The American Civil Liberties Union seeks to "defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties" that are afforded to citizens as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. This page from the ACLU site addresses LGBT rights and seeks to allow LGBT individuals to live "free of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity". The history of LGBT civil rights cases goes back to 1936 and continues to this day.

This article from the NY Times site talks about the impact that Betty Friedan's book "The Feminine Mystique" had on altering women's perceptions of their gender roles and their place in American society. While the article is a little lengthy the first page alone offers a great deal of history and statistics concerning the gender gap and its persistence in American culture.

This page is from the World Health Organization web site which provides a wealth of information about a vast number of health and welfare issues under the umbrella of the United Nations. Here the definitions of the terms "sex" and "gender" are discussed. These terms can often be confused and I found this page to offer a clear definition of the two terms.

This page from the Oberlin Collge LGBT Community History site describes the link between the Women's Movement of the early 1970s and lesbianism. The page offers insight into why many women were undergoing huge changes in the way they thought about traditional gender roles and sexuality in the late 60s and early 70s.

This article from The Village Voice recounts the very first Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day Parade (where the image we are discussing this week was taken) and provides interesting information about the way that homosexuals/lesbians were viewed at that time.

The Constitutional Rights Foundation site seeks to educate people about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This page deals with the institution of the welfare system in the U.S.and it's link to the Great Depression era.

The Historical Text Archive website publishes "articles, books, essays and documents on a broad range of historical subjects". This page deals with the rise and fall of the sharecropping system in America. Although the article is lengthy it has a particularly interesting section concerning the plight of sharecroppers during the Depression era .

This pbs.org site focuses on the pbs television series "American Experience". This particular page deals with the Great Depression and goes into detail about the stock market crash which triggered the Depression. It is interesting to read how the "imbalance between the rich and poor" was a primary factor in the stock market crash and how the poor were by far the most affected by it. The piece also talks about how the government intially underestimated the crisis and it took the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to eventually bring about an end to the Depression.

The Encyclopedia of Alabama offers "a reference resource to the history, culture, geography and natural environment" of Alabama. This particular page discusses the history of sharecropping as it evolved from being a way of earning a living for freed slaves to being taken over by "poor whites". It also talks about how sharecroppiing was affected by the Great Depression. This is pertinent to our analysis of the photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs, a sharecroppers wife from the 1930's.

The Modern American Poetry site offers poems and illustrations to students of the arts. This photo essay on The Great Depression provides a pictorial timeline of the major events of the Great Depression. There are several photographs by Walker Evans, the photographer behind the image we are discussing this week. Please note: The original source of these photos- The Library of Congess- was unavailable due to the government shutdown at the time I was trying to access the LOC site.

This CNN.money site combines information from CNN plus Fortune and Money magazines. This article by David Whitford of Fortune magazine goes into some detail about the story behind the photograph we are studying this week. The woman in the photo (taken when she was only 27 years old) is identified as Allie Mae Burroughs. Her son, Charles Burroughs recalls what life was like for him and his family during the Depression years.

The gilderlehrman.org site focuses on American History and is "devoted to the improvement of history education". The site provides tools for both teachers and students to enhance the study of American History. This page contains an article by Susan Ware that talks about women and the Great Depression and the important role played by women in helping their families survive through this time and how little they had to work with in order to do so.

This page on the NBC news website offers a surprising twist to the story of the Civil Rights Movement. It brings up a great point, why is Rosa Parks one of the only women we know about as an icon of that era? Racial equality was being fought for by those in the Civil Rights movement but what about gender equality? This story gives us more to think about when we look at the image of Rosa Parks and the white man on the bus.

This page from the United Tribune website reports the story behind the photo of Rosa Parks that we are studying this week. While I realized that the photo was staged, I did not know that the man seated behind Rosa Parks was a reporter (Nicholas C. Chriss) who worked for the United Press. The page gives some important background information about what the photograph is meant to represent.

This Smithsonian site is a great place to get lots of information about many different subjects-including Rosa Parks arrest for riding in an "unauthorized" area of a bus. The details of the arrest record of Mrs. Parks and the (now historical) copies of her fingerprints together with a detailed diagram of the scene of her "crime" are astonishing to see.

This website gives a comprehensive overview of the event that made Rosa Parks famous; her refusal to continue to follow the established rules that she should sit at the back of the bus. The site not only talks about the event itself but also contains much information about Rosa Parks including a video and biography of this iconic figure.

This site gives detailed information about the actual events that led up to the decision by Rosa Parks to defy the "back of the bus" rule. It also shows a picture of the bus on which this event took place. Interestingly it covers why "busing" was so integral to the whole idea of racial injustice in the South and the reason why the bus boycott was such a symbolic action towards Civil Rights.

This site, while covering Martin Luther King Jr. and his struggles for Civil Rights, also covers the U.S. Supreme Court case Browder v. Gayle of 1956 that was a direct result of the bus boycott started in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus. The Court ruled Alabama's segregated busing was unconstitutional and de-segregated buses began running in Montgomery, Alabama in Dec. 1956

This is a great site for finding out information about African Americans and their history and struggle for Civil Rights. It also gives current information about Black Artists and writers. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is also discussed on this site and an account of the shameful conditions with which African American bus riders were faced and the insults that were thrown at them by their white co-passengers gives us an insight into why the Boycott was such an important battle to win.