Introduction

Visual images have been used to influence and interpret American history as long as there has been American history. From gravestones and woodcarvings to political cartoons and photojournalism, images have told the stories and pushed the arguments of history every bit as much as written sources. History as a discipline is devoted primarily to written texts (my first book contained no images at all). But over the course of twenty years in the history classroom, I have developed a deep appreciation for visual sources as an aid to student learning. People do not experience their lives primarily through the written word, and our understanding of those who lived in the past is enhanced greatly by the unique access into their lives that visual sources provide.

Looking at a visual document is not exactly like looking through a window into others’ lives, however. These images have creators, just as textual documents do, and we must consider the creator’s purpose and intended audience just as we do for authors of written sources. Images, again like textual documents, also often reveal more than the creator intended, including their preferences, assumptions, and blind-spots. These sources cannot be interpreted or analyzed well in isolation but require an understanding of the larger context. We intentionally titled this a collection of visual documents as an encouragement to approach these images as we would approach the speeches, letters, and other written documents that dominate most primary source collections—by subjecting them to good historical analysis in order to add the resulting insights to our historical understanding.

For this reason, each visual document is accompanied by in-depth commentary that analyzes the image as a primary source, examining who created it, its historical setting, and what it can tell us about its era. The commentary includes a high-level overview to situate the document, including key facts about the image, a biographical sketch of the creator(s), and an explanation of what was going on in the creator’s life and in the country leading up to creation. This contextual information is followed by an explanation and analysis of the image—its meaning, intended purpose, and argument—along with questions for further study and suggestions for further reading. The commentary works on two levels—it provides the context necessary to help students interpret these specific sources, and it models how contextual information can be used to analyze visual sources, to help students learn the process of historical examination to be able to apply elsewhere.

I selected images with two primary criteria in mind: 1) each visual document should represent a significant development, theme, or event in American history; and 2) each should be effective for use in the classroom. I have used many of these images successfully in classes for years, and I hope they all will prompt curiosity, provoke a response, or raise questions. Of course, a collection of 121 sources cannot touch on every important event or topic in U.S. history, but I have tried to include images for key topics addressed in U.S. history courses at the high school and college level from a wide range of creators and perspectives. Some of these images are well known, and some are quite obscure. Some are of famous events and deal with famous people, while others document the lived experience of unknown individuals and families. All reveal something about the actions, decisions, and events that have shaped the American story.

As single works created by an individual or group, each of these images represents a particular view, argument, or claim about American history, and as such they offer us much to think about on their own. In some cases, it can be quite effective to examine the single representative image in this collection along with similar images available online (by using the image in this collection as the anchor term for an online search). A few examples where such an approach may be fruitful include: Reconstruction political cartoons reveal competing arguments about how to restore the nation—examine the cartoons of Thomas Nast in particular to see changing attitudes across time within the work of a single cartoonist; Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino war cartoons offer countless examples of common turn-of-the-twentieth-century assumptions about race, gender, class, and culture (even among those who disagreed on policy), and how those assumptions could be used to make arguments about policy and culture; war recruiting posters reveal assumptions about American national identity, history, and gender roles that were relied upon to motivate Americans of all stripes to contribute to the war effort; and photographs from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s reveal both the brutality of the forces of segregation and also the fortitude of those seeking change, and gain power with each image added for consideration. Each of these topics is represented by a document in this collection, which can be used to begin an online search to create a small image essay for comparison and contrast, if desired.

Many thanks to Neil Schlager, Sarah Robertson, and all the folks at Schlager Group / Milestone Documents. I have been involved with Schlager Group for over a decade, both as an instructor using the resources and as an editor and author, and it has always been a pleasure. Thanks, too, to the many scholars who contributed the commentary to make this a truly educational resource, and to my students over the past twenty years who have helped me make historical sense of many of the documents in this collection, and helped me learn what does and does not work well in the history classroom. Finally, Alli, Merrill, and Seth have waited, mostly patiently, to be included in acknowledgements. For their constant reminder of what’s most important, I am grateful.

—Craig Kaplowitz