International Relations | Teachinghistory.org

9/11 and Commemoration: A Guide for Pre-Service Teachers

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What is it?

For students in high school today the events of September 11 belong to the past, but they may very likely encounter the yearly commemorations of those events on television or social media or they may have seen a physical memorial either in their area or while traveling. The past regularly enters our daily lives in this way and this is distinct from history. This guide explores commemorations, memorials, and monuments of the September 11 attacks to help students identify and recognize how they engage with the past how that process differs from history.

Key points:

This activity will take one 90-minute period or two 45-minute periods. It is appropriate for a high school U.S. history classroom, but can be modified for a variety of learners.
Students will analyze, interpret, and evaluate primary sources.
Students will learn more about the events of September 11 and also how those events exist in public memory.
Guiding Question: What's the purpose of commemorations and memorials

Introduction

History is the process by which we try to better understand the past, but history is not the only way human beings use the past or make meaning out of past events. This guide looks at another process of remembering the past through commemorations and memorials. Specifically it looks at the commemoration of and memorials to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States in order to help students identify the differences between commemorating past events and studying those events historically. While the events of 2001 seem quite recent for some of us, they are far enough in the past to begin to be considered as history — especially for students in high school today who are too young to have been alive when these attacks occurred. Analyzing how various commemorations and memorials engage with the past will help students recognize the difference between this engagement and history while also understanding better the place the events of September 11, 2001 in public memory.

Hook/Bellringer

Write on the board: What is a commemoration? Can you think of examples?

If students are struggling with this prompt, add related words that they might be more familiar with such as “memorials” or “monuments”. Explain that memorials and monuments are specific kinds of commemorations. Have students come up with 5-10 examples of their own and have them note what event is being commemorated by the memorial.

Show the following images to prime their memory.

Washington Monument, Washington, D.C. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2010641711

The Washington Monument, a tall white obelisk on the national mall

Aerial view of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2010630765

Aerial view of the Lincoln memorial. White rectangular granite building with stairs leading up to it and columns around the sides.

Memorial Day, Vietnam Memorial, Washington, D.C. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2010630875

Close up photo of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC on Veterans day. There are soldier's boots, letters, photos, flowers, and other sentimental items placed in front of the memorial

Note: Teachers may also want to include memorials and monuments from their community or region.

Background/Context

[This can be read to class, assigned for the class to read ahead of time, or you can substitute another resource such as the FAQ from the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.]

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a group of 19 men forcibly took control of four separate commercial jet airliners. The first two planes struck each of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers [office buildings with more than 100 floors each] in New York City and a third aircraft struck the Pentagon — the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense — in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth aircraft crashed into an open field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania after the passengers and crew, having learned about the earlier attacks via phone calls they were able to make to family and friends, attempted to take control of the aircraft away from the attackers. In all 2,996 people died in the attacks. It was later learned that the attackers were associated with an extremist group, al Qaeda, then based in Afghanistan. The response from the U.S. government led to an invasion of Afghanistan from which troops were only withdrawn in 2021. The attack was also used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The attacks resulted in changes within the U.S as well, including new laws such as the 2001 Patriot Act, changes to airline security procedures, and even changes to the structure of the federal government with the creation of a new cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security. The full effects of these attacks are still being felt today both in the U.S. and around the world.

[While you read the above background, you may want to display the images in the blog post below that show the lower Manhattan skyline before and after the attacks.]

The World Trade Centers in an Evolving Skyline | Picture This | blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2016/09/the-world-trade-centers-in-an-evolving-skyline/

Four photos of the New York skyline in different years. Those from before 9/11/2001 show the twin towers. Those after show monuments to the attack

Activity

Have your students examine the images below in the Primary Sources section. This can be done digitally with the links provided below or the sources can be printed out for students to examine physically. Each source is a photograph of a memorial to the September 11 attacks. The memorials come from different locations across the U.S. and were built at different times. Some are informal handmade memorials put in place immediately after the attacks. Others were planned monuments built several years later. Students should examine these sources closely and then work together to sort them into those memorials that were placed at the site of the attacks (either at the World Trade Center Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, or the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania). Students should then divide the photos into those that were placed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks (2001-2002) and those that were constructed later (after 2002). Students can make use of the information that accompanies the images on the Library of Congress page to make these determinations about time and location.

This sorting can be done physically with printouts on four tables or desks or digitally with platforms such as Google slides or Padlet.

Once these have been sorted, prompt students to look for patterns by examining the photos closely. Provide the following questions for students to consider as they examine the images:

What if anything does the memorial communicate about the September 11 attacks?
What themes do they express or communicate?
Do they look similar to any other memorials you have seen? Which ones and in what way?
How do the memorials and commemorations differ by time and location?

These questions could form the basis of a whole class discussion or students could discuss them in groups of 3-5 and report out. If the course is online students could post their responses in a discussion board in their LMS.

Optional Short Essay Assignment for homework (1-2 paragraphs)

What purpose do you think memorials and commemorations serve? What’s their purpose? How might historians engage with the events of September 11? What sources would they use to understand the event and its impact?

Primary Sources

The 9/11 Memorial in Overland Park, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb, includes informational signs about the four aircraft destroyed, and their passengers killed, in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and in a hijacking over rural Pennsylvania by terrorists on September 11, 2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2021756265/

Four informational panels commemorating the passengers on each of the flights during 9/11. The stories are engraved on tall metallic sheets.

