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THE AMERICAN YAWP READER

A Documentary Companion to the

American Yawp

Volume II

[http://www.americanyawp.com/reader.html]

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Table of Contents

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7

16. Capital and Labor …………………………………………………………………………………………. 9

William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca.1880s) ………………………………………10

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Selections (1879)………………………………………………12

Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth (June 1889) ………………………………………………..14

Grover Cleveland’s Veto of the Texas Seed Bill (February 16, 1887) …………………………16

The “Omaha Platform” of the People’s Party (1892) …………………………………………….18

Dispatch from a Mississippi Colored Farmers’ Alliance (1889) ………………………………..23

The Tournament of Today – A Set-To Between Labor and Monopoly ……………………..27

Lawrence Textile Strike (1912) ………………………………………………………………………….28

17. The West ……………………………………………………………………………………………………29

Chief Joseph on Indian Affairs (1877, 1879) ………………………………………………………..30

William T. Hornady on the Extermination of the American Bison (1889) ………………….32

Chester A. Arthur on American Indian Policy (1881) …………………………………………….35

Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893) ….37

Turning Hawk and American Horse on the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890/1891) …….39

Laura C. Kellogg on Indian Education (1913)………………………………………………………41

Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor (1881) …………………………………………..43

Tom Torlino (1882, 1885) ……………………………………………………………………………….45

Frances Densmore and Mountain Chief (1916) ……………………………………………………46

18. Life in Industrial America ………………………………………………………………………………47

Andrew Carnegie on “The Triumph of America” (1885) ………………………………………..48

Henry Grady on the New South (1886) ………………………………………………………………50

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America” (1900) …………………………………………..52

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) ………………………………………….54

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913)………………………55

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890) ……………………………………………………….57

Mulberry Street, New York City (ca. 1900) ………………………………………………………….61

Luna Park …………………………………………………………………………………………………….62

19. American Empire …………………………………………………………………………………………63

William McKinley on American Expansionism (1903) …………………………………………..64

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) …………………………………………….65

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James D. Phelan, “Why the Chinese Should Be Excluded” (1901) ……………………………67

William James on “The Philippine Question” (1903) …………………………………………….69

Mark Twain, “The War Prayer” (ca.1904-5) …………………………………………………………70

Chinese Immigrants Confront Anti-Chinese Prejudice (1885, 1903) …………………………72

African Americans Debate Enlistment (1898) ………………………………………………………75

“School Begins,” Puck, January 25, 1899. ……………………………………………………………76

“Declined With Thanks” (1900)………………………………………………………………………..77

20. The Progressive Era ……………………………………………………………………………………..78

Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. DuBois on Black Progress (1895, 1903) …………………79

Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892) ……………………82

Eugene Debs, “How I Became a Socialist” (April, 1902) ………………………………………..84

Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) ………………………………86

Alice Stone Blackwell, Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage (1917) ………………..88

Woodrow Wilson on the New Freedom (1912) ……………………………………………………91

Theodore Roosevelt on “The New Nationalism” (1910) ………………………………………..93

“Next!” (1904) ………………………………………………………………………………………………95

College Day on the Picket Line …………………………………………………………………………96

21. World War I & Its Aftermath………………………………………………………………………….97

Woodrow Wilson Requests War (April 2, 1917)……………………………………………………98

Alan Seeger on World War I (1914; 1916) ………………………………………………………… 101

The Sedition Act of 1918 (1918) …………………………………………………………………….. 103

Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917) ……………………………………………………. 105

W.E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919) ……………………………………………… 106

Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918) …………………………………… 108

Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919) ………………………………………. 110

Boy Scout Charge (1917) ………………………………………………………………………………. 112

Uncle Sam …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 113

22. The New Era ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 114

Warren G. Harding and the “Return to Normalcy” (1920) …………………………………… 115

Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin” (1920) …………………………………………………. 117

Marcus Garvey, Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement

Association (1921) ………………………………………………………………………………………. 120

Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926) ………………………….. 122

Herbert Hoover, “Principles and Ideals of the United States Government” (1928) ……. 124

