Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

“Strange Fruit,” recorded in 1939 by Billie Holiday, is one of the most well-known and powerful protest songs. Originally written as a poem in 1937 by Abel Meeropol (under the name Lewis Allan), it protested the lynching of Black Americans and systemic racism.[1] The...
Civarro Family

Civarro Family

Lewis Hine’s 1917 photograph of the Civarro family powerfully captures the everyday struggles of working-class family life in early twentieth-century urban America. Taken inside a cramped New York tenement apartment, the photograph shows Mrs. Civarro holding her...
For the Benefit of the Girl About to Graduate

For the Benefit of the Girl About to Graduate

The source I chose consists of a black-and-white image by Charles Howard Johnson titled For the benefit of the girl about to graduate, created in the 1890s. Johnson’s image is published in American Women: A Library of Congress guide for the study of...
Path to Citizenship

Path to Citizenship

Take a look at the poster called Path to Citizenship from 1917. It instructs immigrants to learn English and apply for citizenship. The message appears in English, German, Hungarian, Czech, Yiddish, and Italian. This reflects the diversity of immigrants arriving in...