Memorial to the brave souls of Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 after a terrorist attack. The plaque was donated by a private citizen named Hebert Erdmenger in 2002. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2011631500/

Memorial resembling a gravestone to honor the passengers on Flight 93. It is surrounded with flowers, small American flags and other items. The memorial appears to be near a wide open field and accompanies a larger museum.

Informal tributes posted at the first, temporary memorial site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to those who perished on United Flight 93, which crashed during an attempt by passengers to recapture the plane, which had been hijacked by terrorists on 9/11/01 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2011633153/

Handmade wooden angels painted with the American flag design. Each is labeled with the name of a passenger from flight 93 who did not survive. Some of the angels are accompanied with photos or sentimental items.

Steel beam and rubble from the Twin Towers, displayed at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2016631019/

A rusted section of steel beam sits on a display. The steel beam was recovered from the Twin Towers after they fell.

Citizen artwork at an informal memorial to the victims who died on United flight 93 when they attempted to overpower hijackers during the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2011634321/

South Bend, Indiana's, 9/11 Memorial, erected by South Bend fire department personnel in St. Patrick's Park | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2016631954/

A piece of steel from the World Trade Center, destroyed by a terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City. It is displayed as a memorial at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas| Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2014632438/

A piece of mangled and rusted steel from the World Trade center stands and a wall of granite encircles it. Upon entering the small space with the beam, from left to right the granite wall gets increasingly taller. Informational panels and memorial notes are placed at the entrance and along the wall.

Memorial gate, where people from all over the world have left momentos to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist hijacking of Flight 93. Shanksville, Pennsylvania| Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2011631553/

Chain link fence/gate that has been adorned with memorial material for Flight 93 and 9/11 generally. Small American flags line the top and larger flags are pinned up throughout alongside caps, firefighter jackets, clothing, photos, and other mementos.

Part of an informal memorial to the victims of United Flight 93, which crashed in a nearby field after passengers fought with hijackers who had taken the plane and directed it to Washington during the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2011633798/

A closer view of memorial gate in Shanksville that shows the firefighter jacket, a number of caps, several firefighter helmets, American flags, and more that have been placed on the fence.

Portland, Maine's, modest memorial to those lost in the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11/2001, at Fort Allen Park at the busy harbor on Casco Bay in Maine's largest city | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2017882500/

Black stone memorial resembling a large headstone that reads "If but one life be saved and one soul be comforted... all gave some some gave all and some still give. In honor and memory of all those who lost their lives in the rescue efforts of September, 11, 2001." The stone is painted to look like an American flag is draped over the top.

A rusted steel beam recovered from New York City's fallen World Trade Center that fell during infamous terrorist attacks in 2001 stands at this "9/11" memorial in Gila Bend, Arizona. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2018663482/

A rusted section of steel beam sits on a display. The steel beam was recovered from the Twin Towers after they fell.

Calatrava's Oculus, a 335-foot-long, spiky-skylighted transportation hub attached to the One World Trade Center memorial in downtown Manhattan (borough) in New York City. The structure, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, opened on the 16th anniversary of the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center's "Twin Towers" on what has become known simply as "9/11" - September 11, 2001| Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2018699939/

Walls extend upwards and meet to make a pointed ceiling. Light filters through the skylights. The ceilings are very high and the whole building is white.

Interior view of the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum in downtown Manhattan (borough) in New York City, built on the site of the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center's "Twin Towers" on what has become known simply as "9/11" - September 11, 2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2018699980/

View from inside the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum in New York City. Two rusted steel beams several stories tall stand by the window.

Tall column spanning the height of the building. The column contains written text and photographs from the top to the bottom

Memorial photograph wall of people killed at the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum in downtown Manhattan (borough) in New York City, built on the site of the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center's "Twin Towers" on what has become known simply as "9/11" - September 11, 2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2018700059/

Seven rows of head shots on a wall in a room. The photographs continue far down the wall out of the frame

Angel memorial near the Shanksville, Pa., crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, which was highjacked in the September 11th terrorist attacks | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2002717287/

Ten angels erected on wooden posts in a field in Shanksville. Five angels in the back row and five in the front. The angels' dresses are made to look like the American flag.

Wreath memorial, Shanksville, Pa., decorated with photographs of the victims of United Airlines Flight 93, which was highjacked in the September 11th terrorist attacks | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2002717288/

Wreath containing photographs, American flags, flowers, and crosses held up by a stand close to the ground. Shanksville, PA written across the bottom

Sculptor Sassona Norton's 9/11 Memorial outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania The memorial honors those who died in the events of September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, and an airliner flying over Pennsylvania The memorial is cast in bronze and features a set of hands that hold a 16-foot piece of twisted steel from the wreckage of the Trade Center| Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2019689991/

Sculpture of two hands holding another item

A "9/11" memorial at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the town of the same name, to those killed in three locations in terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2019691118/

Sculpture of two hands holding another item in a green field with brick buildings in the background

The 93-foot "Tower of Voices" at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm/item/2019690759/

Grey obelisk in a field with trees

9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon, Pentagon City, Virginia | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2010630812/

Grey and Green sculpture in Pentagon City

Memorial at the Pentagon - Poster | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/afc911000188/

Cardboard sign on a stone wall reading America we Need to Stand Together.

