The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Ever since its publication in 1900 Lyman Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been immensely popular, providing the basis for a profitable musical comedy, three movies, and a number of plays. It is an indigenous creation, curiously warm and touching, although no one really knows why.

How did Baum's storybook differ from the 1930's movie?

Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz include treatments of the modern fairy tale  as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America of the 1890s.

In a 1964 article, high school teacher Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book regarding monetary policy. According to this view, for instance, the "Yellow Brick Road" represents the gold standard, and the silver slippers (ruby in the film version) represent the Populist Party's desire to construct a bimetallic standard of both gold and silver in its place.

Dorothy learns that to return home, she must reach the Emerald City, Oz's political center, to speak to the Wizard, representing the President of the United States. While journeying to the Emerald City, she encounters a scarecrow, who represents a farmer; a woodman made of tin, who represents a worker dehumanized by industrialization; and a cowardly lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan, a prominent leader of the Silverite movement. The villains of the story, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East, represent the wealthy railroad and oil barons of the American West and the financial and banking interests of the eastern U.S. respectively.

Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory and Historian Ranjit S. Dighe wrote that for sixty years after the book's publication, "virtually nobody" had such an interpretation. None-the less the comparisons are compelling.

Do you think Baum's portrayal of the Populists was positive or negative? Why?

What modern day movies could be used as allegories?

Why do you think The Wizard of Oz lives on in Popular culture? What about the story appeals to new and old generations?

Still not convinced? Watch The Secret of Oz for more on the symbolism.

The Dark Side of the Rainbow launched a whole new craze based on the movie. Coincidence, Apophenia, or Synchronicity?

Wonder which character of Oz you are? Take the quiz.

What's In a Name?

What is Assimilation?

The drive to assimilate Indians into the mainstream of American life by changing their customs, dress, occupations, language, religion and philosophy has always been an element in Federal-Indian relations. In the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, this assimilationist policy became dominant. A major thrust of assimilation efforts was to educate Indians in American ways. in 1879 the Carlisle Indian Training School was established by a former military officer. Its 'benevolent philosophy' of separating Indian children totally from their Indian environment was supposed to help them not cause harm. Forcing Indians to adopt white ways became the basis for a widescale boarding school movement that eventually removed thousands of Indian children from their cultural settings and families. The motto: 'KILL THE INDIAN, SAVE THE MAN.'

Can you really change a person by cutting their hair or renaming them?

What about a school?

The "Braves," an American Indian warrior, became the symbol of the Talawanda Schools in the 50s after a contest was held to name the newly consolidated district formed by Sommerville, Hanover, Milford, and Oxford. Hannover 5th grader Karen Irwin won with the name 'Tallawanda' because Tallawanda Creek (aka 4 Mile Creek) flowed through the three newly merged townships. After some discussion the second 'l' was dropped and the new High School on Chestnut Street opened in 1956 where it remained for then next half century.

But who was Talawanda?  What did the name mean?

 

Where exactly is the old Talawnda spring & bottle company?

In 2018 the Talawanda school board voted 3-2 to change the high school’s mascot from “Braves” to “Brave” after a meeting lasting more than three hours.

A heated crowd filled the Performing Arts Center at Talawanda High School to listen to the recommendations made to the board by the superintendent-appointed branding committee.

The change responds to complaints that the name and logo currently used by Talawanda are offensive. Many feel that the logo is more of a “caricature,” depiction of what a Native American would look like, and others feel that they are simply honoring Native Americans with the “Braves” name.

Should we be proud to have the 'Brave' as our Mascot or change it to something else?

I Will Fight No More Forever!

With 2,000 U.S. soldiers in pursuit, Joseph and other Nez Perce chiefs led 800 Nez Perce toward freedom at the Canadian border. For over three months, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers traveling 1,700 miles (2,740 km) across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Finally, after a devastating five-day battle during freezing weather conditions with no food or blankets, Chief Joseph formally surrendered.

Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever!

Using the worksheet given to you in class write a 'BIOPOEM' for Chief Joseph and one for yourself.

TATONKA!

What in the World:  The title and key of this map have been removed.  What does it show?  