Ellen Welles Page, “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (1922) ………………………………….. 128

Alain Locke on the “New Negro” (1925) …………………………………………………………. 130

Advertisements (1924) …………………………………………………………………………………. 132

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Klan Gathering (ca. 1920s) ……………………………………………………………………………. 133

23. The Great Depression ………………………………………………………………………………… 134

Herbert Hoover on the New Deal (1932) …………………………………………………………. 135

Huey P. Long, “Every Man a King” and “Share our Wealth” (1934) ………………………. 137

Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936) …………………………… 142

Second Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937)………………………………….. 145

Lester Hunter, “I’d Rather Not Be on Relief” (1938) ………………………………………….. 147

Bertha McCall on America’s “Moving People” (1940) …………………………………………. 150

Dorothy West, “Amateur Night in Harlem” (1938)…………………………………………….. 152

Family Walking on Highway 1936 …………………………………………………………………… 154

“Bonus Army Routed” (1932) ……………………………………………………………………….. 155

24. World War II ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 156

Charles A. Lindbergh, “America First” (1941) …………………………………………………… 157

A Phillip Randolph and Franklin Roosevelt on Racial Discrimination in the Defense

Industry (1941) …………………………………………………………………………………………… 159

The Atlantic Charter (1941) …………………………………………………………………………… 161

FDR, Executive Order No. 9066 (1942) …………………………………………………………… 163

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment (1942/1994) ………………………………. 165

Harry Truman Announcing the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima (1945) ………………….. 168

Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945) ………….. 171

Tuskegee Airmen (1941) ………………………………………………………………………………. 174

WWII Posters …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 175

25. The Cold War …………………………………………………………………………………………… 176

The Truman Doctrine (1947) ………………………………………………………………………… 177

NSC-68 (1950) ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 179

Joseph McCarthy on Communism (1950)…………………………………………………………. 182

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace” (1953) …………………………………………….. 184

Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” (1950) …………………….. 187

Lillian Hellman Refuses to Name Names (1952) ………………………………………………… 190

Paul Robeson’s Appearance Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 192

Atomic Energy Lab 1951-1952 ………………………………………………………………………. 195

Duck and Cover (1951) ………………………………………………………………………………… 196

26. The Affluent Society …………………………………………………………………………………… 197

Juanita Garcia on Migrant Labor (1952) …………………………………………………………… 198

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Hernandez v. Texas (1954) ……………………………………………………………………………. 200

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) ………………………………………………… 203

Richard Nixon on the American Standard of Living (1959) ………………………………….. 205

John F. Kennedy on the Separation of Church and State (1960) ……………………………. 208

Congressman Arthur L. Miller Gives “the Putrid Facts” About Homosexuality” (1950)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 210

Rosa Parks on Life in Montgomery, Alabama (1956-1958) …………………………………… 212

1959 Little Rock Rally ………………………………………………………………………………….. 215

“In the Suburbs” (1957) ……………………………………………………………………………….. 216

27. The Sixties ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 217

Barry Goldwater, Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech (1964) ……………………. 218

Lyndon Johnson on Voting Rights and the American Promise (1965) ……………………. 220

Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement Address (1965) …………………… 223

National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966) ………………………. 225

George M. Garcia, Vietnam Veteran, Oral Interview (1969/2012) …………………………. 228

The Port Huron Statement (1962) ………………………………………………………………….. 232

Fannie Lou Hamer: Testimony at the Democratic National Convention 1964 ………….. 235

Civil Rights Images (1964, 1965) …………………………………………………………………….. 238

Women’s Liberation March (1970) ………………………………………………………………….. 240

28. The Unraveling …………………………………………………………………………………………. 241

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) ………………… 242

Statement by John Kerry of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1971) …………………… 245

Nixon Announcement of China Visit (1971) …………………………………………………….. 247

Barbara Jordan, 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (1976) …….. 249

Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” (1979) …………………………………………………….. 251

Gloria Steinem on Equal Rights for Women (1970) ……………………………………………. 254

Native Americans Occupy Alcatraz (1969) ……………………………………………………….. 257

New York City Subway (1973) ……………………………………………………………………….. 260

“Stop ERA” Protest (1977) …………………………………………………………………………… 261

29. The Triumph of the Right……………………………………………………………………………. 262

First Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan (1981) ………………………………………………. 263

Jerry Falwell on the “Homosexual Revolution” (1981) ………………………………………… 265

Statements of AIDS Patients (1983) ………………………………………………………………… 267

Statements from The Parents Music Resource Center (1985) ……………………………….. 270

Pat Buchanan on the Culture War (1992) …………………………………………………………. 272

Phyllis Schlafly on Women’s Responsibility for Sexual Harassment (1981) ………………. 275

Jesse Jackson on the Rainbow Coalition (1984) …………………………………………………. 278

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Satellites Imagined in Orbit (1981) ………………………………………………………………….. 280

Ronald Reagan and the American Flag (1982) …………………………………………………… 281

30. The Recent Past ………………………………………………………………………………………… 282

Bill Clinton on Free Trade and Financial Deregulation (1993-2000) ……………………….. 283

The 9/11 Commission Report, “Reflecting On A Generational Challenge” (2004) ……. 286

George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002) ……………………………………………….. 289

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) ………………………………………………………………………….. 292

Pedro Lopez on His Mother’s Deportation (2008/2015) ……………………………………… 295

Chelsea Manning Petitions for a Pardon (2013) …………………………………………………. 297

Emily Doe (Chanel Miller), Victim Impact Statement (2015) ………………………………… 299

Ground Zero (2001) ……………………………………………………………………………………. 301

Barack Obama and a Young Boy (2009) …………………………………………………………… 302

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Introduction

Civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 1965. Via Library of Congress.

Primary sources are the raw materials of history: written accounts, physical objects, and

visual material allow historians to build narratives and construct arguments. Letters, diaries,

written publications, laws, artwork, buildings, skeletal remains, environmental data, and even

oral histories can all provide the first-hand evidence that historians need to make convincing

arguments about the past and to properly evaluate the historical arguments made by others.

Historians work primary sources into secondary and even tertiary sources: the books and

textbooks assigned to students. They all rely, one way or another, on primary sources.

Students of history must know how to analyze and critically evaluate primary sources, for

primary sources can distort as much as they reveal. The voice of slaves, for instance, can be

drowned out by the letters and journals of slaveholders. We can produce more honest

histories by interrogating our sources, asking questions such as, Who created this source?

Who was their audience? How might their beliefs and perspectives have influenced their

understanding? In the case of slavery, for instance, a critical eye is often needed to read

between the lines and uncover forgotten histories hidden within the materials available to us.

Historians must make the most of the sources they have. But while some eras and some

topics lack abundant primary sources, others have almost too many, often more than any

single historian can read and analyze. Under such conditions it can be tempting to cherry

pick sources and create a narrative of one’s own choosing, but good historians must read

widely and maintain an open but critical mind to discover patterns and produce historical

insights.

Just as historians must approach their sources with a critical eye, so too must they be aware

of their own preconceptions and biases–their own place in history. “The past is a foreign

country,” novelist L.P. Harltey wrote, “they do things differently there.” We must be critical

of ourselves. We cannot expect individuals in the past to know what we know or to behave

as we behave. They had their own ideas and their own dreams. They viewed the world

differently than we do. So if we are to understand the past, we must begin by recognizing the

present. The more we study the past, the more we come to understand ourselves.

Learning to ask good questions is an important historical skill, yet we will often not know

which questions to ask until we have steeped ourselves in primary sources. You may already

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have questions in mind as you read and evaluate the sources in this reader, but you should

also pay attention to any thoughts, emotions, and historical questions that they may provoke.

