and developing black-owned businesses; he hoped this would ultimately lead to black economic and political independence, which formed the foundation of his Pan-African vision.
De Priest himself advocated civil rights causes, but those who supported black nationalism would also point out that he was the only black American elected to Congress since the late nineteenth century. Illinois congressman Oscar De Priest was born to former slaves in Alabama.
His family were Exodusters who moved to Ohio in the late s. De Priest eventually settled in Chicago where he was a local politician before winning election to Congress. His supporters resented the way their labor was exploited by white bosses while their earnings enriched white store owners and landlords who were often disrespectful. Garvey was unrivaled as a promoter, and he established dozens of businesses that produced products black men and women could be proud of, such as black dolls for children and uniforms for black nurses.
Independent UNIA chapters launched dozens of economic cooperatives—stores run by black consumers who pooled their money to purchase goods directly and share profits equally. The paper included uncompromising editorials about the white power structure and the need for a Pan-African independence movement. It also called for an end to colonialism, in both Africa and the United States.
By , they had enough evidence to imprison the black leader for fraud. The purpose of this company was to promote trade and travel with Africa. Garvey received hundreds of thousands of stock subscriptions and purchased several large but aging ships that turned out to be poorly suited for international travel.
For example, the first ship Garvey purchased ended up being worth only a fraction of its price. A touring ship Garvey purchased called the SS Shadyside had a leak in the side of its hull and sank. The irony of this disaster did little to improve the financial condition of the Black Star Line.
After several voyages, most of the ships were in disrepair, and nearly every black leader had turned against Garvey for the loss of nearly every dollar entrusted to him by working-class men and women. After serving a brief jail sentence for investment fraud, Garvey was deported back to Jamaica in late Despite the poor management of his shipping company, the Garvey movement encouraged black pride. His mother had defeated segregation in Topeka, Kansas, five decades before the famous Brown v.
Board decision that originated in this Midwestern state capitol. The agreement she secured permitted Hughes to attend the school nearest his home. His grandmother was the first black woman to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. His granduncle had been a US congressman representing Virginia. The Hughes ancestry also included Native Americans and people of European descent.
His distant relatives even included leading men such as Senator Henry Clay. Hughes attended Columbia University in , but his real education took place in the adjacent community of Harlem.
Hughes immediately recognized that the spirit of his poetry was alive in this mecca of independent black art and culture. This journal was not well received by the mainstream black press. In fact, the reviewer from the Baltimore Afro-American declared that the journal deserved to be thrown into the fireplace. Ironically, a warehouse fire would later destroy many of the unsold copies.
Surviving copies of the journal and the work of its contributors and hundreds of other writers and artists demonstrate that the Harlem Renaissance A cultural movement centered around the black neighborhood of Harlem that produced a wealth of uniquely American art, literature, poetry, music, and plays. While previous generations of African Americans had usually sought to mirror European culture, black artists from around the country joined those in Harlem in creating uniquely American and African American styles of cultural expression.
We know we are beautiful, and ugly too. This new spirit contrasted sharply with the work of most African American artists, musicians, and writers who, prior to the s, mirrored European styles. Because most white Americans also sought to produce art and literature that reflected European standards, the Harlem Renaissance would inspire the creation of uniquely American art, music, and literature in future generations.
Zora Neale Hurston would later become one of the most well-known writers of the era, although her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God , was not published until Her style set Hurston apart during an era when many black newspapers scolded the masses for speaking too informally and too loudly on trains because it created a negative impression in the minds of white passengers. His art depicted a variety of topics, including a series of famous murals depicting the slave revolt aboard the Amistad.
Despite its middle-class pedigree, the work of the Harlem Renaissance was still daring and uniquely American. Its poetry, prose, music, and art reflected the unique struggles of those who achieved a high level of education and economic security yet were denied the respectability granted to others whose journeys were less burdened.
Hughes wrote poems inspired from his own life. No matter how successful one rose to be, even those whites that called themselves friends of the race acted differently among other whites, Hughes explained.
Others practiced segregation with little regard for its consequences upon the self-perception of black children. The independence of black writers was reflected by the works of black musicians in Harlem and throughout the United States in the s.
Jazz featured an up-tempo beat with improvised solos bound together by a bolder rhythm and harmony than could be found anywhere else. None of these styles and forms of music was invented by any one person, although W. On any given night in s America, one might go in search of the blues as it moved from its birthplace in the Mississippi Delta north to Chicago and all points east and west. If one knew where to look, they might even find it in the factory towns of New England and the mining camps of Appalachia.