Dances with Wolves is a 1990 epic western film directed, produced by, and starring Kevin Costner. It tells the story of a Union Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and his dealings with a group of Lakota Indians. In this dramatic scene we see Costner as he joins the Lakota on a Buffalo hunt.

Clearly the Plains Indians were expert horsemen and hunters. But were they always?

Learn how the whole animal was used.

How does Buffalo meat compare to Beef?

What was the United States government policy regarding Indians? The Buffalo?

How effective was it?

Unfortunately the number of wild buffalo herds in the United States has decreased significantly over the past two centuries. However it is still possible to view wild buffalos. The Yellowstone National Park maintains the largest number of wild buffalo in the United States and many other National Parks provide habitats for buffalos. It is estimated that there was once 60 million buffalo in North America. According to the National Bison Association there are only 350,000 buffalos in North America today.

Who is really to blame for the near extinction of the once great herds?

Battlefield Detectives

George Armstrong Custer, the young Civil War hero turned Indian fighter, was trapped on a desolate ridge overlooking the Little Bighorn River in the territory of Montana. Swarms of well-armed Indians surrounded him. According to legend–and many historians–Custer rallied his vastly outnumbered troops. The desperate 7th Cavalry soldiers shot their horses to make barricades and fought ferociously as hundreds of Indians, led by famed Sioux war chief Crazy Horse, overran the ridge.

But because Custer's men were wiped out before reinforcements arrived, a definitive account of the Little Bighorn battle has eluded historians. The only eye witnesses were the Indians, who had conflicting recollections. And so the legend of "Custer's last stand" began to take shape. "The image of Custer blazing away till the very end with his pistols was an icon of the American West," says John Dorner, chief historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

The lack of reliable accounts has kept the details of the battle a hotly debated topic, and discoveries in recent years have challenged the heart of the legend. "The myth is the gallant, heroic last stand–that the Indians drove him to the killing field, where he fought to the last man and last bullet against overwhelming odds," says Richard Fox, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Dakota.

Fox, who specializes in archaeology, completed an extensive battlefield survey after a 1983 wildfire and revealed evidence that cut to the core of the Custer legend. "My research says the outcome was a function of panic and fear, a very common thing in battle. There was no last stand in the gallant, heroic sense."

So who is telling the truth? You decide.

Battle or Massacre?

Whats the difference between a Battle and a Massacre?

Read the account of the Battle of Wounded Knee  and compare it to the first hand accounts of the Indians who were there. What differences do you notice? How are the accounts biased?

I find it hard to accept that Wounded Knee was a “battle” rather than a “massacre.” Chief Big Foot’s abject band of 300 was comprised mostly of women and children. The adult men among them were few and not well armed. All of them were starving and suffering from prolonged exposure to cold. Before embarking on their trek which tragically ended at Wounded Knee, they had spent more than a decade on the reservation, being systematically beaten down and broken apart.

Contrast this to the 500 well-fed, equipped, and armed soldiers sent to prevent Chief Big Foot’s (a.k.a. Spotted Elk) band from reaching Pine Ridge. This army unit infamously included the reconstituted 7th Cavalry, which had been humiliated at the Custer battle in 1876 and was itching for retribution. Consider the chilling orders issued to the army:

Disarm the Indians. Take every precaution to prevent their escape. If they choose to fight, destroy them.

Short, concise, and clear. The results were deadly, and it was not a battle. One can come to this conclusion only by relying primarily or exclusively on government and army sources.

Listen to Charlie Parrker's song 1890.

In the end, nearly 200 Lakota lay dead and 25 soldiers were killed. Most of the soldiers were killed by a few warriors defending the women, children, and elderly being slaughtered by 500 troopers using rifles and 4 Hotchkiss cannons with exploding shells (with a firing rate of 1 shell per second), this strains credulity. Unwisely, the army commander had formed his troops in a circle around the Lakota, so when the firing began the troopers were shooting not only at the unprotected Lakota, but also at their fellows — killing each other with “friendly” fire. This resulted in a court martial trial for the commander James William Forsyth. The charges against him were ultimately dropped and he was later promoted to Major General. (source)

Its been more than 120 years since this massacre. Has the Government made amends?

