Digging for dinosaurs.
To find an op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers before 1970, I went straight to JSTOR.
Search parameters: school teachers and labor and dispute > years 1900 – 1969 > article or review
A lot of articles came up, but a lot of them were also (supposed to be) unbiased reviews of what the labor union was, how it functioned, yada yada … But then I came across an article titled A Newspaperman’s Point of View by Ted Princiotto in Theory into Practice, Vol. 3 No. 4 October 1964. It revolves around the Civil Rights Movement and desegregating schools. It would seem that some people weren’t 100% integrating schools, but they didn’t want their kids going to an integrated school… so debates started, should all schools be integrated, should we build new schools so kids and parents can have a choice?… But even against those who were wishy-washy about their opinion on integrating were those who were staunchly against it. Even teachers would go on strike to try and go against integrating the schools they worked at. Riots broke out and teachers went on strikes to show their disapproval.
Photo from Ted Princiotto's Article in Theory in Practice
It would seem the author of this article, mister Ted Princiotto, was against the outbreak of violence. He doesn’t go into detail about whether or not he thought that in every aspect of Civil Rights, but he did think it was completely unnecessary and damaging to the children and general public when the violence broke out at schools.
For finding the first documented use of solar power in the U.S., I went to the U.S. Department of Energy’s website. They have a lot of awesome information about renewable energy and energy policies, but upon doing a site-wide search, I came across a .pdf file that detailed the history of solar energy.
It would seem that the first documented use of solar power in the United States was by Samuel P. Langley, 1880, by inventing the bolometer – or an wire that measures the light from the “faintest stars and the sun”, which in turn heats the wire which is connected to an electrical circuit (the History of Solar, pg. 2). Not too long afterwards, in 1883, Charles Fritts (an American inventor) made the first solar panels from selenium wafers (also from the History of Solar, pg. 2).
http://energyfuture.wikidot.com/solar-resources
The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data I didn’t really know how to go about searching for this one at first. I initially just googled California ballot initiatives and it took me straight to Wikipedia. It actually wasn’t a bad find! The article, List of California Ballot Propositions, lists all ballot initiatives added to the ballots from 1970 until 2012:
- List of California ballot propositions 1970–1979
- List of California ballot propositions 1980–1989
- List of California ballot propositions 1990–1999
- List of California ballot propositions 2000–2009
- List of California ballot propositions 2010–2019
Each link takes you to a page that lists every individual initiative AND tells you whether or not is was passed or defeated.
There are a couple of other sites you can check:
the California ballot database on the University of California Hastings College of Law’s website which has .pdf files of the ballot initiatives added… I clicked on almost every file and they’re all very hard to read and just too long.
I also found California Ballot Measures on Berkley’s Law e-library, and California elections database on Sacramento State’s website, and the Citizens in Charge is an okay site which gives you an overview of the history of ballot initiatives in each state.
I think the most useable and useful site for the last subject, for me anyway, was Wikipedia. It’s always a good place to start when you’re having trouble even knowing what to search for, and can help you really pin-point external sites to search. After I scrolled through the California Ballot Proposition page on WP, I knew more specifically what I should search for, as the subject we were given was a little broad and had a few different things we needed to find. Luckily, WP had basically everything necessary.