A Patriot's History of the United States, Part One: Liberty and Property in the American Past

Description

Professor Larry Schweikart argues that most popular textbooks today show a liberal, left-wing bias. He reexamines specific periods in U.S. history from a conservative perspective, focusing on Ronald Reagan's presidency and the colonization of the original colonies, particularly as documents from the latter discuss property rights.

This lecture continues in A Patriot's History of the United States, Part Two: Reinterpreting Reagan and the Cold War.

Freedom Now! An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University

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Brochure, Fundraising to aid. . . , 1970, NAACP, Tougaloo College Archives
Annotation

This searchable archive offers more than 250 documents from the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the struggle to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi in the early 1960s, and the continuing Brown-Tougaloo Cooperative Exchange that grew out of it. The Freedom Movement was "one of the most inspiring and important examples of grass-roots activism in U.S. history." The archive includes books; manuscripts; periodicals; correspondence; interview transcripts; photographs; artifacts; and legal, organizational, and personal documents.

The collection can be searched by document type, keyword, or topic, including black power/black nationalism, college students, gender issues, incarceration, labor issues, legislation, media, non-violence, protest, segregation, and state government. The site offers two lesson plans on the Mississippi Freedom Movement based on documents in the database, one focused on the experiences of college-aged civil rights workers during the Freedom Movement and the other on voter registration. Other teaching resources include links to five websites on teaching with primary documents, six sites related to the African-American civil rights movement, and eight related books. This site is a useful resource for researching the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the history and people of the civil rights movement, or African-American history.

Home Sweet Home: Life in 19th-Century Ohio

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Chromolithograph, Power of Music, James Fuller Queen, c. 1872, Home. . . site
Annotation

19th-century Cincinnati, OH, an economically prosperous city and a "Gateway to the West," was a microcosm of the changes in domestic life occurring throughout the United States. This website uses music, commonly performed and appreciated in family parlors, to help users better understand these changes, as well as common social, economic, and religious values among Cincinnati's majority population of white Protestants. The 21 songs included are divided by theme: Family Life, Singing Schools, Religion, Rural Values, Temperance, Parlor Music, and Minstrel Songs. "You'll Never Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry" exemplifies some of the changes in family life, describing the lessons a young man learned from his mother, and then re-learned later for himself, about forging a successful life on his own.

Sheet music and an audio recording are provided for all songs, which are also accompanied by brief annotations. Two substantive, scholarly essays on "Life in 19th Century Cincinnati and "Understanding the Music," provide historical context. A bibliography and list of related Library of Congress websites provide opportunities for further exploration.

Provenance

Description

Wes Cowan of PBS's History Detectives discusses the importance of tracing the provenance, or chain of custody, of an object, through primary source documents.

Gen. John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historic Site [MO]

Description

One of America's highest ranked military officers, Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, spent most of his childhood years in the small town of Laclede. Pershing was born Sept. 13, 1860, and moved into the Gothic nine-room house in Laclede with his family at age six. He taught at Prairie Mound School, and in 1886, graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, thus beginning his military career. Between 1886 and his military retirement in 1924, Pershing fought his way up through the military ranks. In 1917, Pershing was sent to France as Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I and two years later was named General of the Armies of the United States by a special act of Congress. Today, visitors can tour Gen. Pershing's boyhood home. A statue of "Black Jack" stands next to the home surrounded by granite tablets naming war veterans. Inside Prairie Mound School, an exhibit gallery allows visitors to walk through the many doorways Gen. Pershing passed through during his childhood life, military career, and numerous accomplishments.

The site offers a short film, exhibits, and tours.

National Women's Hall of Fame [NY]

Description

The National Women's Hall of Fame honors U.S. women who have made significant contributions in government, science, philanthropy, education, athletics, the arts, business, and the humanities. The hall is located in Seneca Falls, NY, site of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention at which the struggle for women's rights within the United States officially began.