However, if a musical style could ever be said to have an address, during the s, the home of jazz was Harlem. At hundreds of similar venues throughout the nation, black musicians, light-skinned dancing girls, and white-gloved waiters offered a taste of black culture to a white America that was not yet ready for the New Negro of Harlem. Despite its hypocrisy in drawing the color line against black patrons, The Cotton Club provided an authentic portrait of US culture and all its contradictions.
Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior? Woodson explaining the importance of teaching the culture, language, perspectives, and history of diverse peoples.
As evidenced by Locke and many other scholars, such as historian Carter G. Equally important, Woodson studied topics such as the history of slavery from the perspective of black Americans during an era when academic studies of slavery were dominated by Southern whites. Woodson rose from the coal mines and segregated schools of West Virginia to become the second African American to receive a PhD from Harvard University. Woodson started what became black history month.
More impressively, Woodson transformed black history from a branch of Southern history practiced by Southern whites to its own scholarly discipline. Woodson lived in a time when scholars accepted slavery as a positive good for the slave with a few unfortunate exceptions and a few unkind masters. The standard work on the subject, American Negro Slavery by U. Woodson also explained how the miseducated views of these historians justified and perpetuated racist ideas in the minds of both white and black Americans.
During the s, one in four Americans in the paid workforce were women. One in twenty married women was engaged in paid employment outside of the home at the turn of the century, but by the s, that number had increased to one in ten. The emergence of nursing, and especially teaching, opened new positions for educated women. The teaching field grew exponentially during the early decades of the twentieth century as mandatory school attendance laws finally began to be enforced nationwide.
Entering this field was an army of well-trained women, as female high school graduates outnumbered their male counterparts, and 47 percent of college students were women. Men and women were also graduating college in equal numbers during the s. A glass ceiling remained for educators, however, as 80 percent of teachers were women, while only a handful of women had been appointed as principals.
Her most famous novel is semi-autobiographical, detailing life in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. The discrepancy was not the result of a lack of female candidates, as one in six PhD degrees was awarded to a woman during the s. Owing to the vast number of well-qualified women, the academy began its reluctant march toward gender equality. In many ways, universities were more progressive than the rest of the professions in this regard.
Women during the s were also more likely to achieve professional degrees, even if their opportunities to practice law and medicine were even more severely limited than academia. In addition, nine women served in the US Congress during the late s, and thousands of women were appointed or elected to positions in state and local governments nationwide. The battle for the right to vote had at least partially unified women of diverse backgrounds. With suffrage achieved, the already tenuous cooperation of these groups was threatened.
Absent a common cause, the lines of race, ethnicity, region, and social class once again threatened to divide women. A group of black women rose to address the convention regarding the refusal of some Southern states to recognize their right to vote. NWP leader Alice Paul argued that this was a racial and regional issue best handled by Southern black women separately. However, it was clear to the black delegates that their interests were secondary concerns to Paul and most whites within the NWP.
Instead, Paul hoped to capitalize on the inertia of that movement and use the voting power of women to pass a law that would forever outlaw gender discrimination. The amendment was elegant in its simplicity, prohibiting any legal distinctions regarding gender. Paul believed that the amendment would require equal employment and educational opportunities.
It would also open new opportunities for entrepreneurial women who needed equal access to bank loans. However, most restrictions upon women in business and the professions were by custom rather than law and would therefore be more difficult to challenge. Many women outside the NWP argued that the Equal Rights Amendment threatened to invalidate a number of state laws that women had lobbied for in the past.
This division among women would become especially pronounced during the s when the Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. This kind of rhetoric was expected from presidents and would later be used to make it appear as though Hoover had not anticipated the challenges of the next four years. The criticism is only partially valid. As secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge, Hoover understood these challenges as well as most Americans and had long cautioned about the dangers of stock market speculation.
The only consolation for the Democrats was that they were successful in mobilizing immigrant voters, although a large part of this growth was simply a reaction to the nativist rhetoric of many within the Republican Party. Smith was the first Catholic to secure the nomination of any major political party. These efforts backfired, at least in the long term because they brought Catholic voters into the Democratic fold. These two groups—Catholics and immigrants—would prove essential components of the future Democratic coalition that would provide large majorities for their party in future elections.
