Lincoln Archives Digital Project

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Carte de Visite, Abraham Lincoln and Son Tad, The Henry Ford, Flickr
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The private organization behind this website is in the process of digitizing millions of records from the Lincoln Administration (March 4, 1861, through April 15, 1865), drawing from collections at the National Archives; the State Treasury, Justice, and War Departments; and other federal offices and agencies.

These records include pardon case files, applications for Federal jobs, the papers of Generals Ambrose Burnside and Henry Halleck, records on the capture of Jefferson Davis and the John Surratt trial, and numerous telegrams and letters about all aspects of Presidential business, as well as maps, photographs, and newspaper articles.

Though the majority of these records are accessible by subscription only ($150/year for individuals, more for school districts and libraries), a few are freely available at the website: thumbnails of 35 photographs (most available in higher quality elsewhere), and roughly 50 political cartoons (too small to read).

More useful for the non-subscriber is the inclusion of 100-200 word descriptions of many of the newspaper publications included in the archive, as well as video footage of several scholarly conferences and presentations about Lincoln.

An interactive timeline of Lincoln's entire life is also included, interspersed with video footage of scholars discussing important events, as well as staged audio recordings of several of Lincoln's letters and speeches, such as a letter he wrote to Mary Owens in 1837 before she broke off their courtship.

For teachers, the website presents a list of 20 links to outside lesson plans covering many themes in Lincoln's life and Presidency.

Federal Trade Commission

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The Federal Trade Commission serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it protects consumers from unethical business practices, while, on the other, it completes legal proceedings involving business mergers and other such competitive actions.

The Federal Trade Commission's offerings are decidedly not designed with K-12 education in mind. Most of the materials are fairly technical, and may require some background understanding of large-scale business. However, teachers who are willing to parse the materials may be able to use selections as the basis for in-classroom activities, particularly in a civics classroom and/or the higher grade levels.

Different sections will serve different interests. For example, if you're interested in the history of the FTC itself, the site includes eight oral history interviews with past commissioners. All are provided as transcribed text. If you are more interested in legal history, try the court case details for all cases between 1996 and the present. Other resources include commissioner speeches given between 1995 and the present and FTC annual reports from 1916 through 2008. The latter, while lengthy, could provide an excellent opportunity to compare government regulation of big business in different periods of 20th and 21st century history.

Key Concepts in Historical Thinking

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This site, produced by the University of Victoria, the Université de Sherbrooke, and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, introduces students to the idea of the "unsolved mystery" that is history. While the focus of the overall project is applying primary source analysis to key events in Canadian history, "Key Concepts in Historical Thinking" provides exercises and ideas which can be applied in any history classroom—from elementary to graduate school—with very little adaptation.

Resources are divided into two sections. The first consists of classroom exercises. Challenge students to consider how their lives might be interpreted in the future in an exercise introducing the idea of the primary source. What documents would exist? Would they be preserved? By whom? Would historians have access to them? What might these documents tell future historians? Additional activities differentiate inferred societal evidence from document testimony and the past from the future.

The second section is intended for educator preparation rather than student activities. Individual sections discuss underlying and direct causation and bias. Note that the court evidence section is based on Canadian common law.

Portal to Texas History

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Postcard, postmarked October 9, 1907, Portal to Texas History
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This archive offers a collection of more than 900,000 photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, and other items relating to all aspects of Texas history, from prehistory through the 20th century. Subjects include agriculture, arts and crafts, education, immigration, military and war, places, science and technology, sports and recreation, architecture, business and economics, government and law, literature, people, religion, social life and customs, and the Texas landscape and nature. Some subjects include sub-categories. For instance, social life and customs, with 694 items, includes 13 sub-categories, such as clothing, families, food and cooking, homes, slavery, and travel. The visitor can also search the collection by keyword.

Resources for educators include seven "primary source adventures," divided into 4th- and 7th-grade levels, with lesson plans, preparatory resources, student worksheets, and PowerPoint slideshows. Subjects of the lessons include Cabeza de Vaca, Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War, life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the journey of Coronado, the Mier Expedition, runaway slaves, the Shelby County Regulator Moderator war, and a comparison of Wichita and Comanche village life. This website offers useful resources for both researching and teaching the history of Texas.

Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930

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Photo, Police Captain Max Nootbaar, Jul. 21, 1914, Chicago Daily News
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Post-Civil-War industrialization and urbanization put new stresses on American law and society. Criminal records reveal the circumstances where social strain boiled over into violence and unrest. Using this website, visitors can search the complete Chicago Police Department Homicide Record Index from 1870 to 1930, detailing more than 11,000 homicides, and read and watch accompanying contextual material that explores tensions between laborers, industry leaders, political ideologies, social reformers, organized crime, and more.

