About.com's page about 1970s feminist activities provides a detailed list of feminist achievement during the '70s. The links provided take us to some of the struggles that the feminist movement took on such as the Equal Rights Amendment, Roe v. Wade, Feminist poetry as well as the Feminist art movement. The links also point to the second wave of Feminism in the 1960s-1970s. Women's liberation was the topic du jour during that time and this site goes into some detail about the actual activities and struggles. The explanations are a bit short, but the links take us to articles about each topic. This is a good starting point to start digging into the subject.

This short article on msmagazine.com describes ten things that American Women could not do before the 1970s. It is an eye opening list of basic things that might be taken for granted today. One strong example of the discrimination is the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 which apparently had to be passed as women were able to get fired for being pregnant before its passage. In 1973 Roe vs. Wade protected a woman's right to an abortion up to a certain stage. Before that landmark decision, it was illegal to have an abortion in most cases.

This piece discusses the role of the sexes in the family. It describes the evolution leading up to the feminine revolution and the effects it had on the family unit. The main point of this article is to address the role of women in society and the slow evolution towards equal rights as well as its effects on the modern family unit.

Encyclopedia Britannica's article about the women's movement in the United States offers insight to the movement's history and evolution. One of the catalysts it discusses is Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" which wrote about the suburban housewife's boredom and lack of fulfillment even though they have been educated that they had a nice house, children and husbands. The article also explains how the National Organization for Women (NOW) was created due to the slow understanding that Women needed a liberation group of their own equivalent to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. There is a paragraph about the movement's successes such as the backing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which granted Women access to jobs in every corner of the U.S. economy.

This website is a very interesting place to read the timeline of the American women's rights movement. It goes all the way back to 1848 up to today. We can see various key events of the movement which slowly led up to the formation of Planned Parenthood as well as the FDA approval of birth control and the legalization of abortion. It is a very good resource to see how the movement evolved as well as the timeline of each important milestone achieved along the process all the way to 2009.

Even though farmers suffered from low prices, many were still in better shape than city dwellers. Farmers could at least grow their own food unlike people in the cities. Farmers banded together like a labor union to prevent various products like milk from reaching towns and cities in order to raise the prices. The effort did not really have any effect on prices. The government stepped in to pass a bill to help the farmers to reduce production and surplus products. Limits on sizes of crops and herds that farmers could produce were set and farmers that agreed to limit production were paid subsidies.

In 1937, several smaller steelmakers refused to sign union contracts providing workers with basic working conditions. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee organized a strike against these small steelmakers. The Chicago Police, protecting the wealthy interest confronted the strikers and fired shots into the crowd killing ten demonstrators.

This is a comprehensive photo gallery of images from the Dust Bowl. It shows in great detail and visualizes the hardships that farmers faced during the Great Depression as the weather prevented agriculture. The dust storms are very well documented in these photos.

This site discusses the life of two hundred and fifty thousand teenage "hoboes" who left home because they felt they were a burden to their families. It describes how some teenagers looked for adventure while others searched for jobs. All were searching for a better life. Education was not an option for these children during the depression so they had to "ride the rails" to find employment.

This PBS site about the Jim Crow era shows the very interesting side of how the Supreme Court basically had a crucial role in the establishment, maintenance and the end of Segregation and Jim Crow laws in the US. Presidents did not challenge these laws due in part that some of them agreed with the white supremacy ideology themselves. Congress was largely silent since they did not want to alienate the southern states again.

This site has a few more examples of Jim Crow laws across various states in the US. It also has a reference to the timeline of the segregation period in the US. While we remember that there was segregation in the US, it is sometimes hard to imagine how restrictive this period was until we read examples of different laws in different places. All based on the supreme court statement of "Separate but Equal." When reading these laws, I couldn't help but think of all the restrictions that still exist these days on other communities.

This article gives a good brief history of the Jim Crow laws passed around the united states after the civil war. I found it very interesting that right after the civil war, african americans had a great deal of freedoms in the south and only after the withdrawal of north's troops and a supreme court decision that blacks and whites could be "separate but equal" that the situation got inherently worse over the next twenty years. Not only segregation but voter limits as well as social mobility laws were passed which significantly affected civil rights based on white supremacy ideology.

This short essay explains why the NAACP decided to use Rosa Parks' case to advance the Civil Rights movement rather than others before her. Parks was not the first to refuse to give up her seat to a white person, but she was a good candidate for the fight. As in everything political, image is everything. Parks had a better image than a poor unwed pregnant teen or a poor high school dropout working as a maid.

Did you know that Rosa Parks was not the first woman to refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger? This link is the biography of Claudette Colvin who at the age of fifteen (That's right, 15) refused to give up her seat for a white passenger in Montgomery Alabama. The reason her arrest was not used by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was because of her age and the fact that she got pregnant around the same time she got arrested. Claudette's incident happened nine months before the better known Rosa Parks incident.