History is a conversation between the past and present, and, by reading the following

sources and thinking critically about them, we hope that you will bring bring your own

curiosity and creativity to the conversation.

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16. Capital and Labor Introduction

Industrialization remade the United States. At the turn of the twentieth century, powerful

capitalists, middle class managers, and industrial and agricultural labors confronted a new

world of work and labor in the United States. While many benefited from the material gains

of technological progress, others found themselves trapped in cycles of poverty and

hopelessness and strikes, protests, and political warfare rocked American life as workers

adjusted themselves to a new industrial order. The following sources explore the mindsets of

American suddenly confronted with a new world of concentrated capital and industrial

labor.

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William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism

(ca.1880s)

William Graham Sumner, a sociologist at Yale University, penned several pieces associated with the

philosophy of Social Darwinism. In the following, Sumner explains his vision of nature and liberty in a just

society.

The struggle for existence is aimed against nature. It is from her niggardly hand that we have

to wrest the satisfaction for our needs, but our fellow-men are our competitors for the

meager supply. Competition, therefore, is a law of nature. Nature is entirely neutral; she

submits to him who most energetically and resolutely assails her. She grants her rewards to

the fittest, therefore, without regard to other considerations of any kind. If, then, there be

liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are

just in proportion to their being and their doing. Such is the system of nature. If we do not

like it, and if we try to amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it. We can take

from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the penalties of those who have done

ill and throw them on those who have done better. We can take the rewards from those who

have done better and give them to those who have done worse. We shall thus lessen the

inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and we shall accomplish this by

destroying liberty. Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative; liberty,

inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former

carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards

and favors all its worst members.

For three hundred years now men have been trying to understand and realize liberty. …

What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees

of law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own

welfare. It is, therefore, a civil and political status; and that nation has the freest institutions

in which the guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the capitalist are the highest.

Liberty, therefore, does not by any means do away with the struggle for existence. We might

as well try to do away with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same

thing. What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and

brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the

acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and

other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done

away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and

doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who

gains the highest reward. It is impossible that the man with capital and the man without

capital should be equal. To affirm that they are equal would be to say that a man who has no

tool can get as much food out of the ground as the man who has a spade or a plough; or that

the man who has no weapon can defend himself as well against hostile beasts or hostile men

as the man who has a weapon. If that were so, none of us would work any more. We work

and deny ourselves to get capital just because, other things being equal, the man who has it is

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superior, for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has it not. Considering the

eagerness with which we all seek capital and the estimate we put upon it, either in cherishing

it if we have it, or envying others who have it while we have it not, it is very strange what

platitudes pass current about it in our society so soon as we begin to generalize about it. If

our young people really believed some of the teachings they hear, it would not be amiss to

preach them a sermon once in a while to reassure them, setting forth that it is not wicked to

be rich, nay even, that it is not wicked to be richer than your neighbor.

It follows from what we have observed that it is the utmost folly to denounce capital. To do

so is to under- mine civilization, for capital is the first requisite of every social gain,

educational, ecclesiastical, political, aesthetic, or other.

Source: William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, edited by Albert Galloway

Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914).

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Henry George, Progress and

Poverty, Selections (1879)

In 1879, the economist Henry George penned a massive bestseller exploring the contradictory rise of both

rapid economic growth and crippling poverty.

This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central

fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world, and

with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it come the

clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive and self-reliant nations. It is the

riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be

destroyed. So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to

build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House

of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction

must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new story but hastens the final

catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them

restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which

men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.

…

… the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming

more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but

tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on

the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep

us back into barbarism by the road every previous civilization has trod. But it also shows that

these evils are not imposed by natural laws; that they spring solely from social mal-

adjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving an

enormous impetus to progress.

…

Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty

of nature. Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population

increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation

wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. And so there come beggars in our streets and

tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are political sovereigns; and

want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their masters

dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of

justice; and in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue even the compliment of

hypocrisy; and the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under an

increasing strain.

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We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we

have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half

service!

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to v

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