American Film since 1945
Joshua Gleich
Over the past seventy years, the American film industry has transformed from mass-producing movies to producing a limited number of massive blockbuster movies on a global scale. Hollywood ...
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America’s Wars on Poverty and the Building of the Welfare State
David Torstensson
On January 5, 2014—the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty—the New York Times asked a panel of opinion leaders a simple question: “Does the U.S. ...
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Bracero Guest Worker Program
Ana Elizabeth Rosas
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article.
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Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement
Matt Garcia
In September 1962, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) held its first convention in Fresno, California, initiating a multiracial movement that would result in the creation of ...
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Employers’ Associations and Open Shops in the United States
Chad Pearson
Employers began organizing with one another to reduce the power of organized labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Irritated by strikes, boycotts, and unions’ desire to achieve ...
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McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare
Landon R. Y. Storrs
The second Red Scare refers to the fear of communism that permeated American politics, culture, and society from the late 1940s through the 1950s, during the opening phases of the Cold War ...
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Municipal Housing in America
Margaret Garb
Housing in America has long stood as a symbol of the nation’s political values and a measure of its economic health. In the 18th century, a farmhouse represented Thomas Jefferson’s ideal ...
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Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement
Alan Draper
The relationship between organized labor and the civil rights movement proceeded along two tracks. At work, the two groups were adversaries, as civil rights groups criticized employment ...
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Polish Immigration and the American Working Class
Dominic Pacyga
In the years after the Civil War, Polish immigrants became an important part of the American working class. They actively participated in the labor movement and played key roles in various ...
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Public Authorities
Gail Radford
Public authorities are agencies created by governments to engage directly in the economy for public purposes. They differ from standard agencies in that they operate outside the ...
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