20th Topic Selections

As with most topics, they change frequently, or more gems are discovered. Therefore, they are housed in one location here on my site rather than on the class platform. Please message me if you see a topic or keyword we should add. 

Welcome to your Topic Selections Resources page. Students can use this as a springboard for a topic for their in-person presentations. For this project, students survey old newspapers to learn more about a topic of their choice. After researching the topic, grabbing JPEGs, and deducing its mood, they will introduce our class to the topic via a visual presentation. The students are not limited to any topic, but to help prime the mind, we have a few below to help.

Also, you can view this document from previous students concerning Turning Points in the 20th Century. These topics are from student suggestions and course materials. 

Our objectives for this activity: 

• Students will demonstrate an understanding of cultural experiences by exploring other cultures through film, literature, museums, festivals, interviews, rituals, etc.

• Examining the background information to better understand the subject in question allows us to analyze rather than summarize what we are studying.

• Conducting research using old newspapers to examine and analyze the historical contextual framework of the topic.

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Death Penalty

• Death Penalty (pick country or methods)

• George Stinney Jr. (14 years old)

  • Preston Cobb Jr (16 y/o)

Dictators

• Karl Marx & the Communist Manifesto

  • Manifesto Anniversary Clipping

  • Manifesto Analysis Clipping

  • Marx and the N*gro Question

  • International Slave Cartoon

• The Bolsheviks

• The Mensheviks

• Lavr Kornilov

• Vladimir Lenin

• Joseph Stalin

• Leon Trotsky

  • Fall of Trotsky in Germany Clipping

• Marxist Aesthetics

• Impact of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti 

• Hitler

  • Weird Sleep Habits (Pre-WWII article)

• Mussolini

• Mao

Drugs

• War on Drugs: Nixon & Elvis

• Opium Crisis

  • Opium News Clippings

  • Kensington St, PA

  • Skid Row, LA

Diamonds

• Blood Diamond mines in Africa

Disasters (Manmade or natural)

• Anchieta rail disaster: Brazil 

• Chornobyl nuclear meltdown

• Dust Bowl farming of the 1930s

• Bhopal Gas Tragedy of India 

Existentialism 

• Existentialism 

  • Existentialism and Literature (article)

Economics

• Capitalism v communism

Exercise 

• Aerobics craze of the 1980s (Tony Britts)

Eugenics

• Eugenics and Race Relations 

Education

• George McLaurin, the first black man to attend a US college

• Affirmative Action Repealed

• COVID High Schooler Struggle to Cope

• Student strikes/protests (name schools/events)

• India Women Struggle for Education and Freedom from Britain

  • (Source: Maryland Suffrage News., April 24, 1920, Page 27)

• Tibetan Sealed Library discovery 

• Textbook publishers changing history?

• Segregation in US schools (pick a school to focus on)

  • Fed Court Upholds Law

• Student Strikes at the University of Puerto Rico (2010)

• Secularism in Western Schools 1940 and 50s

Expeditions

• Toxic Tourism

• Arctic expeditions

  • The Terror, Admiral Byrd, Hollow Earth Theory

Fascism

• Italian Amendola Attacked

Fashion

• Fashion (pick a decade or style)

Gas Shortages through time

• Gas shortage of the (pick decade and country)

• OPEC History

Ghost Hunting

• Paranormal: Pick one

• Queen Mary

Govt Relations

• Founding Fathers (PDF)

• Brexit

• Uganda Jewish Plan by Britain 

• Sharecropping in the U.S. Southern States 

• Philippines vs Spain 

  • Source II

• Korea Split (North vs. South)

• First Female U.S. President Edith Wilson?

• BRICS

• Imperialism and Colonization (pick empire)

• France vs. North Africa

• The Wilcox Rebellion of 1888; US Gvt Steals Hawaii 

• ECOWAS

• The Red Scare (USSR)

  • NSC 68 Blueprint

  • The Red Scare is a Menace

  • Black Scare, Red Scare

  • NSC-69 Explained

  • Project Troy: How Scientists Helped Refine Cold War
    Psychological Warfare by Audra Wolfe

  • Red Scare: 100 years

  • 1st Amendment Encyclopedia 

  • What is the Red Scare?