The hall offers exhibits, children's activities, and tours. School and children's groups are asked to make reservations. The hall is closed to the general public in January, although group tours may still take place with two weeks advance notice.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House [OH]

Description

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is operated as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The site also includes a look into the family, friends, and colleagues of the Beecher-Stowe family; Lane Seminary; and the abolitionist, women's rights, and Underground Railroad movements in which these historical figures participated in the 1830s to 1860s, as well as African-American history related to these movements. The house was home to Harriet Beecher Stowe prior to her marriage and to her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, and his large family, a prolific group of religious leaders, educators, writers, and antislavery and women's rights advocates. The Beecher family includes Harriet's sister, Catherine Beecher, an early female educator and writer who helped found numerous high schools and colleges for women; brother Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a leader of the women's suffrage movement and considered by some to be the most eloquent minister of his time; General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African-American troops in the Union Army recruited from the South; and sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, a women's rights advocate. The Beechers lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years, from 1832 to the early 1850s, before returning East.

The house offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational programs and events.

Rankin House [OH]

Description

The Rankin House was an important stop on the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio through which many slaves escaped from the South to freedom. John Rankin was a Presbyterian minister and educator who devoted much of his life to the antislavery movement. In 1826 he published his antislavery book, Letters on American Slavery. In 1834 he founded the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Zanesville. From 1825 to 1865, Rankin and his wife Jean, with their Brown County neighbors, sheltered more than 2,000 slaves escaping to freedom, with as many as 12 escapees being hidden in the Rankin home at one time. The house, a National Historic Landmark, is included in the National Underground Railroad to Freedom Network. Outside is a reconstruction of the stairway used by slaves to climb from the Ohio River to the Rankin House.

The house offers tours and educational programs.

Grant Boyhood Home and Grant Schoolhouse [OH]

Description

The Grant Boyhood Home was the home of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, from 1823, when Grant was one year old, until 1839, when he left to attend West Point. Ulysses Grant lived in this home longer than any other during his lifetime. Jesse and Hanna Grant, the parents of young Hiram Ulysses Grant, built the original two-story brick section of the Grant Boyhood home in 1823, when they moved to Georgetown from Point Pleasant in Clermont County, where Ulysses had been born the year before. Grant attended the Schoolhouse from the ages of about six to 13. The building, built in 1829, consisted of only one room at that time.

The site offers tours.

Seeking U.S. History Books for 9th and 11th Graders

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Cigarette card, Robinson Crusoe, New York Public Library
Question

I am interested in locating a list of U.S. history fiction and nonfiction books that are appropriate for use with my U.S. history students, grades nine and 11.

Answer

Some of the best and most easily available sources for lists of appropriate books for 9th and 11th graders come from school districts and teachers who have compiled them and shared them on the internet.

An excellent example of this can be found at Oxnard Unified High School District. This annotated list includes both fiction and nonfiction titles related to high school U.S. history. Another example of this type of list has been posted by a classroom teacher. This list highlights nonfiction titles on a range of U.S. history topics but also includes a brief list of recommended historical fiction.

Libraries are another obvious choice for booklists. Library Booklists is a clearinghouse of public libraries across the nation, providing links to lists of books put together by librarians on diverse topics. You can search for nonfiction as well as historical fiction lists, and it differentiates between young adult and children's literature.

The American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has annotated lists of suggestions for teen readers. Many, but not all, of their nonfiction history titles relate to U.S. history. They also have excellent annotated lists of fiction, but they do not differentiate historical fiction from general works.

Another approach to finding books would be to use a search engine to generate a personalized list on a particular topic. The reading measurement company Lexile has an online feature that can be used to search for book titles. To use Lexile, go to Find a Book, then follow the prompts to enter information about your students (for average 9th-11th grade readers the Lexile range would be 880–1165), and then you enter your search terms. The California Department of Education also has a reading list generator. These sites can be tricky, and you may want to try a variety of searches as often a search will bring up too few results or so many that it is hard to tell what might be worthwhile.

Finally, there are many excellent high school booklists on specific topics that might be of interest to you. Check out the lists for Black History Month, (extensive and divided by grade level, but not annotated), and Lincoln and the Civil War which offers an annotated list on the topic for young adults.

Kudos to you for bringing books into your curriculum! And happy reading.