This project was developed to help your students analyze and interpret primary source materials—photographs—under your direction. Although students can access individual photographs and answer the appropriate questions on their own [view "For Students" page], this site has been designed to be used with your guidance. We encourage you to use the photographs as they fit your needs, but we also want you to think about the ways to use questioning strategies to guide student thinking and get the most from them (and this web site).

	Transportation For most of history, humans have lived in a four-mile-an-hour world. People traveled only as fast as their feet, their animals, or the wind could carry them. This began to change early in the nineteenth century with the introduction of steam power, but the real changes in this area have occurred over the past century with the development of the gasoline-powered engine. Go to Transportation
	Urbanization The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas rather than rural ones. In Virginia, however, this transition did not occur for another thirty years. Moving from the farm to the city involved more than just a change of location. City residents commute to work; they are paid on a regular basis; they measure time with clocks and calendars; and they live close enough to other people to allow for the development of social clubs, baseball teams, and political organizations. Go to Urbanization
	Industrialization This section goes hand-in-hand with the one above. The industrial revolution led to increased migration to the cities, and consequently we deal with the two themes together. It is important to remember, however, that industrialization also occurred in the rural areas that provided the raw materials that fueled American industry. Go to Industrialization
	Women Virginia was one of the last states to grant married women the right to own property in their own names. It was also the last state to ratify the Women's Suffrage Amendment, which it did as a symbolic gesture in 1952. And although they waged a vigorous campaign for women's suffrage, Virginia women were often divided over gender issues as their identities as women were also shaped by race, class, and region. Go to Women
	Rural Life Despite the rapid urbanization that occurred in the early twentieth century, a majority of Virginians lived in rural areas until World War II. Their lives were very different from those of Virginia's urban residents. Agricultural life had its own unique rhythms. And technological change was slower to come to rural areas. For example, while many urban residents had electricity in their homes by 1900, 90 percent of Virginia's farms were still without electric power three decades later. Go to Rural Life
	Education The Virginia Constitution of 1869 mandated that the state operate a public school system. Many elites opposed public education, believing rural children needed only rudimentary instruction in reading and writing. Nonetheless, public schools quickly became popular with the masses and, in the late nineteenth century, proved to be one of the few issue on which many white and black Virginians agreed. Like other facets of Virginia society, public schools remained racially segregated until the 1960s. Go to Education
	Jim Crow to Civil Rights For most of American history, most white Americans believed that they were superior to black Americans. Until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, only a handful of northern states had extended the right to vote to African Americans. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe quickly adopted the racial attitudes that predominated in American society, and laws in both the north and the south reflected those prejudices. It took the modern civil rights movement, often called "America’s Second Reconstruction," to bring full, legal equality. Go to Jim Crow to Civil Rights

Resources

This project was developed to help your students analyze and interpret primary source materials—photographs—under your direction. Although students can access individual photographs and answer the appropriate questions on their own, this site has been designed to be used with your guidance. We encourage you to use the photographs as they fit your needs, but we also want you to think about the ways to use questioning strategies to guide student thinking and get the most from them (and this web site).
View activities

Using the VHS online catalog

Browse more photographs using the VHS online catalog. By clicking on the links below, you will open a new window to the VHS online catalog. We have provided links for searches for all seven topics found within "Teaching with Photographs," but please feel free to explore the catalog and its contents at your leisure.

• Transportation in Virginia
• Urbanization in Virginia
• Industrialization in Virginia
• Women in Virginia
• Rural Life in Virginia
• Education in Virginia
• Civil Rights in Virginia