1920 Archives

Breadline at McAuley Water Street Mission under Brooklyn Bridge, New York, circa 1930.

What Caused the Great Depression? The Widget Boom Game

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
A simulation helps students understand the causes of economic crises.

June 3, 1943: The Zoot Suit Riots

White U.S. servicemen and police entered a majority-Mexican American neighborhood in East Los Angeles and attacked and detained hundreds of young people in the “zoot suit riots.”

Jan. 22, 1932: La Matanza (“The Massacre”) Begins in El Salvador

The government of El Salvador launched a murderous, anti-indigenous and anti-leftist campaign that led to the deaths of 30,000 Salvadorans.

August 21, 1939. Arrest of five young Black men for peaceful protest at the whites-only "public" library in Alexandria, Va.

Aug. 21, 1939: African Americans Arrested for Going to Public Library

Five Black men were arrested for staging a peaceful sit-in at the Alexandria “public” library that denied access to African Americans, making this the anniversary of one of the earliest instances of this form of non-violent protest that became popular in the mid-20th century.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Film. Directed by Phillip Noyce. 2002. 79 minutes.
In 1931, three aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff and set off on a journey across the Outback.

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2024 (Second Edition). 512 pages.
This biography chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2013. 373 pages.
This biography of cosmopolitan anthropologist Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson explores her influence on her husband's early career, their open marriage, and her life as a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, and an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist.

A Wichita Beacon article lists the ground rules for the game.

June 21, 1925: Black Baseball Team Beats Klan Players

The Wichita Monrovians bested a squad fielded by the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan terrorist organization at the height of Jim Crow apartheid.

The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis with Komozi Woodard. 2019. 352 pages.
This important work shows how the Jim Crow North maintained inequality in the nation’s most liberal places, and chronicles how activists worked to undo those inequities born of Northern Jim Crow.

“Riots,” Racism, and the Police: Students Explore a Century of Police Conduct and Racial Violence

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities.

Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. Written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. 2020. 142 pages.
The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame.

Dec. 6, 1929: Cayes Massacre

One of the worst massacres of civilians during the 19-year American occupation of Haiti took place in Les Cayes.

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre

Picture book. By Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper. 2021. 32 pages.
This children's book centers the history of the thriving Black community of Greenwood before the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

Feb. 12, 1938: Ellen Harris Refuses to Move for White Passenger

Ellen Harris told the bus driver she would accept a refund and get off the bus, but the driver refused to accept her terms and had her arrested for breaking segregation law.

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

Book — Non-fiction. By Steve Sheinkin. 2014. 208 pages.
The story of 50 African American sailors charged with mutiny during World War II for challenging working conditions after a deadly munitions explosion.

The Forgotten Fight Against Fascism

By William Loren Katz

Anyone who has gone through school in the United States knows that history textbooks devote a lot of attention to the so-called “Good War”: World War II. A typical textbook, Holt McDougal’s The Americans, includes 61 pages covering the buildup to World War II and the war itself. Today’s texts acknowledge “blemishes” like the internment of Japanese Americans, but the texts either ignore or gloss over the fact that for almost a decade, during the earliest fascist invasions of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Western democracies encouraged rather than fought Hitler and Mussolini, and sometimes gave them material aid.

Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession

By Linda Christensen

The author describes teaching about racist patterns of murder, land theft, displacement, and wealth inequality through the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

The term “race riot” does not adequately describe the events of May 31 - June 1, 1921 in Greenwood, a Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In fact, the term itself implies that both Blacks and whites might be equally to blame for the lawlessness and violence. The historical record documents a sustained and murderous assault on Black lives and property. This assault was met by a brave but unsuccessful armed defense of their community by some Black World War I veterans and others.