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Twentieth Century

General Sites - 1900 through World War I -
Between the Wars - World War II -

General Twentieth Century Sites

Pittsburgh Region

United States

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
    The classic photographs and text by Jacob Riis (1890).

  • 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
    http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/
    "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.

Between the Wars: 1917-1941
The Great Depression and the New Deal

  • America in the 1930s
    http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/front.html
    A site from the University of Virginia offering a multimedia sampling of life in the United States in the 1930s. Included are movies, art, radio, magazines, books and explanatory text to go with them.

  • Harlem Renaissance: Carl Van Vechten Photographs 1932-1964
    The Carl Van Vechten Photographs Collection at the Library of Congress consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance.
  • The New Deal Network
    http://newdeal.feri.org/
    "You've stepped back in time to the 1930s. America is in the midst of the Great Depression. Millions are out of work; businesses, farms, and schools are in danger; many families are struggling."
    Investigate the public works programs that President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted with The New Deal Network presenting monthly features spotlighting individual projects, class exercises geared to grades 7-12, a database of documents, images, audio, and video clips taken from leading national and state archives, and a timeline important New Deal dates. You can even "join up" and participate in the enterprise. NDN is now based at the Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) at Columbia University.

  • A New Deal for the Arts
    http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts/
    Samples of artwork from the New Deal art projects, from the National Archives and Records Administration. "During the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the early years of World War II, the Federal government supported the arts in unprecedented ways. For 11 years, between 1933 and 1943, federal tax dollars employed artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers, and dancers. Never before or since has our government so extensively sponsored the arts."

  • Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
    • Riding the Rails
      From the PBS TV series: The American Experience. Tales of the 250,000 teenagers who hopped a freight during the Great Depression of the 1930s searching for a better life. The video might be available at your public library.
    • Surviving the Dustbowl
      Part of the PBS TV documentary, The American Experience. The catastrophic 8 year drought that began in 1931 in the Southern Plains states of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico and drove many farmers to migrate to California.

  • Temperance and Prohibition
    http://prohibition.osu.edu/
    An Ohio State University Project in American History.

World War II

  • Children of the Camps
    http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/
    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
    http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/pearlharbor/
    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
    http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/
    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
    http://www.foitimes.com/
    "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
    http://search.eb.com/dday
    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"
    http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/
    An Oral History of Rhode Island Women during World War II. Written by students in the Honors English Program at South Kingstown High School.