Memorial at the Pentagon-Marine Flag | Library of Congress | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/afc911000187/

Red flag with notes, flowers, and photographs resting on top. Flag reads United States Marine Corps

Memorial at the Pentagon - Flag 2 | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/afc911000189/

Sign of an American flag reading God Bless America covered in signatures

Memorial to Matthew Diaz, a victim of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, New York, N.Y. | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2002717256/

Open Shoebox with text on the top containing the bible verse Mark 9:2 v 3

Memorial for the victims of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, New York City; with candles, flowers, mementos, and photo of the twin towers | Library of Congress | www.loc.gov/item/2002717255/

Candles, stuffed animals, photographs, and flowers gathered together to memorialize 9-11 victims

General Tips for Teaching Controversial Subjects

Center activities on primary sources. Primary sources are tangible evidence that allow students to engage directly with history. These primary sources in particular were preserved and digitized by the Library of Congress because they were deemed important to the history of the United States.
Discussion and analysis of these sources can be wide ranging, but within each class those discussions can always be turned back to the source itself.
The sources are also, by definition, only pieces of a puzzle. They bring us closer to understanding the past but there is always room for doubt and uncertainty.
Questions, Observations, and Reflections should come from students. These are primarily student-directed learning activities. It is the instructor's role to create a space for inquiry and empower students to drive the inquiry.
It may help to remind students at the outset that it is normal for different individuals to come to different conclusions, even when we are looking at the same sources. Further, it would be strange if we all agreed completely on our interpretations. This can normalize the strong reactions that can come up and enables educators to discuss the goal of historical research, which is to hopefully go beyond the realm of individual perspective to access a fuller understanding of the past that takes multiple perspectives into account.
Teaching historical topics that involve violence and other trauma can be traumatic for some students as well. Providing students with previews of what content will be covered and space to process their emotions can be helpful. The following video series from the University of Minnesota contains further tips for teaching potentially traumatic topics: https://extension.umn.edu/trauma-and-healing/historical-trauma-and-cultural-healing.

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American Tourists and the Holy Land, 1865-1900

Teaser

Help students make connections between religion, technology, and American culture in this teaching module.

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Shapell Manuscript Foundation: American Tourists in the Holy Land

Description

Students analyze maps, travel posters, and the writings of Mark Twain to explore expectations versus reality. They then plan their own itinerary for American tourists.

Article Body

In this teaching module from the Shapell Manuscript Foundation in collaboration with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Mediastudents learn how to examine engaging primary sources including travel posters, train tickets, maps, and a letter written by Mark Twain to better understand the attitudes and experiences of Americans who travelled to British Palestine in the late 1800s.

Students work in small groups to analyze sources and think through what kinds of expectations Americans might have had about the Holy Land before they travelled there. Students are also encouraged to explore what technological changes allowed tourists the opportunity to travel across the ocean. Primary sources such as travel posters present an idealized version of the places that Americans were familiar with from the Bible.

After analyzing these primary sources students work in groups to create their own travel itineraries and promotional posters or pamphlets to advertise tours in the Holy Land. These can be physical materials or students may use digital tools to create their promotional materials. The modules also contain guidance on differentiation for diverse learners and connections to standards.

Topic

American Tourists in the Holy Land

Time Estimate

90 minutes

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Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Students show their understanding through primary source analysis and creating visual media.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Requires close reading and attention to source information.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

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The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Personalizing History

Video Overview

Christina Chavarria, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)'s Education Division, introduces teachers to the museum. She highlights the importance of using individual stories and specific artifacts to make history live for students.

