U.S. Census Bureau

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The United States Census Bureau's mission is to collect and provide data on the economy and people of the United States.

The bureau's website is definitely worth an educator's time. Several sections are designed specifically for students of different ages, and the overall navigation is relatively simple and effective.

To start, perhaps you need current statistics to compare to historical data? In that case, the best recommendation would be QuickFacts, which offers data on the population of the states, individual counties, and all towns and cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants. State Facts offers similar data for states, presented in a more colorful, engaging, child-friendly manner. More detailed data can be found by choosing your area of interest from the navigation bar on the left of the American FactFinder page.

The bureau also offers a teacher and children's page. Highlights include lesson plans; warm-up activities; facts pre-selected for holidays and observances; and maps depicting city growth and distribution between 1790 and 2000.

A page for younger children provides counting, coloring, word, trivia, and memory games. Be aware that the site has a rather peppy little song clip, which may delight students or annoy them, depending on their ages and personalities.

Finally, if you're having a difficult time convincing individual teenage students that formal education is worthwhile, money is always a fantastic incentive. Consider showing them the financial payoffs of advanced education. The data also covers the earning differences among ethnicities in the U.S.

Teaching Future Historians: U.S. History Lesson Plans Using Primary Documents

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This website offers links to lesson plans, audio recordings, and video lectures related to the Antebellum, Civil War, and Gilded Age eras. There are 15 lesson plans on the Antebellum era focused on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, antislavery, Cherokee removal, slavery and the legal status of free blacks, gender roles, religion in political life, and the free-market labor vs. slave labor, "mudsill" theory debate. The nine lesson plans on the Gilded Age include such diverse topics as the WCTU and the lynching controversy, civil service reform, bimetallism, free trade, and political campaign songs. There are 145 downloadable songs organized by topic.

The site also offers access to downloadable video lectures on 12 different topics that include African Americans and race, economic development and labor, frontier settlement, law and society, religion and culture, women and gender, and political development. Most topics have 10 or more lectures available. A small site, but very useful for teaching the history of these three eras.

Illinois During the Gilded Age

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Focused on the Gilded Age in Illinois, this website offers 287 primary source documents. These include political speeches, pamphlets, songs, audio recordings, and maps that deal with such issues as politics, farming, law, labor, religion, and economic development. Visitors can browse all 287 items or search by author, title, date, theme, or genre. Visitors can search text documents, images, or audio files separately. The site also offers 26 video lectures from college professors interpreting the major issues of the period. Lecture topics include John Dewey, Dwight Moody, Chicago Gilded Age culture, women's suffrage, government and reform, the People's Party, William Jennings Bryan, William Mckinley, and the election of 1896.

The site can also be explored through eight historical themes, each with an interpretive essay, a bibliography, a search feature for related primary documents, and a list of related video lectures. The themes are: economic development and labor, labor, law and society, political development, race and ethnicity, religion and culture, settlement and immigration, and women's experience and gender roles. In addition, eight essays cover important periods: 1866-1868 (war's aftermath), 1869-1872 (the Chicago Fire), 1873-1876 (the Panic of 1873), 1877 (The Great Strike), 1878-1884 (Immigration, Labor, and Politics), 1884-1891 (Haymarket and Hull House), 1892-1895 (1893 Chicago's World Fair), and 1896 (The Cross of Gold). The "Teacher's Parlor" has nine lesson plans, including the WCTU and the lynching controversy, civil service reform, bimetallism, and free trade.

Harlem History

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This website offers a collection of oral history interviews, images, videos, and scholarship on various aspects of the history of Harlem. It is divided into three main sections. "Arts and Culture" has six exhibits that include two video interviews focusing on Harlem's artists, writers, and musicians; oral history interviews with A. Phillip Randolph on the Harlem Renaissance and Dorothy Height on Harlem's theatrical scene; and a multimedia presentation on the Harlem Renaissance. "The Neighborhood" provides seven exhibits that include an oral-history interview with the first African American patrolman in New York City, an essay and video on the architecture and development of Harlem, an e-seminar about classic New York ethnic neighborhoods, an essay on the decline of Jewish Harlem, Bayard Rustin's reflections on different ethnic groups with economic interests in Harlem, and civil rights leader Dorothy Height's description of changes in Harlem and her attachment to the neighborhood. "Politics" offers four exhibits: oral history interviews with A. Phillip Randolph on Marcus Garvey's movement in Harlem and Bayard Rustin on Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a video lecture on Harlem politicians, and a video interview with David Dinkens on 1950s Harlem. The site also offers a short (eight images) photo essay entitled "The Streets of Harlem" and a multimedia presentation on the 1945 Negro Freedom Rally. This site offers a useful and varied collection of material for those researching or teaching Harlem or 20th-century African American history.

Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819

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This database is the most essential collection of written materials for historical research in American history from 1801-1819. It provides full-text access to nearly 4.5 million pages of 36,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints published in the U.S. during this period. Gazetteers, almanacs, juvenile literature, chapbooks, hymnals, campaign literature, novels, slave narratives, spelling books, school readers, treaties, maps, atlases, advertisements, diaries, autobiographies, and much more are all included. Most of these materials were originally detailed in the bibliography compiled by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker. This collection, long available on microfiche, is made available here as a digital, fully searchable online database. It complements Readex's other Early American Imprints series of material from the period of 1639-1800.

Life After the Holocaust: Stories of Holocaust Survivors After The War

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This website presents the stories of six Holocaust survivors—three men, three women; five born in Poland and one in Czechoslovakia—who immigrated to the United States after World War II. Visitors can either listen to the six 30-minute interviews in their entirety, or listen to interview clips surrounding six themes: "starting over," "arriving in New York," "living with the past," "speaking out," "faith, guilt, and responsibility," and "telling their children." Many of the survivors begin by talking about their experiences before the war, and proceed to explain the complexities of starting over in the United States after the war.

Each interview is interspersed with narration and accompanied by photographs and other personal memorabilia, helping visitors better contextualize the narrators' stories. Audio files and interview transcripts are downloadable, making this website's resources useful in classroom settings, as well as to a broader public interested in understanding the aftermath of the Holocaust through deeply personal accounts.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

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The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

Red White Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium

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An exhibit of 101 images with a 10,000-word essay that tracks the influence of the Book of Revelations' apocalyptic vision of history in shaping conceptions of America and its destiny for religious zealots and others from the colonial era to the present. With images primarily from published texts—covers, title pages, illustrations, and relevant pages of writing—the exhibit is divided into 14 chronological sections, each opening with a quote from Revelations and detailing its relevance in successive historical periods. The exhibit begins with the period of the English Reformation, when John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, exported to America, related contemporary political events to scripture and established a timeline that proved influential over the next 250 years. The site covers beliefs that American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; Cotton Mather's sermons as the culmination of a century of speculation about America's place in the apocalyptic scheme; early nationalist ambitions as fulfilling prophecy; and the influence of Revelations on Thomas Jefferson. The site also looks at William Miller's numerologically-based predictions of the end of the world in 1843; millennial movements in the antebellum era; urban exposÎs that conceived of American cities as present-day incarnations of Babylon; and 20th-century anti-Semitic thought. Well organized, the exhibit provides a useful introduction to students of American religion and culture of the persistence of the power of the Book of Revelations, but exaggerates its importance with the odd claim that no other book has "produced a more profound vision of America's hopes, duties, dreams, and destiny."

Jewish Women's Archive

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These exhibits and resources are valuable for studying American Jewish women's contributions to their communities and the wider world. Women of Valor focuses on 16 notable historic women—including Congresswoman Bella Abzug; radical Emma Goldman; philanthropist Rebecca Gratz; poet Emma Lazarus; actress Molly Picon; Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold; and nurse, settlement worker, and political leader Lillian Wald. Women Who Dared offers oral history interviews of Jewish women activists in text, audio, and video formats. Interviewees discuss activism in the context of Jewish and gender identity, values, and situations, and elucidate the path to activism, challenges, rewards, and impact. The Encyclopedia, browsable by keyword, time period, and country, includes 2,000 articles on Jewish women's history. This Week in History looks at moments in the lives of Jewish American women corresponding to the date; visitors can subscribe to this feature by RSS feed or email. On the Map pinpoints locations important to Jewish American women's history—and to Jewish American women today. Visitors can add their own locations with photos. Jewesses with Attitude, the JWA blog, features articles on Jewish American women past and present and on other topics relevant to the lives of Jewish American women today. The site has also digitized nine volumes of The American Jewess. Most recently, the Jewish Women's Archive has compiled objects, photographs, and personal accounts of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the aftermath, complete with 100 oral histories, blog postings, emails, and other firsthand accounts.

Thomas Paine National Historical Association

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With full-text versions of seven books and essays in addition to five 19th- and early 20th-century biographies, this website presents the life and works of Thomas Paine (1737–1809). Materials include Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, The Crisis Papers, "African Slavery in America," "Agrarian Justice," and "An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex." These texts are reproduced from The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, a 1945 publication edited and annotated by historian Philip S. Foner. The site also includes Foner's section introductions and his "Chronological Table of Thomas Paine's Writings." Unfortunately, the site also includes hundreds of broken links to additional essays and letters by Paine. The biographies presented provide works published from 1819 to 1925. The site also reprints Thomas Edison's 1925 essay, "The Philosophy of Thomas Paine," in which he attempted to reawaken interest in Paine.