President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points

In January of 1918, amidst the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress in one of the most historic speeches of that time period. Wilson’s address proposed a blueprint for achieving a peaceful world; he called it “The Fourteen Points.” He proposed...
An Analysis of The Bonds of Liberty

An Analysis of The Bonds of Liberty

During World War I, the US government set up an extensive propaganda campaign to persuade American citizens to buy Liberty Bonds. These bonds were a major source of money for military operations abroad. The poster “Keep These Off the U.S.A.” plays on the...
The Chain Gang

The Chain Gang

The American chain gang is a haunting symbol of the nation’s failure to fulfill the promise of freedom after the Civil War. It represents a line between slavery and incarceration, a system that was built to punish crime but to reassert racial hierarchy under the...
Enlist: On Which Side of the Window are You?

Enlist: On Which Side of the Window are You?

Both the U.S. government and private organizations conducted large scale propaganda in order to build support for the war, most notably in Laura Brey’s 1917 recruitment poster [4] “Enlist: On Which Side of the Window Are You?” This image captures what is likely a...