Video Clip Name

holocausttour1.mov

holocausttour2.mov

holocausttour3.mov

holocausttour4.mov

Video Clip Title

Introducing the Museum

Race and Eugenics

Obstacles to Flight

Teaching with Artifacts

Video Clip Duration

5:25

3:48

2:28

4:03

Transcript Text

Christina Chavarria: So just kind of look around. What feeling is evoked? Is there anything that might remind you of something? Or maybe nothing at all. Visitor 1: We were just taking [about] the stairs. Almost as if you can be kind of spread out, and then as you go up closer you have to bunch together to file in. I've never seen stairs that do that, it's weird. Christina Chavarria: Okay, that's true. And when you mention that I think of also the train tracks and how they're kind of elongated and they fade and they seem to become more narrow the further away they become. Anybody else have any thoughts about the architecture, the building? Visitor 2: I think it's overwhelming. It makes you feel small. Christina Chavarria: That's very true. That's a very good point. Because, like I said, going back to the importance of the individual in this history, one of the things that we do with teachers is that we really encourage that you translate statistics into people, that instead of focusing solely on the millions of victims or the thousands who may have died in one place, you take those individual stories and you pull them out using primary resources. Christina Chavarria: What the purpose of these cards do, especially in a teaching standpoint, is, again, they focus on the individual. How many of you have somebody who is not Jewish? Anybody have somebody who is not Jewish? Okay, who? Visitor 3: I have Lucian Belie Brunell. He's born to Catholic parents, he's a priest. Christina Chavarria: Okay, we have a priest. Anybody else have somebody who is not Jewish, somebody who is Roma? Disabled? Okay, how about does somebody have—how many of you have somebody from Poland? Germany? Austria? Italy? France? Denmark? The Netherlands? Greece? Yugoslavia? Okay, any other place that I did not mention? Visitor 4: Romania. Visitor 5: Lithuania. Visitor 6: Hungary. Visitor 7: Czechoslovakia. Christina Chavarria: So another purpose of these is for us to see the range of geography. That this did not happen solely in Germany, even though it began there. This did not happen only in Poland. That it spread geographically. It spread all the way into Northern Africa and other parts of the world were impacted, even if they were not occupied by Nazi Germany. Christina Chavarria: Look at the monitor. TV Documentary: "—called in by radio, said that we have come across something and we're not sure what it is. It's a big prison of some kind, and there are people running all over—sick, dying, starved people. You can't imagine it, things like that don't happen." Christina Chavarria: So as we go through, as I mentioned downstairs, I'm not going to point out everything to you, but there are certain elements that I want to point out because we will talk about them in the afternoon. This, in particular, I think is very striking for us as teachers, as social studies teachers, as teachers in the United States. You notice at the top it says, "Americans encounter the camp." We don't use the word in this picture—we don't use the word "liberation." Why not? You couldn't just walk out and go home, first of all. And liberation has that connotation of being free, and yet the obstacles that lay ahead for those who did survive will be so vast—the obstacles, the challenges, for the Allied forces and relief workers who come into the camps. So, we chose that word "encounter." And this was not, as we know now, this was not the first that we knew of the camps. It was the first maybe that we had seen of the camps with our own eyes, but we will see that. When you look at this history again we define it the years 1933–1945. Christina Chavarria: Where you all came in, we call that the Eisenhower Plaza. This quote up here that's on the side of the building, of the museum structure. Because if you look at it, I think this is an excellent quote to use with students because it takes us back to that theme of anti-Semitism and that theme today of Holocaust denial.

Christina Chavarria: I think as teachers here in the United States, the issue of race science, which was very popular in the United States, it was not only in Nazi Germany. If you look at your own states—if each individual state looks at its history—you can look and see the laws that were on the books regarding sterilization, regarding who could marry whom. So, again, looking at U.S. history, especially in the latter part of the 19th century and the eugenics movement and how this became so popular. And the whole notion of race, the definition of race, and categorizing people. This is very, very relevant. Christina Chavarria: What are the questions that your students ask when you're teaching this? How many of you have taught about the Holocaust? Visitor 1: They want to know why; they want to know how could this have started? They want to know, you know, why is Hitler so anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic? They want to know the root of it all. Visitor 2: They want to know, too, why they willingly were prisoners. You know, 7th grade, why, I would have not done this— Christina Chavarria: I would have fought back, right? And they did, that's a very good issue to bring up. They did, and we have to teach about resistance. One of the questions related to that is: Why didn’t they just leave? Why didn't they just pack up and go somewhere else? Well, again, the complexities of this history—don't avoid those questions when they ask you. Why didn't, why couldn't they just pack up and leave? We look at the Évian Conference, which is where we look at the failure of other nations to respond to the growing crisis in Europe. And this symbolizes that, this political cartoon. This appeared in the New York Times, July 3, 1938, just before the Évian Conference was to begin. So we can take this image and we can deconstruct this, and what do we see happening here? Visitor 3: The guy's at a stop sign with no place to go. Christina Chavarria: The stop sign is on what? Multiple Visitors: A swastika. Christina Chavarria: Every point, every direction ends with that halt—you can't, you can't go. And who is this person? Visitor 4: Non-Aryan. Christina Chavarria: Non-Aryan, presumably Jewish—the kippah. And what's on the horizon? The Évian Conference invited nations to attend to discuss the growing refugee problem. So 32 countries send representatives to this conference, but, yet, they're also told we're not going to ask you to take any more people in. So the conference was basically a failure before it even began because only one country stepped forward and said, "We're willing to take in more refugees than what we have on our quotas, listed as our quotas." Does anybody know what that country was, what that one country was? It's right down here. The Dominican Republic. This also revealed a lot of anti-Semitic thought from leaders of other nations. Some countries said, "We don't have a Jewish problem and we don't want to import one." Some said, "We're going through our own issues." And that's very true, because we've got to contextualize this from what happened in the 1920s, what happened in 1929, the economic—the Depression as well. But, yet, we also have to factor in anti-Semitic sentiments because who are these refugees? Well, they're mostly Jewish, they might take our jobs, they might take—we don't have money to support them.

Christina Chavarria: Looking at the whole idea of refuge, and the search for refuge, where do you go when nations have closed their doors to you? Where do you go? What kind of documentation do you need to get out of Germany? What documents do you need? What kind of money do you need to emigrate? These are all issues that you have to bring up with your students so that they understand why they were trapped in Europe. Christina Chavarria: This chart that we see here, this is the forced immigration chart that Adolf Eichmann's office produced to show how it was able to expel, within three years, most of Vienna's Jewish population. After the Anschluss, after Kristallnacht, this is when Jews in the occupied territories—Germany, Austria, parts of Czechoslovak—after Kristallnacht, they realized that they can no longer stay. Life is just not bearable any more; in fact it's dangerous now. In many cases, many of them actually bought visas to get out. Some countries made money, some diplomats made money selling fraudulent visas that turned out to be no good. And that is what happened with the voyage of the St. Louis. Out of the 937 passengers who were on the boat, almost—I think all but maybe six to eight of them were Jewish. They needed to get out, and Cuba was the destination of this ship, the St. Louis. It was owned by the Hamburg line, Hamburg America. They had acquired visas to go to Cuba, where they were planning to stay until their numbers came up to come to the United States. But before they reached Cuba, their visas were rescinded; in fact, many of them were fraudulent, only about 28 of them were actually valid. So when they got to Havana, they were not allowed to dock. Only those who had valid visas, which was just a miniscule number out of the over 900 those people were allowed to stay, and the rest could not get off the boat.

