The State Normal Schools: Teaching Teachers and Others

In view of their complex, if not complicated, information systems, computers and advanced technology seemingly snatched from the next century, Pennsylvania’s “modern” state universities evolved from what were originally called “normal” schools. During the last century, both educational and social traditions have changed drastically; in fact, nineteenth century...
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Behind the Battle of Gettysburg: American Nursing Is Born

The battle of Gettys­burg cannot only be characterized as the turning point of the Civil War, for it was so much more. During the war, with casualties high and the need undeniable, women entered hospitals to care for the wounded, but – shockingly­ – were made to feel unwelcome. These resolute women, though, stood fast, and pro­ceeded to establish a new profession. When the war...
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Mifflin County: The Crossroads of the Commonwealth

Mifflin County will celebrate its two hundredth birth­day on September 19, during a customarily beau­tiful month when glowing foliage sweeps over four hun­dred and thirty-one square miles of farms, small towns and wooded mountains. Ex­tending from Bear Gap to Kistler Borough through rug­ged and scenic valleys to the banks of the Juniata River, it’s just fifteen miles from the Seven...
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Philadelphia Thirtieth Ward, 1940-1960

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, little did black residents in Philadelphia’s Thirtieth Ward suspect their neigh­borhood would change dramatically and commence a steady regression toward an economically depressed area.   I The ward’s grandest and most exciting days were achieved during the Second World War. The war placed money into the hands of...
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His Eye Was On the Positive

Ask a well-informed Philadelphian who it is that photo­graphs local society, and the answer will probably be a resounding “Fabian Bach­rach.” Few people know that for more than thirty years – from 1936 to 1967 – a Black photographer, John W. Mosley, was the photographer for mid­dle and professional class Black Philadelphians, and that virtually every significant social...
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In King’s Shadow: Bayard Rustin and the 1963 March on Washington

On Wednesday, August 28, 1963, a quarter-million African American and white civil rights activists walked the one-mile length of the National Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to rally for better jobs and freedom for the nation s blacks. The signature event of the March on Washington occurred in the late afternoon when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his...
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