Listen and you decide: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (lyrics)

Hollywood Indians

"A Nation that does not know its history has no future."

What does this saying mean? How has Hollywood stereotyped the Indians in the movies? Why?

How is what happened in history very different than the Hollywood stereotype of the Indians as warriors?

Little House On the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie, a series of eight mostly autobiographical books about Laura Ingalls Wilder's life as a settler on the American prairie, has been a perennial favorite ever since it was first published in 1935.  My second grade teacher started reading it to us.  In the 1970s the TV series with Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon came onto the scene. I watched it as a child, and watched it again with my own children.

Pa, Ma, and the children, Laura and Mary of the prairie. We went with them through all their obstacles, the sickness of Mary, the birth of children, moving to their own farm, the store owner and his family, the teacher at the school, all of the issues and problems that the family, the children and Ma and Pa had together. This was a time in our history when the West was young, the earth was new, the farming good. New lives, new adventures, to share, and this series gives us hope. So much love and kindness in this family, and that won the day, every time.

The Ingalls family were people of their time and place. In the words of Laura June Topolsky writing for The Awl, that meant they were “Manifest Destiny personified.” Even Pa, the adult character who is most sympathetic to the Osage Indians on whose land the Ingalls family are squatting, sees white people as having a right to the land, writes Laura Ingalls scholar Amy Fatzinger. She quotes Laura’s Pa from the text:

1) Why did Laura's family leave Wisconsin to go to Indian Territory?

2) How did the Ingals exemplify Manifest Destiny?

4) How are Indians portrayed in the story? Portrayals of Native American characters in this book and throughout this series have led to some calls for the series to not be taught in schools.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

5) Why does the story give us hope more than 100 years later?  

6) Would you have wanted to live in the 'Little House on the Prarie?'  What would the opportunities be?  Challenges?

All Aboard!

Folk music, trains, and railroads would hardly exist in this country without one another. Some of the greatest American folk songs of all time can be traced back to the building of the railroads, the advent of train travel, and, of course, the riding of the rails during the Depression—when working class men and immigrants traveled on trains in search of work.

You may know our nation's railroads were built primarily by African-Americans and immigrants (particularly Irish immigrants). It was grueling work made more tolerable by the presence of music (similarly to the way field calls and African-American folk songs developed out of the slave tradition).

In the case of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," the telling line is "...all the livelong day." These men really did back-breaking work beyond the hours of labor now acceptable in our society.

From Crazy Train to Peace Train, songs about trains are still popular today...

HOW MANY CAN YOU THINK OF?

The Golden Spike

Can you spot the differences in these two pictures?

Completing the last link in the First Transcontinental Railroad with a spike of gold was the brainchild of David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor. The spike had been manufactured earlier that year especially for the event by the William T. Garratt Foundry in San Francisco. Two of the sides were engraved with the names of the railroad officers and directors. A special tie of polished California laurel was chosen to complete the line where the spike would be driven. The ceremony was originally to be held on May 8, 1869 (the date actually engraved on the spike), but it was postponed two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute that delayed the arrival of the Union Pacific side of the rail line. On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60 (better known as the Jupiter) locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. The golden spike was made of 17.6-karat(73%) copper-alloyed gold, and weighed 14.03 ounces (436 g). It was dropped into a pre-drilled hole in the laurel ceremonial last tie, and gently tapped into place with a silver ceremonial spike maul.

Why was this Rail Road necessary for the United States?

How would it effect our nation's future?

Transcontinental RR

 Where did you go on your Summer Vacation? If you could have gone anywhere, where would you have traveled? How would you get there? Plane, train, automobile?

I bet that most of you did not take the train. There was a time however when the train was not only the preferred form of transportation in America; IT WAS THE ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION.

As you watch this clip focus on the social and the economic factors that influenced rail travel in the United States.

What challenges did building the Transcontinental Railroad pose?