Christina Chavarria: Here you see newspapers from some of the major cities across the country reporting on the front page certain events that were taking place in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. Right here, for example, the Dallas Morning News: Kristallnacht, November 1938, front page. This was not a secret. Christina Chavarria: This is called "The Tower of Faces." This is one thing I want to point out to you because—just take a couple minutes to look around at the pictures. This represents one shtetl, one Jewish community, in Lithuania. The little girl right here is Professor Yaffa Eliach, she lives in New York. She went back to this shtetl, Eishyshok, and she gathered the 10,000 photos, many of which you see here, and which we have online. Again, what this does, we look at the individual; we look at the victim not as a "victim," but as a vibrant human being. I think anything we teach, whether it's the Holocaust or any other topic that we're looking at in history, we have to look at the individuals. Christina Chavarria: This milk can is one of three milk cans that was used to bury documents and chronicles of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. And in 1950, two of the milk cans were excavated as well as the other metal boxes. Within them they found a very rich documentation of what life in the ghetto was like. Christina Chavarria: Actual barracks that are on loan to us from Poland, they are not replicas. Right over here we have a large-scale model of the process of going through the selection, going to the gas chambers, because we don't have any photos of the actual gassing, of course. Christina Chavarria: The diary, the quote, and the armband, take a look at that. The diary is the first diary that was donated to us by an American in captivity. Most of the diaries that we see they were written when they were in hiding or before they had to leave, but he was able to keep his diary while he was in the camp. It's also striking because Anthony Acevedo—he's not Jewish, in fact he's the son of Mexican immigrants. He is—we consider him to be a survivor, because of the fact that he went through a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Christina Chavarria: This is one of over a thousand citizenship papers that was found in somebody's attic in Switzerland. In a suitcase were these documents, these citizenship papers, issued by El Salvador that stated that the individuals who were named in the documents, whose pictures appeared on the documents were citizens of El Salvador, when in reality they were not—most of them were Hungarian Jews. This is 1944, Hungary is invaded in the spring of 1944 by Germany, and out of about 500,000 Hungarian Jews, over 430,000 died at Auschwitz in a very short period of time.

Read more about The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Personalizing History

Central Intelligence Agency

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President Harry S. Truman created the CIA in 1947 when he signed the National Security Act. Today, the agency performs worldwide reconnaissance, advises the President and key national decision makers based on the intelligence acquired, and operates additional covert missions as directed in order to protect U.S. interests.

The CIA website offers a wealth of information, particularly in the form of web-based articles, on the history of intelligence operations within the United States. These text-based features discuss intelligence during the Revolutionary War and Civil War, the Office of Strategic Services, the Corona project and space reconnaissance, and heroin use worldwide. The Revolutionary War and Civil War articles include suggested reading lists, and the former also offers a letter by George Washington.

If you are interested in historical comparison, the CIA's web publications are of note. The World Factbook includes information on the geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, and transnational issues of the countries of the world. Or perhaps you would like your students to compare historical governments, domestic or international, to their modern counterparts? In that case, the CIA's listing of current world leaders may come in handy. If you just cannot find the information you are looking for, consider the site's suggested reading list.

The CIA also maintains a website for children. The K-5 section holds a short description of the CIA seal, an introduction to K-9 helpers, and a brief history of pigeons as aerial photographers; while the 6-12 section includes brief histories of intelligence and the CIA, as well as biographies of notable individuals, written in the first person. Teachers can also utilize suggested lesson plans.

Finally, the site offers a CIA virtual museum tour which introduces key intelligence artifacts, such as the Enigma Machine. Flash is required for a visual tour, although a text option is available.

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What Happened to the Fenians After 1866?

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Fenian Prisoner, 1857, New York Public Library

Question

What happened to the Fenians after 1866?

Answer

The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was established in 1858 in Ireland and the United States as a secular, revolutionary movement committed to armed struggle against Great Britain in order "to make Ireland an independent democratic republic" as members pledged when taking the society's oath. In 1859, the American wing—"equal, if not senior, partners in the trans-Atlantic organization," according to historian Hereward Senior—became known as the Fenian Brotherhood, a name derived from the Fianna, the militia of the warrior Fionn MacCumhail of Gaelic legend.

Modeled on earlier Irish revolutionary organizations by revolutionaries who had fled Ireland following the failed rising of 1848, the Fenian Brotherhood and the IRB emerged following a decade during which the population in Ireland had declined from 8.5 million to six million due to famine, disease, and mass migration, especially to the U.S. In a resolution agreed upon at the first Fenian Congress in the U.S., held in Chicago in November 1863, Fenians expressed "intense and undying hatred towards the monarchy and oligarchy of Great Britain" that, they charged, had "ground their country to the dust, hanging her patriots, starving out her people, and sweeping myriads of Irishmen, women, and children off their paternal fields, to find refuge in foreign lands."

