‘World War I and America’ Traveling Exhibit

In conjunction with its Great War Commemoration Lecture Series, the Angelo State University Department of History is co-hosting a special “World War I and America” traveling exhibit that will be on public display April 1-24 at Fort Concho.

The exhibit will be open for free public viewing in Fort Concho Barracks 2 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sundays. It consists of six panel displays: 

• Panel 1:  “WWI and America” provides an introduction to the rest of the exhibit, giving an overview of themes. 
• Panel 2:  “The U.S.: An Industrial Nation in the World” sets the stage, giving a brief overview of the United States in the early 20th century. 
• Panel 3:  “The Road to War” covers American isolationism at the beginning of the war and discusses some of the steps toward American involvement as the war progressed, including points like the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmermann telegram.
• Panel 4:  “The Experience of War: Why We Fight” briefly discusses the different experiences of African-Americans and recent immigrants as soldiers. The panel also discusses the different tones in soldiers’ letters home as opposed to their diaries, and provides quotations from writings by nurses, soldiers and W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Panel 5:  “The Home Front: Selling Unity, Suppressing Dissent” shows propaganda posters and discusses the use of propaganda, as well as legislation like the Espionage Act.
• Panel 6:  “Coming Home” covers the end of the war, including its impact on the American home front and the economic and social situations soldiers were returning to. The panel discusses the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and shows an image of President Harding and the monument at Arlington Cemetery.

The exhibit is a component of “World War I and America,” a two-year national initiative of Library of America presented in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the National World War I Museum and Memorial, and other organizations, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities