determined by basically international grain markets because that flower was shipped long distances around the country and even around the 1850s, even out to california. so the products traveled far. but for the own use, the pork products, everybody raised hogs for themselves and corn was for their own use. this area, by the 1820s and up to the civil war, was -- it was no longer the frontier by that time period. it was a well-settled thriving farm area. the economy improving all of the time and more mills being built all of the type. more land being put under cultivation. so people were certainly aware of the -- the discussions going on and the problems within the country, most of them concerning slavery. but they probably felt that they wouldn't be effected by things like that. certainly in the 1820s, they would have felt safe and no one

could have forecasted at that time the problem that the whole country and definitely the valley would face some 40 years later. there were a lot of community. for example, when the main part of the house was built, this is a nice log house, that would be a community event. you might have four corner men responsible for the notching of the logs and everything else. but the entire community would take part. much like a modern barn raising amongst the ommish and other folks because they would catch up on news and do some courting and get together and socialize. so the community was definitely much more involved in things like that and these folks are lutheran and they went to the local lutheran church, raiders lutheran church in rockingham county and that would form their community events through the church. but they would also be form

projects maybe when someone was bringing in a crop, folks would share that -- you know, share some of the duties in return for help from that family for some other job on the farm. not everybody went to school. in 1820s, 30s, 40s here in the valley and somewhat later, school would be definitely a community thing, where it may be sefrm farm families and a local farm would donate a acre, half acre of his property and then several families would get together and hire someone, a teacher, to come and that teacher would generally board with one of those farm families and they would be paid by not very much, not very well. but they would get their room and board by one of the farm families and so they would live in the community. but not all children got to go to school. and if they were going to school, they wouldn't go to school in the springtime, when it is time for planning and in the fall when it is time for harvesting. so more of a wintertime thing.

and we do have an 1840s run-room schoolhouse which is just outside of the window of the parlor from the valley as well. my name is andrew richardson and i'm the director of education at the front ear culture museum and we're standing in an 1840s era single room schoolhouse. the children would attend school often year round. but it was irregular since most were farmer's kids and they were needed on the farms. the typical school day was from 9:00 to 5:00 with often a large break in between for lunch. they usually went home for lunch instead of eating here. and the busiest times of the year would have been outside of the busiest times of a farmer's life. so during the summer, an our school calendar today, follows that. it was the slowest time in the schoolhouse but busiest time on the farm. but then in late fall, or beginning in fall, and then through the spring, was your

busiest time in the schoolhouse. this was a schoolhouse geared toward farmer's kids of all ages. there was no grade system. children from maybe as young as 6 and 7, all the way up to maybe the upper teenage would attend throughout the year. and the students were divided amongst each other. boys on one side and girls on the other. but throughout the day, they would actually move around based on their skills. and they would be taught the basics of reading and writing, arithmetic, probably a little bit of geography and history and things like that. this was not a public school. at the time period we're talking about, it was before virginia instituted public schools in the 1870s. this was a privately funded school by the faups in a community. so often it was called a community school. the supplies, most were provided by the individual parents of their school children. the funding for the school and

for the school master was often a collection amongst the families to pay to build the structure and to hire a school mast tore come and keep inside of it. sometime this is was a farm who are got together with neighbors and they collectively paid for it and one would teach it. the man who started this schoolhouse taught his children and some neighbors children. they often would have to hire outside of the community and they would bring in a young man who might have some formal education, sometimes not. and it was a low paying job. and so often the school masters were irregular. they might not stay throughout the year and it often might be during a down semester for a college student or it might be somebody who answered a newspaper ad looking for pay for an amount of time. so when i mentioned earlier that the school year was often all year round, there is no guarantee there is actually someone teaching in it all year. it was very irregular for the students because of the farm

life, but also very irregular because it was often hard to keep someone employed in the schoolhouse. sometimes it is a shock to people that public schools does not begin as early as they thought they did. and it was state by state. and most of the southern states, they were instituted after the civil war. but it is a shock that people dent realize that public schools have been around for not that long, actually. this was a very typical schoolhouse found in the shenandoah valley, especially in the mid-atlantic states. typically you are finding a man teaching in it. one of the reasons, of course, was that men had more opportunities back then and therefore more education than women typically. but it had a lot to do with the corporal punishment. so hear accounts of men teaching in the early to mid 19th srnts because they wanted a firm hand in charge of a lot of students. but community schools like this, schoolhouses were found a lot in