...Fenians expressed "intense and undying hatred towards the monarchy and oligarchy of Great Britain."...

Although the Fenian Brotherhood remained in existence until 1886, its most notable North American exploits, a series of failed military raids into Canada, occurred in 1866. After 1866, the IRB center of gravity moved to Ireland, although in 1870 Fenians undertook another series of raids into Canada. Following 1870, as the Fenian Brotherhood declined in importance, the group Clan na Gael developed into the most prominent Irish-American revolutionary organization, and during the second half of the 1870s, the latter group became allied with the IRB. Throughout this period, the words "Fenian" and "Fenianism" were applied to the IRB as a whole and to revolutionaries not connected with the original Fenian Brotherhood. Historians have noted significant unintended consequences in Canada of the Fenian raids and have contended that Fenianism influenced later Irish nationalist movements of the early 20th century.

Canadian Incursions

In 1866, the Fenian Brotherhood conducted three military incursions into Canada after plans for an insurrection in Ireland had fallen apart due to British raids against the IRB in Dublin in September 1865 that had resulted in arrests and dispersal of the leadership. With many Irish-American veterans of the American Civil War in their ranks, the Fenians decided to seize territory in British North America and proclaim an Irish Republic. They hoped their raids would encourage the United States to follow with troops in order to establish the St. Lawrence River as its northern border or even to annex the whole of Canada.

During the Civil War, tensions had heightened between the U.S. and Great Britain when the latter, after declaring its neutrality in the conflict, allowed Confederate diplomats passage on British ships and sanctioned the building in England of Confederate cruisers that later destroyed Union merchant ships. American hostility to Great Britain increased in October 1864 when a Confederate band, after crossing the Canadian border, robbed banks in St. Albans, Vermont, stole horses, set fire to houses, and shot a citizen before returning to Canada. After a local Canadian court released the raiders on a technicality, voices in the American press called for an invasion.

In 1865, an ephemeral movement to annex Canada called for outright attacks and coercive economic pressure

The movement in 1865 in the U.S. for the annexation of Canada, characterized as ephemeral by historian Donald F. Warner, included calls in the press for Union and Confederate armies to unite to attack Canada and schemes of politicians to coerce annexation through economic pressure. Although expressions of U.S. interest in annexing Canada died down following the end of Civil War hostilities, the Fenians nevertheless hoped that their planned invasion would revive the annexation movement and draw British troops to North America leaving Ireland vulnerable.

Plan of Attack

The plan of attack, devised by the Fenian secretary of war who had been a U.S. Army major during the Civil War, called for multiple invasions: across the Vermont-Canadian border; from Malone and Potsdam in New York to the Canadian towns of Cornwall and Prescott, then north to Ottawa and Montreal; across Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to Stratford and London in order to gain control of an important railway terminal; and incursions to capture Toronto and major waterway and railway centers. The Fenians had some reason to believe that the U.S. government would recognize an Irish republic on captured British soil, as President Andrew Johnson and his Secretary of State, William Seward, anxious not to antagonize Irish-American voters, reportedly stated that the U.S. would "acknowledge accomplished facts," in the words of historian William D'Arcy, when they were informed by a Fenian delegation about the group's vague intentions to seize territory in Canada. No official U.S. commitment, however, ever was committed to writing.

Fenians misjudged both U.S. and Canadian politics and history.

Canadian historians have concluded that in addition to misreading the response of U.S. politicians, the Fenians also misjudged the Canadians. Their invasion plan was formulated, Hereward Senior has written, "without much regard for Canadian history or the contemporary political scene." W. S. Neidhardt has pointed out that Fenian plans to win over key elements of the Canadian populace "were based on completely false assumptions." Contrary to their beliefs, most Canadians of Irish descent were Protestants from Northern Ireland, not Catholics like the Fenians. Furthermore, for many Irish Catholics, "Canada offered a reasonably good government, a fair legal and adequate educational system, and an opportunity to maintain a decent standard of living." Most Canadians who had experienced the Famine in Ireland during the 1840s were unlikely to risk their present situation to support the Fenians' scheme.

Across the Border

The first Fenian operation of 1866 occurred in April when a small force raided Indian Island in New Brunswick as part of a plan to invade the nearby island of Campobello in order to establish a base for a later landing in Ireland, for launching cruisers to attack British commercial vessels, and as a diversionary tactic designed to keep British troops in North America preoccupied while revolutionaries in Ireland attempted a rising. By declaring themselves a republic at war with Great Britain, the Fenians hoped to attain the status of belligerents, rather than pirates, and thus not risk violating U.S. neutrality laws. A concerted effort by Canadian militias, well-armed British naval vessels, and the American military, however, confounded Fenian plans with only a few shots fired during confrontations and no reported casualties.

Some nine combatants from each side were killed in battle, however, during the second Fenian invasion of 1866, which began in the early morning of June 1 as a Fenian force of nearly 1,000 men traveling on canal boats that were towed by tugs crossed the Niagara River near Buffalo and landed at a dock just north of the Canadian village of Fort Erie, which they proceeded to occupy. Two days later, following a victory at Ridgeway over ill-prepared Canadian volunteer forces—the ease of disrupting the Campobello plot apparently had led to complacency among Canadian troops—the Fenians, aware that a large Canadian force was approaching, retreated back across the Niagara River, where U.S. naval forces belatedly called into action arrested them. Three days later, President Johnson issued a proclamation characterizing the Fenians as "evil-disposed persons" and their actions as "proceedings which constitute a high misdemeanor, forbidden by the laws of the United States as well as by the law of nations."

