Carnegie Museum Exhibit: 'World War I & the Copper Country Home Front'
The Michigan Tech community is invited to commemorate Armistice Day and come see the WW1CC research team's exhibit, "World War I & the Copper Country Home Front, 1917-1918," at the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw.
Join us at the Carnegie Museum for the exhibit's public reception, starting at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Enjoy WWI-era music and refreshments. Meet exhibit curators and researchers. Browse the 12-panel exhibit based on research as reported in the Daily Mining Gazette, 1917-1918, about the Copper Country home front. Free admission.
"WWI&CC Home Front" was funded by a Keweenaw Heritage Grant, the Department of Humanities at Michigan Tech, and a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council. WW1CC committee members include Sue Collins, Stefka Hristova and Patricia Sotirin (all HU), Steven Walton (SS), and museum director Elise Nelson.
About the Exhibit
World War I marks the first modern “total war." As millions of combatants were called to the battlefield, massive and rapid mobilization required civilians to reorganize their daily lives to wartime. Though less recognized, rural communities, such as the Copper Country, were integral to the war effort on the home front.
In April 1917, when the United States entered the war, Americans were soon overwhelmed by unrelenting government propaganda campaigns that pressured all residents to “Do Your Bit.” Over the next year and a half, as over 4,500 local men volunteered to join or were drafted into the American Expeditionary Forces, Copper Country towns were faced with novel wartime challenges. How did families support their fathers, sons, brothers, and sweethearts serving overseas? How did the community mobilize for absent friends and neighbors, employers and workers?
Drawn primarily from the Daily Mining Gazette, the area’s largest circulating newspaper, this exhibit features 11 panels: Michigan College of Mines; Newspapers and Mobilization; 4-Minute Men; Funding the War; Food Will Win the War; Every Garden a Munition Plant; Advertising and War; Relief Volunteerism; Copper Country Children; Dear Mother; and Copper Country Mines: Boom to Bust.