agricultural or rural areas simply because the population couldn't support much larger school. they did have especially in towns and cities, you did find multiple room schoolhouses but out on the countryside where the families are clustered together in little communities, it is best just to have a single-room schoolhouse. the students have pro vied their own slate boards and pen and ink when they started using that. books are hard to come by in the sense there are plenty of them, there are a lot of textbooks back then, but books in general are more expensive and often the school master is the only one that might have a text book that he'll use to teach from. students were in charge of their own recess. they didn't -- so there was no gym class, to no toys or equipment were provided for that. instruction, it was very oral. so students are often having to

recite or memorize things and present to the class in front of everyone. not a lot of say like homework or work sheets were given out. rather it was assignments that were -- where you are practicing ello cuse or handwriting on paper but not a lot of things being turned in. it was proving yourself in front of others and in front of the school master. this house, that we're standing in now, is built in the 1840s. there are accounts of one existing about 50 years earlier. often these one room schoolhouses were incorporated into the public school system, but often replaced pretty quickly -- as transportation improved and school districts were formed. but some were used for quite a while. my name is megan sullivan and i'm an interpreter here at

the museum working in the exhibit, the 1850s american runner. the family that lives here were the bargers in the county, they came from western germany which is where we represent our german farm so the ryanland area. they would have traveled down the shenandoah valley and settled on a piece of land they got from a land agent. and they got approximately 225 acres of land, from them, and they divide that up based on what they need for cash purposes and subsistence. the house itself, the room that we're standing in, the hall and the room above it were the first original log cabin built by the family in 1838 and ten years later they add on the kitchen and dining and which is the restore and they add on the porches and the front and back and put the siding on the front and back and making it a nice big house. the family size itself will include a mom and dad, parent,

and then aproxtly six to ten children. so a fairly large family size. and if they had the means, the family might own a slave or rent one and that slave will also sleep inside of the house. this farm came with a springhouse, which is a stone building, it has -- it is a spring that comes from underground and the family collected that water in a trough and that spring water that comes underground is very cold so not only is that your source of water but also your refrigerator too, storage for like milk and cheese. it would also have a wash house. so direct access to that spring water, to wash clothes, a meat house where they store a lot of pork products like bacon and sausage and ham. we have a produce shed, which is where you store wood so it stays dry. but also vegetables and fruits that you are harvesting from

your land. we have a tobacco barn that this family would have used to harvest maybe a little bit of tobacco. it is not a huge cash crop but it does supplement income. our hen house with turkeys and chickens an ben the barn, where you are thrushing your wheat and your hay, storing the grain and storing your animals in the wintertime. typically, men and boys will be out in the field taking care of the major crash crop. they will be in charge of slaughtering the animals, of that major cash crop and be in charge of slaughtering animals whereas women will be in charge of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes. men will be the ones to take that major cash crop, the wheat, to the market to the mill to have it sold. they'll be going to town to have those products kind of appraised and get money for the family.

men will make tools for the farm, repair tools. women will quilt and sew, take care of children while they're not in school, so those kinds of tasks. they're really kind of delineated based off of spheres of the farm. the house is kind of seen as the domestic sphere. then you extend that about five feet and that's the woman's area of work. outside of that area is the work space for the man, the fields, the barn, and kind of harder labor is out there is for the men. this house comes from a county which is about an hour and a halfish drive south of roanoke. they're about average for where they come from. if you compare it to other farms in the shenandoah valley, this

family would seem poorer. the railroad is going to reach that family sooner than this house. it just takes awhile for it to march down the shenandoah valley. because of the differences in economic status across the shenandoah valley, that home can have plastered walls whereas we are using whitewash on the walls in this house. the 1820s house also has a cast iron wood stove that they can use to heat up a room whereas this house is still using standard fireplace for heating. and that's going to be -- just location is the major determining factor on economic status there as well as just the family choices. perhaps they didn't want the newest things. they were comfortable with open

hearth cooking and were just happy with that. 1820s house is kind of showing a second or third generation family in america whereas this 1850s house is showing third or fourth generation. they're more removed from that old world country that they came from. the frontier at this point in america in the 1850s is going to rest more in nebraska and kansas. some families are still getting all the way over to california. so the frontier is more out west, but we're still showing a family in the 1850s farm living in the shenandoah valley, but the way they live could be very similar to how people were living on that new frontier in america towards the west. the industrial revolution is allowing people to have access to more goods. machines are allowing you to cut