The final Fenian raid in 1866 took place one day after Johnson's proclamation, on June 7, when a band of less than 1,000 raiders starting out from St. Albans crossed the Vermont border and planted an Irish flag near the Canadian village of Pigeon Hill. Fenians subsequently occupied Pigeon Hill and three additional Canadian villages before fleeing from a Canadian cavalry corps that chased them back to the border. Under political pressure during a congressional election year, Johnson issued executive orders to release Fenians arrested in the raids and return arms that were seized, and intervened with British authorities to try to get Fenian prisoners in Canada and Ireland released. Although 25 of the invaders were tried and convicted, all but one—a man who died in prison—were pardoned by 1872.

After elections of 1866, Fenian influence on American politicians waned, but more attacks on Canada would follow.

After the congressional elections of 1866, the Fenians no longer were able to exert a significant influence over American politicians. Plagued by factional fighting, financial troubles, police informers, and opposition from the Catholic Church, they did not attempt another Canadian raid until May 24, 1870, a date chosen to coincide with Queen Victoria's birthday. On that day, President Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation warning U.S. citizens "against aiding, countenancing, abetting, or taking part" in reported "sundry illegal military enterprises and expeditions" aimed "against the people and district of the Dominion of Canada."

A Fenian force of less than 200 men crossed the border the next day despite warnings from a U.S. marshal that Canadian riflemen in well-chosen positions on an overlooking hill awaited their arrival. Although four or five Fenians died in the subsequent battle, as the Fenians fled, their commander, John O'Neill, berated them for cowardice. O'Neill himself then was arrested by the marshal. On the following day, a group of more than 450 Fenians gathered in Malone, New York and advanced over the border. In a skirmish with Canadian forces the next day, one Fenian was killed before most retreated to Malone. Despite entreaties by their general for further action, most of the Fenians remained convinced that they had no chance to win and the general was arrested. The Canadians suffered no serious casualties during the 1870 raids. In October 1871, O'Neill, having resigned from the Fenian Council, led a group of three dozen men across the Canadian border into Manitoba in an unsuccessful raid that an advocate for the independence of the Red River Colony had proposed, but which the Fenian Council had rejected. Historians have credited the Fenian raids with encouraging a nationalistic spirit in Canada and spurring the movement to confederacy.

Aftermath

Despite failure in North America, the Fenians, after shifting their focus of attention to Great Britain at the end of 1866, "helped to work a change in the traditional English attitude toward Ireland," according to historian Brian Jenkins. Locating themselves in London, Fenian leaders, supported financially by Irish-American contributions, adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare. In a proclamation published in the Times of London in March 1867, they announced the formation of an Irish Republic and Provisional Government. During that month, Fenians fought police and soldiers in clashes throughout Ireland in an attempted rising. In November, three Fenians, executed on the basis of doubtful evidence for the murder of a police officer who had been escorting captured Fenian leaders to prison, were heralded in the press as the "Manchester Martyrs." In December, 12 Londoners were killed in an explosion designed to facilitate the escape from prison of a Fenian armaments organizer.

In response to fears of the British populace stimulated by the return of Irish revolutionary activity, the new Liberal Party Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, in 1869 and 1870, successfully enacted laws to disestablish the Church of Ireland and address longstanding Irish land tenure issues. Gladstone acknowledged that Fenianism had "produced that attitude of attention and preparedness on the whole population of this country which qualified them to embrace, in a manner foreign to their habits in other times, the vast importance of the Irish controversy." Gladstone's actions, historian Oliver P. Rafferty has written, were intended "to alienate Fenian opinion, and enable the mass of the Irish people to differentiate their aspirations from those of the revolutionaries." Subsequently, the Irish Protestant barrister Isaac Butt advocated home rule for Ireland as an alternative to an Irish republic, stating that Fenianism "taught me the depth, the breadth, the sincerity of that love of fatherland that misgovernment had tortured into disaffection and . . . exaggerated into revolt." While a number of leading Fenians supported the home rule movement and entered into mainstream politics, under an agreement characterized as the "New Departure," Fenians also maintained their revolutionary commitment to create through insurrection an independent Irish republic.

Rafferty has contended that "the Fenian idea of the necessity, or inevitability, of armed insurrection passed into Irish historical lore and conditioned the thinking of, perhaps, the majority of those who staged the 1916 insurrection." In a recently published history of the rise of Irish nationalism during the period between the 1880s and the Easter rising of 1916, M. J. Kelly has asserted, "Historians have largely neglected the activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the 1880s, tending to focus on the two great flash-points of 1867 and 1916." In his revisionist history, Kelly has looked anew at a "second generation of Fenians, qualitatively distinct from their fathers and uncles," who developed "a fresh separatist dynamic based on the nurture of a distinctly Irish culture" and significantly influenced subsequent Irish nationalist political activity and ideals.

Bibliography

W. S. Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), 4, 13, 4142.

Hereward Senior, The Fenians and Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1978), 24; Donald F. Warner, The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 18491893 (Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1960), 48.

William D'Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States: 18581886 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1947; reissue, New York: Russell & Russell, 1971), 84.

