Twentieth Century

General Twentieth Century Sites

Pittsburgh Region

• Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904
  From the American Memory Project at Library of Congress
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: A Pittsburgh Century
  This special edition traces the 20th century in Pittsburgh with a 100 year timeline.

United States

• American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century
  The purpose of these pages is to present a series of web guides on the decades of the twentieth century. The pages are being prepared by the Reference Librarians of Kingwood College Library (North Harris Montgomery Community College District), Kingwood, Texas
• American Memory Project
  From the Library of Congress
  • Photographs from the Chicago Daily News 1902-1933
  • Life History Manuscripts from the Folklore Project, WPA Federal
• eHistory
  Ohio State University's History Department has created this website that includes multimedia Histories, Primary Sources and Reviews. Included are such multimedia histories as "The Strike at Homestead", "Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era," and "Excerpts from The Pittsburgh Survey".
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
  • American Masters
    A WNET series profiling famous American cultural artists.
  • Not for Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
    The companion website to the documentary on the woman suffragists. Includes writings, biographies, lesson plans.
  • People's Century
    A PBS series from 1998 that portrays personal accounts of dramatic and important 20th century events.
• Smithsonian: Between A Rock and a Hard Place: a history of American Sweatshops from 1820 to the Present
  An exhibit that was put online covering information about the seamstress from 1820-1880, the tenement sweatshops from 1880-1940, and the resurgence of sweatshops from 1940-1997.
• Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynchings in American
  "Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. With essays by Hilton Als, Leon Litwack, Congressman John Lewis and James Allen, these photographs have been published as a book – "Without Sanctuary" by Twin Palms Publishers . Please be aware before entering the site that much of the material is very disturbing. We welcome your comments and input through the forum section."
  Like the Jewish holocaust, this aspect of American history reminds us of man's inhumanity to man. We link to this site so that we might remember that injustices can happen here.

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1900 to World War I

• 1914-1918 Art of the First World War
  100 paintings from international collections to commemmorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
• Across the Generations: Exploring US History Through Family Papers
  This is an online collection from the Smith College Libraries of the papers of the Bodmans, Dunhams, Garrisons, and Hales -- white, middle-class, traditional families -- whose experiences represent a portion of American society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• America 1900
  A PBS American Experience series documentary film about turn of the century United States
• American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment 1870-1920
  "a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini.
• Child Labor in America 1908-1912
  Photographs by Lewis W. Hine from the History Place.
• How the Other Half Lives, Studies among the tenements of New York
  How the Other Half Lives together with its sequel "Battle with the Slum" reveal through Riis’s sensationalist prose and photography the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of turn-of-the-century New York City.
• Library of Congress: The Evolution of the American Conservation Movement 1850-1920
  documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage
• National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Collection
  1848-1921. From the Library of Congress
• The Triangle Factory Fire, March 25, 1911
  "The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This incidence has a great significance to this day because it highlighted the miserable working conditions to which unskilled industrial workers can be subjected." From the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
• The Wright Brothers in Photographs Collection
  The Wright Brothers in Photographs Collection, is hosted by the History & Archival Collections database of the OhioLINK Digital Media Center (DMC). This collection of digital images from Wright State University Libraries' Wright Brothers Collection provides thorough coverage of the Wrights' early inventive period documenting their experimental gliders and flight testing in both North Carolina and Ohio. The content posted to date also provides a valuable record of their home life, camp life, and the flora and fauna of the Outer Banks 100 years ago.

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• The Great Depression and the New Deal
  Print and online resources for the period from the Stock Market Crash in 1929 to the beginning of the U.S. involvement in World War II in 1941.
• Temperance and Prohibition
  An Ohio State University Project in American History.

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World War II

• Children of the Camps
  A PBS documentary about 6 of the 120,000 Japanese Americans that the US government confined to bleak, remote internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards during World War II, without due process of law or any factual basis.
• Day of Infamy 1941-2001
  A digital exhibit commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, from the Joyner Library, East Carolina University.
• Dr. Seuss Went to War
  A Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) from the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego.
• The Internment of German Americans in the US during World War II
  "Unknow to most Americans, more than 10,000 Germans and German-Americans were interned in the U.S. during the Second World War." This web site contains research materials on the wartime treatment of U.S. and Latin Americans of German ancestry for serious researchers, students and persons seeking general information.
• Normandy 1944
  An Encyclopedia Britannica site documenting the background and history of the invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces in World War II.
• "What did you do in the war, Grandma"
  An Oral History of Rhode Island Women during World War II. Written by students in the Honors English Program at South Kingstown High School.