straight boards essentially, which really shapes how you can build your own house. now you can have clapboard on the outside of your house as opposed to just building a log cabin, which had been previous. so those changes in technology shape how the frontier can be lived on. probably the biggest national political issue in the 1850s is slavery. that's definitely going to impact anyone across the nation. i mean, they're going to have things like a slave reward poster that they're going to find in their local tavern or their grocery store that they can pick up and take off the wall. for a family living in the s shenandoah valley, $200 might be a viable reward they want. the shenandoah valley is a little more ambiguous about how

they feel about slavery. some families are okay with it and they will rent a slave. others are very against it and are more ablish nolishnist in t thinking. reward poster like this is coming directly out of an event like the compromise of 1850. you have to capture those slaves that are escaping their owners in the south, and if you happen to see the guy that's advertised in this poster, this family might see that as a good economic opportunity. capture him and you get that reward and benefit your family, so slavery is definitely going to be entering your home personally, even if you don't

own slaves. you're going to be bombarded with messages like this from slave owners. then your newspapers as well will have -- your newspapers will have advertisements for slave auctions. and they will detail the reports of these national news and politics in the 1850s. the nation is really becoming more attuned to these national issues, so slavery is definitely impacting a family even on the frontier. education is a little spotty on the frontier. if your community can afford to build its own school, then your children might have a chance of being educated. if your family has a history and background of educated their family members, then it could be passed down just through family members and your children could be educated. but without that public school system that we really kind of celebrate today, it's a little bit uneven across the nation.

but most children are going to have a rudimentary knowledge of how to read and how to write. so a newspaper might be accessible to them so they can understand the new politics of the day. technology once again is allowing newspapers to become more accessible to families and therefore that's going to kind of do a whole push and pull factor and inspire a rise in literacy as a result. kind of cause-effect relationship. more newspapers and books available, more people are going to want to know how to read them, so a rise in literacy. the big bullet point and theme that we try to tell people about the 1850s farm is that it is the last chapter of this museum. if you're thinking about it as a big book, the big message that you want to take away is that people coming into america are slowly blending all of those cultures together, the english,

irish, german, west african, and native american. by the 1850s, you have the beginnings of that american culture as a tangible thing. you can see that in the way that they're living in this house, the foods they might be eating, the house they might construct for thems. this family is a german immigrant family, but by the end of the 1850s they're going to be speaking english. in terms of their food, sitting down to dinner with them, yeah, they're going to have saurkraut now and then, but they'll mix in peas. corn is definitely going to be a staple of their diets. native americans are teaching europeans how to cultivate it and grow it, so they're going to combine that staple grain with

foods they would have traditionally eaten in europe. you have a native plant to north america and bread, which is very common in europe, coming together to create corn bread. even in food and culinary practices. in terms of architecture, the room we're standing in resembles very much an english parlor. we have dishes on display to show fancy china. an english influence on architecture to create a room for guests and to display your fanciest goods, but we're right next to a very german bedroom. having the mom and dad of this household sleeping on the first floor is a very german tradition. that master bedroom is right next to this english parlor. then we have porches on the front and back of this house, which are a west african influence on american architecture as well. the house itself is just a whole

big story of how these cultures are coming together and blending to create this new american culture that we still add to today. it's not finished by any means, but this is kind of where we're at by the 1850s. >> thanks for visiting the frontier culture museum >> this is the second of a two-part series on the frontier culture museum. part one explored before they came to america. you can watch this by visiting our website at c-span.org/history. each week, american history tv's "reel america" brings you shows that provide context to today's issues. "afghanistan 1982 -- the struggle for freedom continues" is a report on the soviet

invasion of afghanistan. the 50-minute film depicts afghan armed resistance through the occupation. united nations protesting soviet action and documents many alleged war crimes. interviews with afghan officials, resistance fighters, scholars, doctors, and human rights workers tell the story of the first three years of the war. ♪

♪ >> since 1979, the soviet union, in violation of every convention protect the rights of a sovereign nation has tried to impose its will on the people of

afghanistan. despite the death and destruction wrought by the soviets, the afghan struggle for freedom continues. ♪ >> afghanistan is an ancient country -- a rich mosaic of traditions shape by islam.

