In this lecture, historian Mary Beth Norton examines the original court documents from the Salem witchcraft trials; she places these well-known events in the context of the Indian wars and other witch trials in New England. The trials, she concludes, were driven more by politics than by superstition.
This site celebrates the commitment and efforts of veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Introduction provides an overview of the website and the Movement.
Veterans Roll Call provides biographies (in some cases, autobiographies) of more than 500 veterans. It includes dates of activity, organizational affiliation, states they worked in, home states, contact information, and personal essays (of lengths ranging from one sentence to full essays). In Memory records the names of men, women, and children killed during the Civil Rights Movement, as well as names of veterans who have died. The Speakers List lists men and women who are available to speak or answer email inquiries.
Photo Album features more than 15 photo essays on subjects including sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, and the March on Washington. Photo annotations link to more information on the events depicted. Other resources including Civil Rights Movement posters, album covers, and pins, as well as photographs organized by photographer.
History & Timeline lists events by year, from 1951 to 1968. Some events include short descriptions; all include recommendations for print and online resources on the events.
Articles gathers together more than 50 documents by Civil Rights Movement veterans, some contemporary to events and some written later. Visitors can also download samples of literacy tests from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and view segregation laws. Documents archives contemporary documents created by CORE, NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, SSOC, and other organizations. Documents include newsletters, maps, plans, reports, minutes, government reports, and more. Also see Letters from the Field for more than 40 letters by Civil Rights Movement participants.
Our Stories includes interviews, stories, and other recollections from more than 80 veterans, while Our Thoughts includes more than 40 retrospective articles by veterans. Discussions preserves more than 20 online and transcribed discussions looking back on the Civil Rights Movement (most are modern, but they also include a 1956 discussion with Rosa Parks).
In addition, the website includes poetry by veterans, related links organized by topic, and a bibliography featuring age-specific book lists.
With the interviews, autobiographies, photos, documents, and discussions, the site includes a wealth of primary sources, and would be invaluable for any student researching the human side of the Civil Rights Movement.
The history of the eugenics movement in the United States, from its inception in the decades following the Civil War through its height in the first few decades of the 20th century, is traced on this website. As we move into the age of genetics, this movement, that sought to filter "bad" traits from the human population, becomes increasingly important to understand.
The movement's history is told through a narrative divided into eight themes, including social and scientific origins, research methods and traits studied, flaws in these methods, ways in which the movement was popularized, immigration restriction, and marriage and sterilization laws. Each narrative is accompanied by roughly 10 primary sources—reports, articles, charts, legal documents, and photographs. These materials provide a succinct introduction to eugenics in the U.S.
In addition to the narratives, visitors can search or browse the Image Archive, featuring more than 2,000 primary sources, including documents, artwork, photographs, and more. Visitors may browse by topic, object type, time period, or the archive sources' originals are held by, or search by keyword or ID number. Note that primary sources cannot be downloaded from the Flash version of the Archive, though they can be from the HTML version of the site.
Nineteenth-century African American pamphlets and documents, most produced between 1875 and 1900, are presented on this website. These 350 works include sermons, organization reports, college catalogs, graduation orations, slave narratives, Congressional speeches, poetry, and play scripts.
Topics cover segregation, civil rights, violence against African Americans, and the African colonization movement. Authors include Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. Publication information and short content descriptions accompany each pamphlet.
The site also offers a timeline of African American history from 1852 to 1925 and reproductions of original documents and illustrations. A special presentation "The Progress of a People," recreates a meeting of the National Afro-American Council in December 1898. This is a rich resource for studying 19th- and early 20th-century African American leaders and representatives of African American religious, civic, and social organizations.
Created as a companion to the PBS series of the same name, this well-produced site traces the history of Africans in America through Reconstruction in four chronological parts. The site provides 245 documents, images, and maps linked to a narrative essay.
"The Terrible Transformation" (14501750) deals with the beginning of the slave trade and slavery's growth. "Revolution" (17501805) discusses the justifications for slavery in the new nation. "Brotherly Love" (17911831) traces the development of the abolition movement. "Judgment Day" (18311865) describes debates over slavery, strengthening of sectionalism, and the Civil War. In addition to the documents, images, maps, and essay (approximately 1,500 words per section), the site presents 153 brief (150-word) descriptions by historians of specific aspects on the history of slavery, abolition, and war in America. The site provides a valuable introduction to the study of African-American history through the Civil War.
Every September 17, Constitution Day calls on teachers to memorialize—and critically engage with—Constitutional history in the classroom. But what approach to the Constitution should you take? What quality teaching resources are available? How can you interest your students in a document that is more than 200 years old?
In 2008, Teachinghistory.org published a roundup of Constitution Day resources. Many of those resources remain available, but online Constitution Day content continues to grow. Check out the sites below for materials that recount the Constitutional Convention of 1787, compare the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, explore U.S. Supreme Court cases that have interpreted the Constitution, and apply the Constitution to contemporary debates.
The Library of Congress's Constitution Day page collects the full text of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments, as well as the Federalist Papers and the Articles of Confederation. Lesson plans for grades 612 accompany the documents. The page also includes short suggested reading lists for elementary, middle, and high school, and links to relevant Library of Congress American Memory collections, such as Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and the papers of James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Also check out the Library's collection of primary sources "Creating the United States."
You can find an elegant, simple presentation of the Constitution on the National Archives' Constitution Day page. Check out their high-resolution PDF of the original document, part of NARA's 100 Milestone Documents exhibit.
If the Constitution is proving a difficult read for your students, try the National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution. Search the text by keyword or topic, and click on passages that are unclear to find explanatory notes from Linda R. Monk's The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution. The Constitution Center also offers its own Constitution Day page, with a short video on the creation of the Constitution, interactive activities, and quizzes.