  • Germany Invades the US: Life Magazine PDF

• Great Depression (pick a country)

• Gaddafi: Rise and Fall of Libyan Gold King

Govt vs. Rebels/Freedom Fighters

• Amharas vs. Ethiopian govt 

• Nazi War Criminals and Argentina/North Carolina/NASA (pick person/place)

• Communiism and the USA: USSR Attacks the USA

• Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987 (led a coup, killed four years later)

• Govt engrossed Fascism in America: German-American Bund (1930s)

• British Mandate of Palestine

• June Fourth Incident in China

• CIA covert operations: Manchurian Candidate, Operation Northwoods, 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

  • THE CIA'S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL

  • William James: The Will to Believe

  • White Bulger

  • MK-Ultra

  • KGB Mind Control I, II, III

  • The Naked Lunch

  • Brain Warfare I, II

  • Allen Dulles

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Modern Marvels: Architecture 

• Canal Building: Panama Jungle disaster and Cleopatra’s Egyptian Suez Canal

Murders (infamous)

• George Stinney: 14 y/o boy person executed by the electric chair 

  • Governor Denies Release

• Pearl Concubine of the Forbidden City

• Racist Night Riders of MO 

• Russia Czar

Medical

• Rebel Woman: Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood)

  • Set against poor people having babies

  • Woman and the New Race

• Psychological experiments (pick one)

• X-ray Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen hands

• Medical Advancements

• Germ Warfare in 1950s Korea (PDF clipping)

• Morphine and Addictions 

  • Users of Meth

• Minamata Japan Mercury Zombie Outbreak (1953)

• UK National Health Service

• Healthcare (pick an aspect of interest)

• Mangbetu tribe head elongation practice

• Dr. Max Gerson, the Gerson Therapy controversial cancer treatment 

• Fall of the Midwifery Industry

• 1st Womb Transplant

• Lalen and Laden, Iranian Conjoined Twins

• 3D printed organs

• Cigarettes: The Silent Killer

• Birth Control History

• Mental Asylums and Healthcare 

  • Mental healthcare and asylums are fascinating topics, but they are frequently very challenging for those with a weak stomach. For this topic, students want to begin their research with the state of Mental Medicine circa 1890. Starting in the 1890s gives us a good base of information where most doctors tried to heal the mentally impaired with religious tactics called Moral Treatment. Next, I suggest jumping ahead to the mid-1950s with Perceptions of the Mind. Then, to rip off the bandaid, look into Willowbrook Mental Home. I follow that up with a decade-by-decade look into the atmosphere of mental care. 

  • University of Toledo Libraries: Mental Minds

  • Moral Treatment Movement 

  • Perceptions of Mental Illness Across History

  • Mental Health America

  • Inside the Abandoned Asylum

  •  lobotomies on children as well. Howard Dully caught my eye during research. 

  • The history of Informed Consent is a blight on the global healthcare community, with four legal cases: Mohr v Williams, Pratt v Davis, Rolater v Strain, and Schloendorff v Society of New York Hospital. In the case of Pratt v Davis

• Rosemary Kelly lobotomized

• Canada's tuberculosis scandal 

• Medical Marvel (pick one)

• The flu epidemic of 1910

• Cholera outbreak in Haiti (present-day)

• Dr. Cornelius Rhoades: Doctor of Death in Puerto Rico

• Darwinism and Eugenics

  • You will research US and German Doctors and specialists such as (but not limited to) Nathaniel Comfort, Karl Pearson, Lori Andrews, Sir Francis Galton, Charles Davenport, Edwin Black, Andrzej Pekalski, Buck v Bell, Thomas Morgan, the justifications during the Nuremberg Trials, Ashkenazi Jewish community, and unfit to reproduce ideals. 

  • Social Darwinism: The Theoretical Justification for Imperialism

  • Cecil Rhodes

  • Descend of Mankind in 1871 Charles Darwin

  • Eugenics in Art, the JAMA Network

    • Der Würgengel, 1909, Franz Karl Bühler (1864-1940)

    • Departure, Max Beckmann (1884-1950)

    • Episode 705 Artwork

  • The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933–1939

  • Eugenics; Andrzej History

  • Social Darwinism: The Theoretical Justification for Imperialism 

  • Charles Davenport, the Man behind American Eugenics (video)

  • A Dangerous Idea: The History of Eugenics in America (video)

  • A History of Eugenics (video)

  • Bio: Charles Darwin

  • The Crimes of The Auschwitz Doctors

  • Charles Darwin and Francis Galton

Massacres / Genocides / Famine

• Visual Aid to the Eight Stages of Genocide (Canva)

• The Red Summer of 1919 (massacre) 

