Every card carries a fact from 1948 to 1984. Every card belongs to one camp — Liberal Democrat, Dixiecrat, Moderate Republican, Conservative Republican — and covers one issue — who leads, what they want, government and the economy, race and rights, who backs them. The card tells you neither. Working out the camp is the game.
This is the deck where the two parties trade places. The Dixiecrats walk out over civil rights and end up voting Republican. The Moderate Republicans — the party that sent troops to Little Rock and passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act — are pushed aside by conservatives who carry the South instead. Read the race and rights row of the answer key across: that row is the whole story.
This is a table game, not a browser game. The demo below is for the projector: run a few turns with the class so everyone sees how a turn works, then print the decks and play it for real.
Your hand. Pick a card to play — then say which camp it belongs to.
At a real table nothing is revealed and nobody checks a screen — the players judge each other. That is what the challenge rule is for, and it is why bluffing works.
Play a card from the same camp as the top card and say the camp out loud. That is the whole turn — you never have to name the issue.
“Liberal Democrat.”Stuck in a camp you do not hold? Play a different camp’s card that is about the same issue, and say both. The camp is now yours. It is the hardest move in the game.
“Conservative Republican. Same issue — race and rights.”Think a declaration does not hold up? Call it. Wrong, and they take the card back and draw 2. Right, and you draw 2. Nothing is printed on the cards, so you can bluff — and that is the point.
Holding a card that matches the top card on both camp and issue? Lay it down as a second card after your play — the only way to shed two facts at once — or slap it down out of turn. Hard to spot, since neither is printed anywhere.
Draw one card and play it if it fits. Still stuck, draw again — up to three — then your turn ends. Not knowing the material costs you tempo, every single turn.
First player out of cards wins. At one card left, say “Wit!” — caught silent and you draw 2. You cannot go out on a Wild Wit; the last card has to be a fact.
Play it on anything except a Devil’s Advocate. Then name the camp that comes next.
Your whole turn. Play it with any card, even one that matches nothing. Name that card’s camp and argue the connection. The table judges.
The next player may not match the camp, and no action card will save them. Cross over on the issue, or take a flat draw of 2 — no digging.
One PDF, 86 pages: a rules sheet, a teacher answer key, and seven complete decks so a class can play seven tables at once. Card backs are numbered by deck, so a card found on the floor tells you which deck it belongs to.
Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and cut on the lines. Cards are 2.4″ × 3.2″, nine to a sheet. Print at 100% — not “fit to page” — or the sizing drifts.
Every image in the deck is in the public domain, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. No AI-generated art is used anywhere in this deck — a history game is the wrong place for a convincing fake. Almost every image here is a United States government photograph, and so in the public domain: Kennedy and Johnson's official portraits, Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act and Medicare, Eisenhower signing the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the 101st Airborne escorting the Little Rock Nine, Reagan's 1981 inaugural address and his tax-act signing at Rancho del Cielo, and the Selma to Montgomery marchers. Alongside them sit the artefacts of the trade itself: a 1948 Thurmond and Wright States' Rights Democrat button, an American Independent Party bumper sticker, a 1969 AIP membership card reading “stand up for America,” a Stop-ERA badge, a Levittown street, and a page of food coupons. The 1955 Interstate Highway plan is a map rather than a photograph.