The core of the site is the "Interactive Database." Here, visitors can search cases using keyword, case number, date, circumstances (accident, manslaughter, homicide, number of victims, number of defendants, method of killing, involvement of alcohol), details about the victim and defendant (age, gender, race, occupation), victim/defendant relationship, and legal outcome. Searches return one-line case summaries including the date, names of people involved, case number, a description of the crime, and legal outcome. Clicking on a result brings up details on the particular crime: time, location, type of death/homicide and details of homicide, details on the victim(s) and defendant(s), police involvement, and legal outcome.

Contextualizing primary and secondary sources frame this bare-bones information. A timeline features a summary of one major event and up to five photographs for every year. "Historical Context" currently offers a second timeline highlighting links to up to 17 notable cases for each year and a section on children's lives in the city, with nine newspaper articles on child labor and obituaries for activist Florence Kelley and lawyer Levy Mayer. (Sections on labor and reform movements and people and events did not work at the time of this review.) In "Legal Content," visitors can read short essays on topics related to Chicago criminal and social history, including capital punishment, anti-corruption campaigns, the Chicago Police Department, judges, lawyers, criminology, prostitution, gambling, murder-suicides, and accidents. Each essay links to related cases and onsite and off-site documents. "Legal Content" also hosts 16 downloadable acts and statutes under "The Laws."

"Crimes of the Century" organizes links to related cases under 23 topics, including the 1919 Chicago race riot and the Haymarket Affair. "Publications," the most valuable part of the site for teachers looking for primary sources, archives the full text of 15 primary and secondary documents related to Chicago crime and social change. Here users can download in PDF form modern studies on the death penalty, crime and policing in Chicago, and the Haymarket Affair, or download primary sources such as law codes and crime reports, the Hull House Maps and Papers, Chicago Daily News articles exposing graft and corruption, 19th-century studies of Chicago's homeless, and contemporary commentary on the Haymarket Affair. Finally, visitors can watch 18 interviews with present-day professors, judges, and lawyers in "Videos."

Though difficult to navigate, this site has rich resources to help students and teachers explore the challenges of change at the turn of the century.

History of American Education Web Project

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Introductory graphic, History of American Education Web Project
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Provides 55 images and 60 short essays, ranging in length from a few sentences to approximately 1,500 words, on significant topics in the history of American education. The essays were prepared by undergraduates and edited by their professor, Robert N. Barger, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of education. Organized into five chronological categories from the colonial era to the present, with an additional essay on European influences. Covers such topics as hornbooks, primers, McGuffey Reader's, normal schools, kindergarten, high school, African-American education, adult education, prayer in schools, student rights, and education of the handicapped. Includes essays on such personages as Freidrich Froebel, Herbert Spenser, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Horace Mann, and G. Stanley Hall. Also offers information on recent topics such as the Committee on Excellence in Education's 1983 study, A Nation at Risk, and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law in 1994. Professor Barger's warning that he did not add balance to the "triumphalist" perspective that some of his students adopted should be remembered by those using this site. Nevertheless, it provides a useful introduction to high school students and undergraduates studying the history of American education.

Emma Goldman Papers

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Image for Emma Goldman Papers
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Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was a major figure in the radical and feminist movements in the United States prior to her deportation in 1919. This collection of primary resources includes selections from four books by Goldman as well as 18 published essays and pamphlets, four speeches, 49 letters, and five newspaper accounts of Goldman's activities.

There are also nearly 40 photographs, illustrations, and facsimiles of documents. Additional items include two biographical exhibitions, selections from a published guide of documentary sources, and four sample documents from the book edition of her papers. A curriculum for students is designed to aid the study of freedom of expression, women's rights, anti-militarism, and social change. The site offers essays on the project's history and bibliographic references as well as links to other websites.

Duluth Lynchings Online Resource: The Tragic Events of June 15, 1920

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Photo, Interior of cellhouse, Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater
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On June 15, 1920, a white mob broke into a jail in Duluth, Minnesota, and lynched three black men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie—accused of raping a white woman. This website tells the story of that attack and its aftermath through more than 700 primary source documents and photographs relating to the lynchings, legal proceedings against members of the lynch mob and several other black men accused of rape, and the incarceration of three white mob members for rioting and one black man for rape. It ends with the aftermath of the incident, including a drop in the black population of Duluth by 16 percent, the formation of an active NAACP chapter in the city, and a campaign for anti-lynching legislation. A Background section sets the scene in 1920s Duluth alongside information on rising racial tensions across the country and lynchings in northern states. An interactive timeline of events surrounding the lynchings, accompanied by an audio narrative, is a good place to begin. All documents are keyword searchable and browseable by document type (government document, newspaper, correspondence) and by date.

Documents in Law, History, and Government

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Logo, Avalon Project
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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.

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.