His cabinet was composed of business leaders and reflected the confidence of years of financial success. The stock market had been encouraged by nearly a decade of increasingly positive earnings results. There were certainly signs of decline within major industries and real estate, but this was true even during the most robust periods of economic growth. Some of the positive signs were unique to the US. For example, American finance and industry had gained globally in the wake of World War I. US banks and the federal government were receiving millions each year in interest payments from loans made to their Western allies during and after World War I.
The United States also enjoyed a favorable balance of trade and a domestic market that was the envy of the rest of the world. The stock market crash of October led to bank failures that caused many Americans to lose their life savings as well as their jobs. State and private charities had cared for individuals in the past, but these entities were quickly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Great Depression. In retrospect, at least, the global signs of economic decline were obvious.
Germany was saved from delinquency in its reparation payments only by a series of temporary reprieves that delayed repayment. US banks had invested heavily in Germany both before and after the war. Had it not been for US money that was still flowing to Germany, German banks would have defaulted on their obligations to Western Europe long ago. If US banks were unable to provide continued loans to their international creditors, these foreign governments and banks might default.
This could start a cycle of defaults that would leave US banks to face their own precarious liquidity issues at home. Domestic consumer purchases of homes, automobiles, and appliances were declining for two important reasons.
First, consumers who could afford these items had already purchased them, while others had purchased them on credit. Neither group could be expected to make the same level of discretionary purchases indefinitely. Second, the distribution of wealth in the nation was dangerously uneven. Corporations had borrowed billions to produce factories that could churn out consumer goods, but there simply were not enough middle-class consumers who could afford their products.
The middle class had grown slightly wealthier, but few people could truly be considered middle class. This group of consumers was simply not large enough to sustain the new economy, which was based largely upon consumer spending. The most obvious sign of financial crisis came in October when the average valuation of every publicly traded US company dropped by nearly 40 percent.
Although this decline merely returned most stocks to the prices of the mids, the Stock Market Crash of Refers to a series of days in October when the aggregate value of publicly traded companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange declined by as much as 10 percent. Although similar panics had led to declines like this over the course of a few days, the stock market crash saw multiple trading sessions in a row, where prices declined rapidly despite the efforts of leading bankers to bolster the market.
Because many investors had bought stock with borrowed money, these declines led many individuals, banks, and corporations to go bankrupt. Prosecutors charged them with “unnatural offenses” and “indecent practices between males” under sections and of Malawi’s Criminal Code. Nevertheless, there are numerous countries where homosexuality is punishable by death.
Joyce Banda who succeeded Mutharika when he died in April , in her first state of the nation address in May , as part of a broader package of reforms, pledged to repeal a number of repressive laws, including sections A and sections to of the Penal Code. Other opponents of the moratorium took other measures to challenge it. In , three applicants sought a court order declaring the moratorium illegal and unconstitutional—in other words, seeking to reactivate the anti-homosexuality law.
They argued that only parliament had the legal mandate to suspend or repeal laws in Malawi. The Mzuzu High Court issued an injunction in their favor in May , ruling that the moratorium should be suspended pending judicial review by a panel of no less than three judges. Both Malawian and international organizations have supported the moratorium as an intermediate measure to end arbitrary arrests of LGBT people, but also maintain that it does not go far enough, and that Malawi must follow through on its commitment to repeal the discriminatory laws.
The case, which could lead to decriminalization of same-sex conduct but has faced significant delays, is discussed in greater detail in Section III below. LGBT individuals and human rights defenders in Malawi told Human Rights Watch that because of the pervasive homophobia and transphobia and the criminalization of same-sex conduct, they live in constant fear of abuse because of their real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. The abuse takes many forms, including intimidation, beatings by members of the public and some police officers, arbitrary arrests and detention, lack of access to justice, and discrimination in healthcare settings.
When he finally managed to leave the house after five hours, his friend took him to hospital for treatment. Human Rights Watch heard how LGBT people are often victims of mob attacks, physical assault, arbitrary arrest and detention simply because of their presumed sexual orientation, and discrimination in access to health care on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Several human rights activists told Human Rights Watch that the combination of the anti-homosexuality laws and the religiously and socially conservative Malawian context contributes to the commission of these abuses and deters many LGBT victims of violence from seeking redress, thereby contributing to a culture of impunity.