If you're not already familiar with EDSITEment, created by the National Endowment for the Humanities, take a look through their extensive collection of lesson plans. A quick search reveals more than 90 lessons related to the Constitution.
Interested in bringing home to students the Constitution's importance today? The New York Times' Constitution Day page links current events to the Constitution in more than 40 lesson plans. The Times also invites students to submit answers to questions such as "Should School Newspapers Be Subject to Prior Review?" and "What Cause Would You Rally Others to Support?"
Can't find anything here that sparks your interest or suits your classroom? Many more organizations and websites offer Constitution Day resources, including the Bill of Rights Institute, the American Historical Association, Annenberg Media, and Consource. (Check out our Lesson Plan Reviews for a review of a lesson plan from Consource on the Preamble to the Constitution.)
A presentation of more than 25 "of the most treasured documents in the holdings of the National Archives" with 10 contextual essays of up to 300 words in length. Arranged in chronological sections, corresponding to eras suggested by the National Standards for History, this site provides facsimile reproductions of important documents relating to diplomacy, presidents, judicial cases, exploration, war, and social issues. Includes the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War (1783); receipts from the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803); the judgment in the Supreme Court's Dred Scott Decision (1857); Robert E. Lee's demand for the surrender of John Brown at Harper's Ferry in 1859; the Treaty of 1868 with the Sioux Indians; an 1873 petition to Congress from the National Woman Suffrage Association for the right of women to vote, signed by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and a 1940 letter from student Fidel Castro to Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for a ten-dollar bill. Provides links to teaching suggestions for two of the documents. A good site for introducing students to a variety of the forms of documentation accumulated in the collections of the Archives.
What was the economic and social impact of the Panic of 1873?
Textbooks differ in their treatment of the Panic in significant ways. Most tie the depression to the national political controversies surrounding Reconstruction. Too often, textbooks combine the Panic with the political scandals which rocked the Grant administration. While certainly a source of the political crisis facing Republicans in the 1870s, the roots of the Panic run far deeper than merely Grant’s poor political skills.
Limited by the amount of gold held in the U.S. Treasury, access to currency and credit contracted sharply, interest rates skyrocketed, and investors were forced to pay off their high stakes gambles (made with cheap paper dollars) with hard-earned gold. Sources bring to light the integral nature of bimetallist theory and its effect on the economy rather than the political climate and scandal that surrounded the Federal Government.
The Panic of 1873 stands as the first global depression brought about by industrial capitalism. It began a regular pattern of boom and bust cycles that distinguish our current economic system and which continue to this day. While the first of many such market “corrections,” the effects of the downturn were severe and, in 1873, unexpected. In 1873 modern economic adjustments were unknown and the ability of national authorities to control the money supply was immature. As a result, the Panic of 1873 led to the longest recorded economic downturn in modern history.
Most Americans are familiar with the Great Depression, beginning in 1929, and the economic safety nets established in response to the crisis, such as Social Security and the right to collective bargaining, from 1933 to 1938. Some know of the equally dire economic conditions, starting in 1893, and how this spurred federal progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson to strengthen public oversight of corporate trusts, child labor, banking, monetary policy, and tariffs. Yet almost no one knows of the profound economic collapse that struck the United States following the Civil War or its equally substantial effect upon the social and political trajectory of the nation. The Panic of 1873 began in Europe, but quickly spread to the United States producing 65 months of depressed economic conditions.
Selected materials from the personal papers of Mary Metlay Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyon, Constance Baker Motley, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Frances Fox Piven, and Gloria Steinem. Also includes papers of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW) and the Women's Action Alliance (WAA). The six women and two organizations are introduced with biographical essays (300-700 words). For each woman, the site provides from three to six texts, of 100 to 1,000 words, including correspondence, photographs, articles written by or about them, and bulletins and newsletters for movements with which they worked. Material includes fan mail received by Steinem, a letter from William Z. Foster to Kaufman, and a five-page speech Motley made to the Children's Organization for Civil Rights.
Papers for the NCNW include two photos, one poster, a brochure, and six pages of projects and activities. The WAA exhibit presents one photo, a press release, a mission statement, and a brochure. There are six high school lesson plans using the primary documents. The site will be useful for research in 20th-century feminism and women's activism.
How do we define and understand resistance to slavery in regards to the 1822 trial and execution of Denmark Vesey?
Most textbooks do not even mention Denmark Vesey or the slave insurrection panic of 1822 commonly associated with him. The few that do mention him (briefly) tend to portray Vesey as a heroic rebel against slavery who met a tragic end.
Primary sources remain ambiguous regarding Denmark Vesey and the slave revolt he allegedly planned. Court testimony implicating him was often provided by prisoners who had been tortured, much of the evidence was secondhand in nature, and some white Charlestonians at the time openly doubted that the plot had ever existed.
Historians disagree about Vesey and his relationship to a Charleston slave revolt scare in 1822. Many see him as a hero who planned a major revolt against slavery. Others see him as a victim of a white conspiracy to kill black Americans as part of an effort to protect slavery.
Most textbook authors have traditionally ignored or mentioned only very briefly Denmark Vesey and the 1822 insurrection plot in Charleston, SC, in their coverage and treatment of the development of slavery, its impact upon black Americans, the strategies employed by whites to preserve or strengthen the institution, and the strategies that were tried by black Americans to ameliorate life in slave society or to overturn slavery itself. A deeper and more nuanced examination of the trial records from the Vesey plot can complicate students' knowledge of how historians interpret the past as well as broaden their understanding of the politics of slavery, definitions of heroism and resistance to slavery, and the contours of daily life for slaves and free blacks in the antebellum South.