James D. Richardson, comp., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Washington, 1899), 6:433, 7:85.

Brian Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 216.

Oliver P. Rafferty, The Church, the State and the Fenian Threat, 186175 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 110, 154, 155, 158.

M. J. Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 188219 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006), 15, 16.

Robert Kee, The Green Flag: The Turbulent History of the Irish National Movement (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972).

Hereward Senior,The Last Invasion of Canada: The Fenian Raids, 18661870 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, in collaboration with the Canadian War Museum and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1991).

American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, "Fenian Brotherhood Collection," (accessed September 14, 2008).

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Documents in Law, History, and Government

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The more than 3,500 full-text documents available on this website address the legal, economic, political, diplomatic, and government history of the U.S. Documents are divided into five time periods—pre-18th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries—and include treaties, presidential papers and addresses, and colonial charters, as well as state and federal constitutional and legal documents.

The materials are categorized into 64 document collections as well, such as American Revolution, Federalist Papers, slavery, Native Americans, Confederate States of America, World War II, Cold War, Indochina, Soviet-American diplomacy, and September 11, 2001. By clicking "What's New," the latest digitized documents become available. Material also can be accessed through an alphabetical list of 350 more specific categories, keyword searching, and advanced searching. Most of these documents are directly related to American history, but the site includes some materials on European and modern diplomatic history.

Confederate States of America

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Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project

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"Densho" means "to pass on to the next generation." In this quest, this website offers an archive of more than 668 oral histories presented in countless hours of video interviews on Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Materials also include approximately 12,000 historical photographs, documents, and newspapers. Visitors to this website should keep in mind that Densho is continually engaged in expanding its resources and adding more interviews, photographs, and documents, so be sure to check back periodically to discover new content!

Access to archival materials requires free registration. Once registered, users may select materials according to 32 topics, including immigration, community, religion and churches, education, race and racism, identity values, resistance, economic losses, redress and reparations, and reflections on the past.

Materials available without registration include lesson plans and information on "Causes of the Incarceration," "Civil Rights and Japanese American Incarceration," "Sites of Shame: Japanese American Detention Facilities," and "In the Shadow of My Country: A Japanese American Artist Remembers." The website also offers 90 multimedia materials providing historical context, a timeline, a glossary, and a list of related sources in print and online.

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Clio Visualizing History

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Glass plate, Lowell Thomas, Afghanistan, 1923, Marist College

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This website provides free access to a variety of visual materials and "seeks to illustrate the unique role of visual images in American history." Clio is an educational organization developing American history projects with appeal to a wide audience, including students, educators, and researchers. This site aims to not only provide access to a variety of visual historical materials, such as photographs, illustrations, and material objects (namely quilts), but also "to promote visual literacy by exploring the variety of ways that images enhance our understanding of the past and challenge us to hone our interpretive skills."

The website is organized into three main sections. The first, "Visualizing America," includes two collections of modules, titled "Picturing the Past: Illustrated Histories and the American Imagination, 1840–1900," and "Quilts as Visual History." A second section, ”Photography Exhibits," includes three photography collections: one focusing on the work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, another on the work of the Allen Sisters (Mary and Frances Allen), and the Peter Palmquist Gallery. A third section, "Creating History," examines the figure of Lowell Thomas, who became one of America's best known journalists, as well as the media version and reality of Lawrence of Arabia.

An additional section concerning women's history and lives in the 21st century and second half of the 20th century is planned for 2013.

A valuable website to students and researchers alike, it suffers only slightly from a lack of search capabilities.

Artifacts and Objects

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Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900

Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930

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Frontera Collection of Mexican American Music

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This collection of commercially produced Mexican American vernacular music is the largest of its kind, with more than 100,000 recordings. The music, originally published between 1905 and the 1990s, is primarily in Spanish. This website presents digitized versions of roughly 30,000 recordings. The music ranges widely in style and includes lyric songs, canciones, boleros, rancheras, sones, instrumental music, and the first recordings of norte and conjunto music, as well as politically motivated speeches and comedy skits.

A browseable list of subjects shows that love (unrequited love, adultery, regrets), war (Korean War, Mexican Revolution, World War I and II), and praise (of country, guitar, mother) are common themes in the collection. Unfortunately, the songs are available to the general public only in 50-second sound clips. Users interested in gaining full access to a select group of songs for research are encouraged to contact the website's administrators.

Music

Mexican American music; Korean War; Mexican Revolution; World War I; World War II; love

Hispanic American Heritage Month

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Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930

Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945

Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s

Contemporary US, 1968-Present

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Ethnicity

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Latinos

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Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

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Introduces the Omohundro Institute, "the only organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to the advancement of study, research, and publications bearing on the history and culture of early America to approximately 1815." The site provides background information about the institute, including descriptions of its fellowships, publications, conferences, and colloquia.

Also provides tables of contents and texts of selected book reviews from recent editions of The William and Mary Quarterly, articles from Uncommon Sense, and four links to related resources—including one to the Institute's own online discussion forum, H-OIEAHC, which offers 13 syllabi for undergraduate courses on early American history, a bibliography of approximately 50 titles, and links to 102 libraries, museums, historical societies, organizations, online exhibits, and collections of documents pertaining to the period. These latter materials can be valuable to students and teachers of the early American period.

Literary Sources

Maps

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Native American Heritage Month

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