Oregon Trail

 

Try taking a journey by covered wagon across 2000 miles of plains, rivers, and mountains.  Try!  On the plains, will you slosh through mud and water-filled ruts or will you plod through dust six inches deep?   How will you cross the rivers?   If you have money you might take a ferry if there is one.  Or you could ford the river and hope you and your wagon aren't swallowed alive!  What about supplies?  Well, if you're low on food you can hunt.  You might get a buffalo... you might.  And there are bears in the mountains.  At the Dalles, you can try navigating the Columbia River, but if running the rapids with a makeshift raft makes you queasy, better take the Barlow Road.  If for some reason you don't survive, your wagon burns, or thieves steal your oxen, or you run out of provisions, or you die of cholera-- don't give up!  Try again.

Manifest Destiny

1) What does this famous painting symbolize?  Who painted it?

2) What opportunities and conflicts emerged as Americans moved westward?

3) Which groups depicted in this image were most likely positively affected by westward expansion?

  4) Which were most likely negatively affected?

In Chapter 12 we will discover how westward expansion in the late 1800s affected several groups of people. Many of these groups saw new opportunities for jobs, prosperity, freedom, and land ownership open up before them, while others were denied these same opportunities.  

Home On the Range

“Home on the Range” appears to have been written in 1885 by a group of prospectors in a cabin near Leadville, Colorado. It was popular throughout the Southwest in the 1880s and 1890s and is now recognized as the state song of Kansas.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

How often at night when the heavens are bright
I see the light of those flickering stars
Have I laid there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of love

The red man was pressed from this part of the west

It's not likely he'll ever return

To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever

His flickering campfires still burn

Home, home on the range

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

1. Do you think the settlement of this region had a more positive effect or a more negative effect on the person or people who wrote this song? How can you tell?

2. Do you think the settlement of this region had the same effect on all the different groups of people who lived there? Why or why not?

Was Roy Rogers, 'King of the Cowboys,' from the West? Does Ohio have a State song?

Here is a picture of my Grammy Ulrey, Roy Rogers, and his famous horse Trigger circa 1943.
Giddy Up!

Reconstruction: Success or Failure?

During the 1870s, more than a dozen African American men, many of whom had been born into slavery, were elected to the U.S. Congress. It was a triumph of our founding ideals of equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness!

It was a period that ended all too quickly.

When neither candidate in the 1876 presidential election secured enough votes in the Electoral College to be declared winner, a deal was struck. Southern Democrats agreed to back Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes; in exchange, the federal troops who had protected black voters were withdrawn from the South. Just a few years later, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. Black voting rights were gradually stripped away, and black representation in Congress faded.

Reconstruction was over, and the Jim Crow era of segregation began.

1) What were the ultimate results of Reconstruction? Do you think it was successful?

2) In what ways were freed people better off?

3) In what ways weren't they?

4) How did the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment advance rights for African Americans?

5) How did Jim Crow and Black Codes reverse them?

Gone With the Wind

 Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It tells a story of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from a white Southern point of view.

The film received ten Academy Awards (eight competitive, two honorary), a record that stood for 20 years.

What does the title of the film mean?

What challenges did the South face following the Civil War?

How would the South rebuild?

Want to watch the rest of the movie?

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Sure you've heard of Homer Simpson;  but who was Homer Plessy?

What were Jim Crow Laws and why was this man not allowed to sit in a 'whites only' railroad car?

This video is about the history of civil rights and Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896. The 14th Amendment is examined as is the case.

How did railcar attendants know Plessy was black?

What was the precedent of 'Separate but Equal?'

With Malice Toward None....

How could a nation torn apart by civil war put itself back together? That was the question facing all Americans in 1865. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of healing the wounds on both sides of the conflict:

With malice [hatred] toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

—Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 1865

Reconstruction

Have you ever broken something and tried to put back together again? Was it the same as before? After the North defeated the South in the Civil War, politicians faced the task of putting the divided country back together. There was great debate about how severely the former Confederate states should be punished for leaving the Union. With the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, it was up to President Andrew Johnson to try to reunite former enemies.

Can you help him re-assemble the pieces?

What does the finished image look like? What can it teach us about Reconstruction?

Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22