• Rwanda Hutu Massacre

• Armenians

• Columbine High School 

• Columbia, Tenn Race Riots

• Carandiru Prison Massacre

• Serbian Concentration Camps

• Namibia vs Germany 1904

• Nanking Massacre

• Waco Shootout in Texas

• North Korean famine 1990s

• Holodomor Massacres Ukrainian history

• Hay Market May Day Labour Union massacre

• Ocoee Voting Tragedy

• King Leopold and the Congolese

• Kent State massacre

• Tulsa Mass Lynchings 1920s

• King Leopold, the butcher king of the Congo

• Guyana Enmore Tragedy

• MOVE bombing in Philadelphia 1980s

Movements

• Nationalist Party uprising: Puerto Rico 

• New Culture Movement (Chinese)

• Men’s Rights (history of)

  • Dubois’ the New Negro ideas

    • “The Sport of the Gods”

    • “Hagar’s Daughter”

    • Alain Locke

• Women's Rights (history of)

  • The New Woman (1890s)“The Doll House”

• Pride Community Rights (history of)

• Birth of the Civil Rights Movement, 1941-1954

• The “Lying Flat” Chinese movement

• Mexico Civil Rights March sews mouth shuts.

Movies / TV

• Signature Sounds (TV)

• The Hays Codes of 1934 - 1968

• Marvel: Modern-day Myths

• War of the Worlds: Orsen Wells Audio Broadcast

• Star Trek and the Kiss

• Vampires (rise of in movies) 

• Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (First African Americans owned movie studio)

  • Almost all Micheaux movies are uploaded to YouTube. 

  • The Symbol Of The Unconquered (1920) (YouTube, 59mins)

    • Reactionary movie towards Birth of a Nation (Klan Movie)

  • Oscar Micheaux: The Czar of Black Hollywood (YouTube, 9 mins)

    • Documentary

  • The Lasting Legacy of Oscar Micheaux (YouTube, 4 mins)

  • Who Is Oscar Micheaux? The Homesteader 1919 (YouTube, 5mins)

  • Blackface Films, which Micheaux was trying to fight against

    • First Ever Sound Film Of A Minstrel Show 1913 (YouTube, 4 mins)

    • Cotton Watts and Chick Watts (YouTube, 4 min)

    • Judy Garland as a Blackface Pickaninny (YouTube, 3 mins)

• Sex Symbols and Children Models

  • War Babies with Shirley Temple (Rated-R for vulgar display of children)

• Popular shows (by decades)

• Superman and the power of TV (1950s Christopher Reeves shot)

Music

• Musical genre or artist of choice 

• Sock hops of the 1950s USA

• Billboard Charting system controlled music

• War of the Worlds broadcast

• Woodstock and/or other Musical Festivals

• Who Killed Tupac? SOLVED!!

• Pagoda Music of Brazil

• Russian Woodstock 1992

• Summer of Love (1960s)

• Rhythm and Blues history: such as (Roy Hamilton) 

• Practical movie effects (movie magic)

• Patriotic music of WWI and II

• Music Videos kill the radio star.

  • Discuss how music videos changed the music industry 

• AfroPop of Morocco 

• Jazz: Jumpin Jive - Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers, 1943

• K-pop and Kdrama and Khorror

• Breakdancing Craze 1980s

• Country OGs vs. Country Pop/Patriotic

• Gangasta Rap of the 90s

• Brazil Pagode, music of the people 

• Harlem Jazz/Art Renaissance

  • The Harlem Jazz Renaissance is one of the most inspiring times in African-American history. Notable items of interest will be Langston Hughes's powerful poems on the Black Identity, the Kansas City Harlem Museum, the New Negro, Zora Neale Hurston, All That Jazz, SpeakEasy, Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret, Gee's Bend Alabama, and the Quilt, Aaron Douglass, James Weldon Johnson, Jacob Lawerence, 92nd & 93rd Infantry Units & Lt. James Reese Europe, Ragtime, and the Foxtrot. 

  • Harlem Renaissance Playlist (video)

  • Lena Horne and the Cotton Club (video)

  • A Raisin in the Sun (Video)

  • The Greats (Video)

  • The Literature, Music, and Art of the Harlem Renaissance

  • The Harlem Renaissance - USHistory.org

  • Sterling A. Brown: The Last Of The Harlem Renaissance Greats (JSTOR)

  • Harlem in NYC

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Science

• Time is relative (different calendars) 

• Space Cadets Hoax TV show of 2005

• VR Chat (video game) vs. Meta

• Space Race (aspects of)

  • FATE magazine

  • Space Race Permeated Pop Culture

  • When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed

  • How the Space Race Altered Art in the Americas

• Moonwalk: USA (1960s)

• Moon Landing: India (2023)

• Sputnik: Russie

• Radium Girls

Science Vs. Religion 

• The Monkey Trial

  • The Scopes Trial is a fascinating time in our history, repeated many times. Long story short, the government of Tennessee enacted the Butler Act, which mandated it was illegal to teach evolution in school. Many people residing in the state were agitated and contacted The ACLU. They decided it was not in line with their 1st Amendment Rights and wanted to fight it. What is Objective Education, and who determines it?

