Like Civil Rights Movement in Context, this assessment gauges students’ ability to contextualize two historical documents and place them in the correct chronological order. Document A is an article titled "The Recent Strikes" published in the North American Review in 1877. Document B is from Franklin Roosevelt's statement on the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935. The assessment draws on students' knowledge about the American labor movement but in a way that goes beyond the simple recall of facts and dates. Students must show that they have a broad understanding of how the labor movement changed over time and demonstrate the ability to use knowledge about the past to place the historical documents in context.
In this assessment, students who correctly contextualize the documents will see that Document A, which describes the President deploying troops to quell labor unrest, was likely written before Document B, which discusses gains made later in the labor movement, like collective bargaining and the notion of workers’ rights.
