Verbena Trágica is a 1939 film directed by Charles Lamont. The film was made in 1938 in the Spanish language only, unusual for the time but most likely due to the film's themes of adultery and revenge.
From Stump to Ship is an amateur industrial film by Alfred K. Ames, former State Senator and owner of the Machias Lumber Company, in Machias, Maine as well as by Dr. Howard Kane of Washington, DC. The half-hour 16mm film was shot over the winter of 1930 in the logging woods and shows logging in the forest with hand tools and horses, then moves to the spring log drive, with loggers using peaveys to break up log jams on icy rivers as the logs are moved from the forest to the mill. Detailed views of mill work, changing the bandsaw, and making shingles. Lumber is loaded onto schooners in Machias for transport to New York. The film was originally silent, with a typed script which Ames read aloud when he showed the film. In 1985, with funds from the Maine Humanities Council, the narration was recorded with the film. The film is distributed by Northeast Historic Film, in Bucksport, Maine. Footage was included in the compilation documentary Woodsmen and River Drivers, Another Day, Another Era which also interviewed the surviving woodsmen of the Machias Lumber Company.
It is a 1927 American silent film directed by Clarence G. Badger and Josef von Sternberg, and starring Clara Bow. It is based on the serialised novella of the same name, republished in "It" and Other Stories (1927), by Elinor Glyn, who adapted the story and appears in the film as herself.
Talking Union is a 1941 album by the Almanac Singers: Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. It is an enduring collection of working man's anthems that have been passed down through generations of laborers. Liner notes include an introduction by Pete Seeger and song explanations. In 2010 it was selected by the Library of Congress as an addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish descent. The history of Swedish Americans dates back to the early colonial times, with notable migration waves occurring in the 19th and early 20th centuries and approximately 1.2 million arriving between 1865–1915. These immigrants settled predominantly in the Midwest, particularly in states like Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, in similarity with other Nordic and Scandinavian Americans. Populations also grew in the Pacific Northwest in the states of Oregon and Washington at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Big Trail is a 1930 American pre-Code Western early widescreen film shot on location across the American West starring 23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh. It is the final completed film to feature Tyrone Power Sr. before his death in 1931, as well as his only sound role.
Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 independent film written, directed and produced by Julie Dash and is the first feature film directed by an African-American woman to be theatrically released in the United States. Set in 1902, it tells the story of three generations of Gullah women in the Peazant family on Saint Helena Island as they prepare to migrate off the island, out of the Southern United States, and into the North.
Mom and Dad is a 1945 American sexploitation film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation film maker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre of "sex hygiene" films. Although it faced numerous legal challenges and was condemned by the National Legion of Decency, it became one of the highest-grossing films of the 1940s.
The American Jewess (1895–1899) described itself as "the only magazine in the world devoted to the interests of Jewish women." It was the first English-language periodical targeted to American Jewish women, covering an evocative range of topics that ranged from women's place in the synagogue to whether women should ride bicycles. The magazine also served as the publicity arm for the newly founded National Council of Jewish Women. The American Jewess was a periodical “published in Chicago and New York between 1895 and 1899” and represented the ideas found among liberal American Jews at the time. It “was the first Jewish women's journal edited by women that were independent of any organizational or religious ties,” along with the “first English-language journal independently edited by women.” The magazine printed stories about politics, famous individuals, aesthetics, and new books. There was also a section for children. The magazine engrained its contents with Zionist views and feminist politics. There were 46 issues published throughout four and a half years, with a circulation totaling approximately 31,000.
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board, whose members are appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry form a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress.
Americanization is the process of an immigrant to the United States becoming a person who shares American culture, values, beliefs, and customs by assimilating into the American nation. This process typically involves learning the American English language and adjusting to American culture, values, and customs. It can be considered another form of, or an American subset of Anglicization.
Little Caesar is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film distributed by Warner Brothers, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In 2000, Little Caesar was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation. The film tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organized crime until he reaches its upper echelons. The storyline, based on real life Mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano, was adapted from the novel of the same name by William R. Burnett. Little Caesar was Robinson's breakthrough role and immediately made him a major film star. The film is often listed as one of the first fully-fledged gangster films and continues to be well received by critics. The Library of Congress maintains a print.
Northeast Historic Film (NHF) is a regional moving image archive located in Bucksport, Maine. It is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing film and video related to the people of Northern New England.
The Task Force on New Americans is an interagency initiative to help immigrants learn English, embrace the common core of American civic culture, and fully become American. It was created in June 2006 by President George W. Bush. Established within the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Michael Chertoff serves as Chair of the Task Force. Membership includes representatives from 12 Cabinet-level departments and a technical working committee of eight additional federal agencies. Alfonso Aguilar, Chief of the Office of Citizenship at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), serves as Chair of the Task Force's technical committee. The Task Force has worked to develop interagency initiatives to help immigrants settle in their new country and maximize the use of federal resources in promoting integration. By providing technical resources to communities and organizations, encouraging volunteerism, developing effective training methods, conducting targeted research efforts, and providing recommendations to the President, the Task Force has sought to encourage successful immigrant assimilation in a comprehensive manner. In December 2022 the Biden Administration announced it would relaunch the White House Task Force on New Americans.
The Recruit Educational Center was a program started by the US War Department in May 1919 at Camp Upton. It provided language instruction and military training for non-English-speaking and illiterate military inductees. The Recruit Educational Center claimed a widened social role for the U.S. Armed Forces during peacetime. It also intervened in the era's virulent debates over eugenics, national identity, and the place of immigrants in American society.
The Daughter of Dawn is a 1920 American silent Western film. It is 83 minutes long and is one of few silent films made, along with In the Land of the Head Hunters and Before the White Man Came (1920), with an entirely Native American cast.
The Nippu Jiji, later published as the Hawaii Times, was a Japanese-English language newspaper based in Honolulu, Hawai'i. Established as the Yamato Shimbun by Shintaro Anno in 1895, the paper began as a six-page semi-weekly printed on a lithograph machine, and changed hands four times before being taken over by Yasutaro "Keiho" Soga in 1905. Soga changed the name of the paper to the Nippu Jiji, Japanese for "newspaper for telling timely news," on November 3, 1906, and under his direction the paper was expanded to a twelve-page daily printed on a rotary press with a circulation of 15,000.
Making an American Citizen is a 1912 silent comedy short film by the pioneering French woman filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché, produced at Solax Studios. Originally advertised as "educational drama" or "educational subject," it grapples with the theme of immigration, assimilation, and of becoming a "good American." The film carries an explicit feminist message: the lopsided power dynamics in an immigrant couple becomes increasingly equalized, as the couple spends more time in America. The wife learns to stand up to her husband's abuses, while the husband is repeatedly coerced by other American citizens into treating his wife as his equal, until he is able to internalize the ethos of the Progressive Era. The film works to allay anxieties over Eastern European immigrant men bringing "Old World" patriarchal values and practices to the "New World."
Jane Maud Campbell was a librarian known for being an early advocate for multiculturalism in libraries through her service to immigrant and minority populations. Campbell believed in cultural pluralism–that there was no one "American culture"–so while she supported immigrants' learning English and eventually becoming citizens, she was supportive of them maintaining their own cultures and interests.
We Americans is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by Edward Sloman and starring George Sidney, Patsy Ruth Miller, and George J. Lewis. An extremely slender young Andy Devine plays an early small role as Pat O'Dougal.
