In pioneer Arizona, among the best places to experience the performing arts were in the mining towns. Striking it rich meant having disposable income and miners, like the well-heeled of the Gilded Age, wanted to demonstrate their sophistication with culture. From the early popular music of ragtime and minstrelsy evolved orchestras, operas and glee clubs […]
Beginning with a short overview of the epic 1804 journey of Lewis and Clark, Weber then focuses on the little known history of Sacagawea's son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was born on the expedition, adopted by William Clark, and went on to become one of the most interesting and foremost figures in early […]
Arizona’s New Deal built sidewalks, post offices, provided school lunches and outhouses. It produced roadside shrines and monuments to encourage tourism, check dams and mud stock tanks to support Arizona ranchers, as well as golf courses and pools for recreation. The federal investment in the built and cultural landscape of 1930s Arizona and the nation […]
In 1933, at the nadir of the Great Depression, the CCC was born. The program was designed to help unemployed and untrained young men learn new skills and earn money to support their families. CCCers fervently claim that the skill-building experiences forever changed their lives. These men built the roads, trails, picnic areas, ranger stations, […]
Sedona is known for its colorful rocks, but how did this striking landscape come to be? Join Ranney on a thrilling trip back in time when the red rocks were part of a coastal plain, a Sahara-like desert, and warm, tropical seas. Learn how the area became sculpted into a maze of breathtaking buttes, spires, […]
Join Arizona Humanities and la Phoenikera Writers' Guild for a reading and discussion with scholar, author and advocate Dr. Richard Benson II for the release of his new book, Fighting for Our Place in the Sun: Malcolm X and the Radicalization of the Black Student Movement, 1960-1973. According to the publisher, Benson "not only seeks […]
Ever since the Grand Canyon became grand, tourists have been flocking to Arizona to see the sights and experience the unique landscape and indigenous cultures. This presentation covers the whole state over more than a century. From 1880s Grand Canyon stagecoach and mule rides, the Fred Harvey railroad era (Harvey Girls and Indian Detours), auto […]
Charles Lindbergh is best known for his famous 1927 flight across the Atlantic Ocean. But few realize that Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, played a brief but important role in archaeology. In 1929 they teamed up with noted archaeologist Alfred Kidder to conduct an unprecedented aerial photographic survey of Southwest prehistoric sites and geologic features […]
Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. was a multi-dimensional man all too often remembered solely for his “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the March on Washington in 1963. Yet, there was another Dr. King that emerged after the Selma to Montgomery march and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was this King […]
Throughout history, the ability of a people to survive has been tied to environmental conditions. The skill to predict the seasons was an essential element in the ability to “control” those conditions. Seasonal calendars became the foundation of early cultures for hunting and gathering, planting and harvesting, worshiping and celebrating. The goal of cultural astronomy […]
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Arizona Humanities builds a just and civil society by creating opportunities to explore our shared human experiences through discussion, learning and reflection.