• THE FIRST AMENDMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA: Scopes Monkey Trial

• Scopes v. State Summary Judgment

• Tennessee Evolution Statutes

• Monkey Trial - John Scopes - Evolution (Video)

• THE MONKEY TRIAL - 1925 (video newsreel)

Society & Sociology 

• The Great Reset of 2022

• Housewives of the 1950s (pick a country)

• Quinceañera traditions 

• Religious holidays

• The Wild West

• Year of the Dragon meanings

Sports

• Racing Sports

  • Rally

  • Motorbikes

  • NASCAR

  • Formula 1

• Baseball

  • Racist Rejection of Willie Mays

• Futball history (pick a team)(this means soccer for Americans)

Symbols

• Hitler Nazi identification Badges

Slave labour / Slavery

• Congo Cobalt Slave Labour Crisis

• Human Trafficking 

• Slave Labor in California and Oregon (PDF News clipping)

• Kimberley Diamond Mines

• Debt slavery of the 1900s

• Johnson v. McAdoo: Cotton tax lawsuit (1915)

  • Ex-slave reparations litigation

• Ex-slave pension bill of 1890 (H.R. 11119)

  • Callie House

Unions

• IWW (International Workers of the World), Eugene Debs, and his role with the unions.

• Union Strikes in history (pick one)

• Mexican Rail Unions: Strike or Die

• Union Packing House Ad for African-American Workers

  • Women Losing Jobs to the NRA

• Union Party & Farms

Unusual Oddities, Events, Stories

• Englishman Brandon Grimshaw, One Man Island

• Extreme tourism 

• New York 1977 Blackout

• Kedareshwar Hindu Temple predicts the end of the world 

• Exploitation of Ringling Bros. Circus Performers

• First high five: Baker and Burke, LA Dodgers

• Racial Tensions: Whites Selling Negros

• Lion Riders Of Ethiopia

• Snake charmers 

Writers and Authors

• Magazine Revolution (origins of the magazine)

• The Little Paris Group (1920s African-American, African-French writers)

  • Loïs Mailou Jones, Langston Hughes, Alma Thomas, Delilah Pierce, Richard Dempsey, Ruth Brown, Don Roberts

• Lost generation (1920s writers) 

  • John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane

War Events & War Related (Civil Wars)

• Bikini Island (Nukes)

  • Bikini Island Watchers

  • Bombs being Tested

• Bomb shelters 

• Captain Charles Hall, African-American WWII Pilot

• Russia V USA, Russia's Race to the Weapons

• Triple Nickles ALL-Black Airborne unit 

• Stateless citizens: such as tribal societies, Tham fütbol team, etc

• Refugees (pick one group)

• Drug makes faint

• Buffalo Soldier of the Civil War

• Tangier Crisis

• Syrian Crisis

• Argentina’s connection to Nazism

• Agent Orange Warfare

• Berlin Wall: Rise and Fall

• The Draft

  • 1860s Northen Revolt

• Paulista War in Brazil

• Rise of the KKK in the US

• The Lebanese Civil War

• Isreal v Palestine 

• Battle of Waterberg (Germany v Heroro/Namaqualand South Africa)

• Child Soldiers (pick a country)

• Concentration Camps (select one)

• Indigenous American code breakers of WWI and WWII

• Chinese vs. US 

• Harlem Hell Fighters

• Lynching in HI during WWII

• US vs. Russia

• Hitlerites in Berlin Pre-WWII

• Japanese Unit 731 during WWII

• Russia vs. Ukraine/Georgia/Poland

• Invasion of Haiti by the USA (1915 massacre)

• Coup d'état (pick one)

• Carnival of Blood, Ohio

• Sudan: Russian/Us Proxy war

• Fall of the Ottoman Empire (1922)

• Farnham Plan and US Invasion of Haiti (1915)

• Rise of Global Terrorism 1980s

• Vietnam War (aspects of)

• Warsaw Pact

• Invasion of Puerto Rico by the USA

  • After the storm

  • Puerto Rico Genocide

  • Close All US military Bases On Foreign Soil

  • Lesser Known Campaigns

World Leaders

• Assassination of …. (pick someone)

  • President Wilson

• Death of (pick person)

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These articles/topics do not reflect an overly accurate or comprehension examination of the topic. However, you can gain an insight into the media portrayal of the event in real time. 

Topics by Subjects

(These represent a few topics from previous students or late-night readings. Could you send me yours, too?)

Ads

• Laborers, Dry Cleaners 

• Aunt Jemima & Uncle Tom

Bans or banning of 'something;

• Turkey Bans Evolution (Website)

Communism & the Red Scare

• Reaction v Democracy

Civil War

• General Granger & the Negro Troops (PDF Clipping)

• Syria vs Isreal (PDF Clipping)

Civilisation Exploring

• Robert Louis Stevenson & Tahitans

Education 

• India Women Pleads for Education and Britain Removal (PDF Clipping)

  • • Maryland suffrage news., April 24, 1920

Housing Discrimination 

• Housing Conference Detroit  (PDF Clipping)

Indigenous Movements

• Trail of Tears (1951)  (PDF Clipping)

Jail

• Oscar Wilde: Jailed for Homosexual Behaviour (PDF Clipping)

KKK

• The Klan Rides Again

Media

• War of the Worlds: Orsen Wells Audio Broadcast

Nazi Colonization Plans

• London Awaits New Colonies

• Nazi War Cartoon

Safety

• Baby and Sibling Drowns (PDF Clipping)

• Motorcycle and Speed (PDF Clipping)

Social Issues

• Succession of the North, South, and States

• Pro-Life in 1941 (PDF Clipping)

Veterans

• Active Duty vs. Reserve (PDF Clipping)

Women

• Young Girls Frighten Middle-Aged Women (PDF Clipping)

• Venona Project - Woman Code Breakers (Website)

• Suffragettes & Returning to the Home (PDF Clipping)

• Suffragettes & Returning to the Home II (PDF Clipping)

• Suffragettes & Returning to the Home III (PDF Clipping)

Topics & Keywords by Years

(Slowly, I am attaching links to the keywords)

1800-1899:

• Industrial Revolution, Tenament Housing, Irish Housing

• Child Labour Factory Workers

• Women's Suffrage and gender equality, 19th Amendment 

• Spanish American War

• Jim Crow, Black Codes, Andrew Johnson, and Radical Republicans, Plessy

• American Civil War battles, general, soldier, etc. 

• Manifest Destiny, Imperialism, and Colonialism

• Indian Untouchable Caste System

• Technological advancements, i.e., an appliance, factory item, or farming.

• The development of photography

• Titanic Sinking (PDF Clipping)

• The American Western Cowboy, Ranches, Mexican Americans, Texans, and Indigenous Tribes.

• Immigration trends and the experiences of immigrants during this period.

• The emergence of new political ideologies and their effects on governance.

1900 - 1950:

• World War I, Assassination Archduke Ferdinand, Sarajevo Anarchist (PDF Clipping)

• WWI: Hitler, Himmler, Camps, warships

  • Rise of Hiter & NAZI Boycott

• The Roaring Twenties: Jazz, flappers

• Puerto Rico Elections in 1924 (Spanish) (PDF Clipping)

• The Great Depression, Socialism, Communism, Red Scare, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.

• The Harlem Renaissance, African American, Latino, and Afro-Latino

  • William Wells Brown (Novalist) (PDF Clipping)

• The Dust Bowl

• Rise of Christianity, Great Awakening

• The Palestine Question

• The Manhattan Project and the development of atomic weapons.

  • Sweden Blast (PDF Clipping)

• The Bracero Program: Examining the experiences of Mexican migrant workers during World War II and its aftermath.

• The Zoot Suit Riots, Tulsa Massacre

• The Puerto Rican migration

1950 - Present: (the papers only go to 1963, but some of these might have pre-history context for you)

• Various Civil Rights Movements: Haitian, Feminin, LGBTQI, Hispanic, Irish, Indgidious American

• The Space Race: the United States vs. the Soviet Union

• Germany, Stalin, Berlin Wall, 

• Emancipation Topics

  • NAACP: Fugitive Story (PDF Clipping)

• Decolonization in Africa (PDF Clipping) (PDF Clipping)

• The Arab-Israeli Conflict

• The Vietnam War and Korean War

• The Digital Revolution

• The Cuban Missile Crisis (PDF Clipping) (PDF Clipping)

• The Duvalier Era: Haiti under the rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. (PDF Clipping)

• Haitian Diaspora and Transnational Identity

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