Page 152 - 1619 Project Curriculum

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market crash of 1929, Wall Street, W.E.B. Du Bois

Guiding 1. How does the author describe capitalism in the U.S.?
Questions 2. How did slavery in the U.S. contribute to the development of the global
financial industry?
3. What current financial systems reflect practices developed to support
industries built on the work of enslaved people?

4. “Mortgaging the Future” by Mehrsa Baradaran (page 32)

Excerpt “The Union passed the bills so it could establish a national currency in order to
finance the war. The legislation also created the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency (O.C.C.), the first federal bank regulator. After the war, states were
allowed to keep issuing bank charters of their own. This byzantine
infrastructure remains to this day, and is known as the dual banking system.
Among all nations in the world, only the United States has such a fragmentary,
overlapping and inefficient system — a direct relic of the conflict between
federal and state power over maintenance of the slave-based economy of the
South.”

Key Names, bank charters, dual banking system, federal oversight, National Bank Act,
Dates, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (O.C.C.)
Terms

Guiding 1. How are current banking practices in the U.S. influenced by bank
Questions administration and regulation practices developed to fund the Civil
War?
2. How are bank regulation practices established after the Civil War
connected to the 2008 economic crisis in the U.S.?

5. “Good as Gold” by Mehrsa Baradaran (page 35)

Excerpt “At the height of the war, Lincoln understood that he could not feed the troops
without more money, so he issued a national currency, backed by the full faith
and credit of the United States — but not by gold.”

“Lincoln assured critics that the move would be temporary, but leaders who
followed him eventually made it permanent — first Franklin Roosevelt during

These materials were created to support ​The 1619 Project​, published in ​The New York Times Magazine​ August
2019. You can find this and more educational resources at ​www.pulitzercenter.org/1619