geography has placed it at a crossroads of trade and throughout the 19th century, it was the object of imperialist rivalries. since modern times, afghanistan has outlined a careful policy of nonalignment and has maintained peaceful relations with the neighbor to the north. four years, afghanistan accepted development aid from the soviet union to grade its agrarian economy. a network of modern roads was built to link its major cities to the soviet order. this aid was not without its consequences. only years later did this become obvious. a former official in the afghan

government who, like others in this report, cannot be identified in order to protect the family and friends recalls the early days of soviet aid to his country. >> initially, people found some advantages in these assistance programs. some areas were developed, roads were made, and factories constructed. but after two or three decades, we found out the russians had bad intentions from the beginning. apparently, it was aid and assistance, but in reality, it was a program of exploitation. they exploited the country economically. and we found their ill intentions when the military cu -- coup of 1978 to place. this was a time we found out they wanted to change the country to a communist country. in reality, it would be one of their satellites. a country that would literally follow their instructions and behavior.

the operation of this regime and the way they were killing the people, the way they were imprisoning people, persecuting people, and torturing people all showed these were planned. as a result, people could not tolerate this and resistance started in different parts. resistance was local and was initially wiped out quickly but people did not have up and continued to resist. these resistant pocket screw and finally, they found it was too difficult for the government to cope with this. >> recently, radio free kabul started broadcasting and has given isolated bans with news

about struggle against the soviet invaders. one of the founders of this clandestine radio station is following events in his country and afghanistan. mr. bukovsky: what actually happened with afghanistan and the movement there is typical of the soviet pattern of negotiations. no matter how friendly the neighboring country, it still works internally, getting more support from one part of the political spectrum to the advantage of another. they are committed to support the forces of migration and it appears this group is not popular in their own country and the only way to keep it empower is i very strong -- is by very strong support from the soviet union.

>> when it looked as though the communist government might look unreliable or be deposed, the soviets moved. in late december, 1979, in their greatest show of force since the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia, they airlifted thousands of soldiers into the kabul area, and moved tens of thousands more overland across the border into northern afghanistan. -- mr. bukovsky: one of the important points, why they cannot leave this country alone is they cannot tolerate the collapse of so-called friendly government on their own borders because then it might be a dangerous precedent.

it may trigger a chain reaction in this region that consists of 130 different nationalities, most of them occupying -- occupied at some point by the soviet union. >> four days after the soviet invasion began, a radio message supposedly from radio kabul but actually from the soviet union announced a mean had been sentenced to death. and another had been unanimously elected as the new president. >> what proof existed that the soviets came on their invitation? they were not in kabul in afghanistan when the soviets invaded on december 27.

he was brought the very next day after the assassination and with the next hour, practically, between the soviet union and afghanistan, things started to intensify. soon, there's no evidence that it helped. it was not by the soviets themselves. >> the russian invasion of afghanistan had vague impacts on the attitudes of developing countries. for years, they were preaching they were supporting developed in countries was supporting them to maintain their freedom. but, when they invaded afghanistan, people found russia is not a reliable friend. it is difficult to rely on russians. the same way they invade afghanistan, they could invade

their country also. >> the world could not simply stand by and permit the soviet union to commit this act of aggression with impunity. 50 nations addition to the united nations to condemn the ussr and demand the immediate withdrawal of all soviet troops from afghanistan. >> the soviet invasion does not represent anything but imperialistic intentions aimed at establishing and consolidating rule against the peaceful afghan people. >> nothing can fully convey the deep sense of disappointment and disillusionment which the government and people of nigeria felt when they heard the news of soviet armed in intervention in

afghanistan, a third world, developing, unaligned country that poses no immediate threat to the peace and security of the soviet union. >> the countries of the third world and developing nations have leave perhaps optimistically that the time has passed when the major powers would send their shoulder -- send their soldiers and tanks into small countries and warlike aggression had been ruled out as legitimate conduct in international life. but they were mistaken. >> most third world nations stated unequivocal opposition to soviet aggression in afghanistan.

the final vote calling for soviet troop withdrawal was an overwhelming 104 in favor and 18 against. again, at meetings of the 42 nation islamic conference, strong condemnation of the soviet union was virtually unanimous and called for the complete withdrawal of soviet troops. again in november, 1981, the nonaligned nations sponsored a resolution in the un's general assembly calling upon the soviet union to stop its aggression against the people of afghanistan. the foreign minister of malaysia stated what was happening in afghanistan was cause for concern for us all. >> particularly the small on developing nations who are anxious to free ourselves from external power domination and influence and hard-won independence on the basis of nonalignment.