History Through a Lens Poster Series Education Posters
for world and American history classrooms and home schoolers.

The Railroad: East and West
May 10, 1869

First Flight

Poster Text: Orville and Wilbur Wright chose the windy, sandy beaches of the Outer Banks, islands off the coast of North Carolina, to test their gliders and their first airplane. The two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, made Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, famous when their airplane took off and flew under its own power – the first time a motorized airplane actually flew. This picture records the first flight of the Wright Brothers' plane on December 17, 1903. Orville was at the controls. Wilbur ran alongside holding on to a wind to keep the plane balanced, and he let go as the plane rose in the air. Wilbur had set up the camera, and the picture was taken by John Daniels, a local man who came by to help the brothers. On this first flight the plane stayed in the air for twelve seconds and flew 120 feet. The Wright brothers made four flights that day; the longest light lasted 59 seconds.
The Wright airplane was the first great invention that ws fully documented by photography. Wilbur and Orville had taken up the photography as a hobby before they became interested in aviation. During the four years they worked to build their airplane, the found photography to be a valuable tool. They used photos to record their experiments and to analyze their mistakes. And, in the end, a picture proved they had made the first machine to fly under its own power.

Child Labor

• Images of Labor posters
• child development posters

Migrant Mother

Poster Text: Photographer Dorothea Lange took this picture in March 1936 when the United States as in the depths of the Great Depression. This was a time when millions of Americans had no jobs and many businessess failed. The photo, of a poor woman and some of her children, came to be called “Migrant Mother.” The woman had picked peas in California, but the crop had frozen in the fields, leaving her unemployed. She is called a “migrant” because she went from place to place looking for work. She and her seven children were living on the frozen vegetables they gathered from the fields and on birds the children managed to kill. When the picture was taken, the woman had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. The photo shows the misery and degree of the depression. The photo appeared in a California newspaper, and it was then in a book that Dorothea Lange wrote with her husband.
Dorothea Lange was working for a government agency called the Farm Security Administration, FSA, when she photographed “Migrant Mother.” President Franklin Roosevelt had set up the FSA to provide loans and other help to poor farmers. The FSA hired photographers to take pictures that showed the suffering in the rural areas – the rural slums, ruined farms, and migrant camps. The FSA then sent these photos to news publications. The pictures helped convince Congress to support the programs President Roosevelt proposed to assist poor people.

• famous women posters
• Oklahoma posters
• Story of “The Picture” as told by Florence Owen's grandson.

Hindenburg Disaster
May 6, 1937

• aviation posters

Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima

Joe Rosenthal's photograph of Marines Ira Hayes, Mike Strank, Rene Gagnon, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and U.S. Navy corpsman John Bradley, raising the U.S. flag atop Mt. Suribachi on the fourth day of the Battle of Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945, is possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.

• WW II posters
• Flag posters
• Historic Documents / Images

Survivors at Ebensee

• Holocaust posters
• Elie Wiesel posters

September 23, 1957 Integration at Central High School (Little Rock, AR)

• Black History posters
• 1997 - 40th Anniversary Desegregation Observances
• September 2007 - Commemorating 50 Years of Integration
• State of Arkansas posters

Lee Harvey Oswald Shot
November 24, 1963

• JFK

Escape from Vietnam
April 29-30, 1975

• more Vietnam War Era posters