It also discussed the socio-economic impact of homophobia. Several interviewees told Human Rights Watch that despite the moratorium on arrests and prosecutions for consensual same-sex conduct, they had experienced police abuse, arbitrary arrest and detention.
Under international human rights law, besides arbitrary arrests and detentions, also unlawful are arrests and detentions as punishment for the legitimate exercise of human rights, arrests on discriminatory grounds, and those with elements of inappropriateness or injustice, that lack predictability and due process of law, or elements of reasonableness, necessity and proportionality.
Phillip, a year-old transgender man from Lilongwe, said that three police officers physically assaulted and humiliated him and another transgender male friend in May as they were leaving a soccer match.
Phillip and his friend immediately reported the assault at a police station in Area 25, Lilongwe, and received medical treatment at Dopa Hospital for their injuries.
Olivia, a transgender woman, said that on November 6, , a mob assaulted her friend, also a transgender woman, in a market in Lilongwe. When they did not find her at home, they arrested her father in her place. Olivia explained:. Olivia said that her friend who had been beaten in the market was detained for a month in Maula Prison, in Lilongwe, without any charge.
In June , Justice, a year-old transgender human rights defender, was arrested and detained for several hours while attempting to make bail payment for a friend at a police station in Lilongwe. He said that one night in October , three police officers, in uniform and carrying guns, arrived at his house late at night with his girlfriend in the police van. While transgender individuals are more vulnerable to arbitrary arrests and detention because of their gender identity or presentation, lesbians and gay men are also exposed.
Daniel, a year-old gay man from Blantyre, said that police arrested and sexually assaulted him at midnight on November 12, after a neighbor reported him for being gay. Daniel was not only subject to arbitrary arrest and detention for two nights without being charged, but he told Human Rights Watch that a senior police officer blackmailed him for several months thereafter.
According to Daniel, whenever the officer saw him in the streets, the officer would threaten to arrest him and detain him in Chichiri prison unless Daniel paid him a bribe. The extortion stopped only when the officer was transferred to a police station in another town. Tyrone, a year-old transgender man from Blantyre, told Human Rights Watch that police arrested his lesbian friend and her partner in July on the basis of their presumed sexual orientation and detained them for several hours at a local police station, but did not formally charge them.
CEDEP lawyers assisted them and secured their release. Several LGBT individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch said the anti-homosexuality laws inhibited them from reporting abuses due to fear of arrest. Those who do report may be further victimized by the police. Kate, a year-old transgender peer educator in Lilongwe, told Human Rights Watch that police discouraged her from reporting a crime because they perceived her as gay.
Kate said that on October 2, , she and her friend were beaten up by 12 young men in the street. Fearing for her life, Kate and her friend reported the incident at a police station. Kate told Human Rights Watch:.
Human Rights Watch did not document other cases in which police arrested or discriminated against LGBT victims of crime. But several gay and transgender crime victims told Human Rights Watch that they did not file complaints with the police because they feared being outed and arrested.
While they were aware of the moratorium, they remained convinced that the police would treat them as criminals simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Trevor, a year-old gay man in Lilongwe, told Human Rights Watch that in mid-April he was at a tavern watching a soccer game with a friend when three men approached him in the restroom.
Jane and her partner did not report the incident to the police out of fear that they would be arrested and prosecuted for living together. Jane and her partner separated for reasons related to the trauma from the mob attack.
In December , Martin, a year-old transgender man from Blantyre and his friend were brutally beaten up by the father of his ex-girlfriend, who lived in his neighbourhood, while walking home one evening. Gail, a year-old transgender woman, told Human Rights Watch that in November , two visibly intoxicated men beat her up in the street in Lilongwe. The men hit her multiple times, knocking loose four of her front teeth. She later sought medical treatment at Kawale Health Centre.
The unwillingness of Malawian authorities to repeal the anti-homosexuality laws fosters a climate of fear, fuels stigma and discrimination in health care settings, inhibits individuals from seeking services and compromises the right to the highest attainable standard of health for gay men and other men who have sex with men MSM.
Punitive legal environments constitute a significant barrier to guaranteeing access to sexual health treatment and services for gay and bisexual men and other MSM. Unfortunately, when gay men or MSM disclose their sexual practices to health care professionals, they are often ridiculed, stigmatized and unable to access the necessary treatment.
Constitution of the United States – Wikipedia – Federal Government Employment
Find a Federal Government Job | USAGov.
Comentários