Slavery and the Making of America

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Image, Graphic from Religion, Slavery and the Making of America
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This extensive companion to the PBS documentary of the same name provides interpretive and primary material on the history of African-Americans during slavery and Reconstruction, including essays, personal narratives, original documents, historical readings, and lesson plans. The "Time and Place" chronology of slavery and Reconstruction places the main events of U.S. history relating to African Americans between 1619 and 1881 in their historical context. "Slave Memories" allows visitors to hear the voices of African Americans recorded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) on their experiences in slavery and Reconstruction. "Resources" includes 17 print resources, 23 books for children, and 30 websites related to slavery. "Slave Experience" allows users to explore slave life through the themes of legal rights and government; family; men, women, and gender; living conditions; education, arts, and culture; religion; responses to enslavement; and freedom and emancipation. Each features essays, historical overviews, original documents, and personal narratives.

A K-12 learning section features historical readings of narratives, slave stories and letters, student plays, links to 19 sites with primary sources, and six lesson plans for middle and high school. This website is a valuable resource for teachers as well as an excellent introduction and overview for those with an interest in the history of slavery and slave life in America.

Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection of Photographs

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Photo, Boys with Banjo, 1880s
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This site consists of nearly 300 images of Afro-Virginians dating from the 1880s to the early 20th century. Images are scanned from prints taken by father and son, George S. Cook and Huestes P. Cook, principally in the Richmond and Central Virginia area. Users can search the digital collection by keyword or browse images, including agriculture, education, recreation, religion, tobacco, and urban life. Documentation of labor is the most extensive, while the images of children ad education are fascinating. This site is valuable to those studying African-American life at the turn of the century or Virginia history.

The Cultural Civil War of the 1960s

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Historian Linda Gordon looks at family values during the 1960s, comparing and contrasting the institution of the family and perception of problems in family in the 1960s with such institutions and perceptions both past and present.

The provided site links directly to the Real Media audio file, as it is not associated with a visual webpage.

Nevada Historical Society

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The Nevada Historical Society museum collections house over 15,000 artifacts, including mining and ranching equipment, artwork, clothing, and items related to the state's gambling industry. The permanent exhibition on Nevada history illustrates the lives of the earliest inhabitants of the Great Basin, the desert stretches of the Immigrant Trail, the Comstock era, the effects of Nevada's liberal marriage and divorce laws, and the rise of the gambling industry. The Nevada Historical Society's library, photograph, and manuscript collections constitute the largest and most complete repository of materials related to the history of Nevada and the Great Basin. Materials available to the public include books, newspapers and periodicals, print files, maps, government documents, subject files, ephemera, manuscript collections, and over 500,000 photographs.

The museum offers exhibits, guided and self–guided tours, hands-on activities, in–classroom presentations on a variety of subjects, a documentary presentation and discussion series, screenings of movies which are set in Nevada, and a research library. The website offers virtual exhibits, children's activities, and a comprehensive PDF outlining available teacher resources.

McKinley Assassination Ink: A Documentary History

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Postcard, McKinley Monument, Buffalo, N. Y., McKinley Assassination. . . site
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On September 14, 1901, American anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley, propelling Theodore Roosevelt onto the U.S. political stage and, some historians would argue, making way for political modernization. Through hundreds of documents and images—including book chapters, newspaper articles and columns, sermons, poetry, and government documents—this website explores the McKinley assassination alongside U.S. politics and culture before and after.

Topics include turn-of-the-century journalism, race relations, anarchism, women's roles, the death penalty, international relations, and the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, where McKinley was shot. A good place to begin is the "Quotes About" section, which provides short excerpts from a variety of sources that serve to familiarize users with conflicting views of McKinley, Czolgosz, Roosevelt, the assassination, Czolgosz's trial, and anarchism in the United States. All documents are keyword searchable and indexed by date, author, title, type, named persons, and source. An extensive bibliography provides suggestions for further reading.

Characteristics of Census Tracts in Nine U.S. Cities, 1940-1960

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Logo, Data & Information Services Center
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A 28-page study, including charts, of 1960 census data compiled according to residence areas, or "tracts," within the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Also provides census data for 1940 and 1950 with regard to Chicago and Detroit. Offers raw data and percentage computations on total population of tracts, number of males and females, African-American ethnicity, foreign origin, age, marital status, income level, education, units of substandard housing, rent amounts, employment figures, and salary levels. Also provides medical-related data, such as numbers of hospitals, hospital beds, pharmacists, and types of physicians in each tract. Of use for those studying mid-20th-century urban history. See "History Matters" entry Data and Program Library Service: Online Data Archive for information on other social science studies available at this site.

Reading for Context

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This video shows a student thinking-aloud while reading a headnote to an excerpt from Bayard Rustin's diary. In this 58-second reading, the student puzzles through the motives of civil rights leaders, who were concerned that Rustin—a gay Communist—would undermine the movement. He identifies the importance of context in his reading, noting that "this was during a great fear of Communists in America" and that if the movement was aligned with Communists, "it would lose a lot of support." The accompanying written commentary highlights the importance of contextualization, which the student uses to better understand a world in which civil rights activists would exclude someone who was different. Find the document the student reads here.

Guampedia

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Illustration, Landing Place at Guam, Jan-July 1863, T. Coghlan, Flickr Commons
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Don't let Guam be forgotten in your classroom! After all, it is one of only 16 non-self-governing territories worldwide that are recognized by the UN. As such, leaving Guam out of history is to ignore a rather remarkable political exception.

Guampedia offers a range of short articles on everything from architecture to World War II. These pages also feature relevant photographs and further resource listings. Additional sections offer basic facts on Guam (motto, population, etc.) and its major villages. Be sure to check out the history lesson plans to see if there's any ready-made content appropriate for you to introduce to your classroom.

Additional ways to explore include a selection of media collections including photographs, illustrations, soundbites, and video; MARC Publications, including issues of the Guam Recorder, lectures, and additional e-publications on topics such as archaeology and stonework; and traditional recipes.

StoryCorps

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Photo, Bob Heft, Designer of  the 50 star flag, StoryCorps
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StoryCorps is a nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving the stories of people across the U.S. Founded in 2003, it has collected more than 15,000 stories from people in all walks of life—immigrants, veterans, those that suffer from debilitating diseases, lovers, September 11th survivors, and many more. Each recorded conversation includes two or three people, often grandchildren interviewing grandparents, old friends interviewing each other, or children remembering their parents. Clips, usually between two and five minutes, from hundreds of these stories are available.

The clips are keyword searchable and browseable by category: Angels & Mentors, Discovery, Friendship, Griot, Growing Up, Hurricane Katrina, Identity, Romance, September 11, Struggle, Witness, Wisdom, and Work. Many people discuss their involvement in World War II or the Vietnam War, and many more talk about how they met their spouses or coped with segregation. Always thought-provoking, and often moving, these clips can expose the more human side of major 20th-century events.