What Exit? New Jersey and Its Turnpike

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This site uses about 45 sources to document the planning and construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, opened after two years of construction in 1952.

Building It contains a 1,000-word history of the turnpike's construction, as well as eight primary documents from the planning stages of the highway, including an early map of the proposed route. A dozen promotional documents (pamphlets, public announcements, bond solicitations) and newspaper coverage are also available as is a narrative account of tensions in Elizabeth, NJ, where more than 200 citizens were displaced to build the highway.

Driving It includes 10 accounts from many of the first to drive along the turnpike, advertisements from Howard Johnson's and other turnpike concessionaires, and an excerpt from a 1950s film on highway safety.

Telling It features 16 primary sources, 10 driver stories, and accounts from toll collectors, as well as the story of the first highway worker to lose his life on duty in 1967.

Three Detour sections allow visitors a little diversion with short activities: visitors can match up song lyrics that mention the turnpike with the artists who wrote them (Bruce Springsteen and Simon and Garfunkel are included).

For teachers, the site includes an annotated bibliography of works for various age groups.

Women of Valor

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This site introduces Emma Goldman—an immigrant, an advocate of free love, a promoter of birth control, and an anarchist. The designers have done a splendid job in tying the many facets of Goldman's public life together into one set of interrelated narratives. An "Introduction" is divided into 13 thematically coherent sections, such as Early Years, Anarchism, Use of Violence, and Deportation. Each runs approximately 500 words. A Timeline is useful for placing Goldman into historical and cultural context.

There are several dozen artifacts, including the full text of two books, six cartoons, four historical documents, an analytical essay, two personal letters, 12 news clippings, and 16 photographs. The information is well documented, and includes a detailed bibliography.

The care that the producers took in explaining potentially confusing or problematic terms (like feminism and suffrage) makes the site particularly appropriate for high school and undergraduate students. Although not a comprehensive archive, this site nonetheless provides an informative introduction to Goldman and her role in American history.

New France, New Horizons: On French Soil in America

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Designed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the French landing in North America, this site is a collection of primary sources related to the French presence in what would later become Canada, the Great Lakes region, and Louisiana. Exhibition features 350 primary sources, including engravings, portraits, other artwork, as well as documents. They are organized by theme and are easy to find and view.

Database includes a database of more than 6,500 documents, including correspondence, reports, and maps. A special viewer allows visitors to zoom in and out of documents, making close viewing possible.

The collection is searchable by date, author, subject, or keyword. Visitors should keep in mind that although the site is written in English and French, the documents are written exclusively in French. The wealth of primary sources makes this a valuable resource for researchers, but language may prove a barrier for students and teachers.

Rediscovering George Washington

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This site introduces users to the life of George Washington. Reflecting current scholarship, the site contains an Introduction, which is essentially a 4,000 word summary of Washington's life and career. The Timeline is a chronology of the milestones in his life, with a few references to national events. The Multimedia Room includes 11 audio clips of scholars discussing Washington's importance in the second half of the 18th century. Also included are four sound files of Pat Sajak reading memorial letters written by Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill, among others, and five video clips of Charlton Heston reading some of Washington's more famous letters and speeches (his Farewell Speech, for example).

The site contains a modest collection of 150 Washington letters, and a transcription of Washington's Book of Etiquette, which Washington himself transcribed when he was 16 years old. The letters are divided into pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, pre-presidential, presidential, and post-presidential collections; and include personal letters from and to Washington and his wife, as well as documents like presidential pardons, indenture documents, and land surveys. Teachers will find useful the 10 Lesson Plans (for grades 9-12), which are very detailed and include bibliographies. Listen to the audio review: .

A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers

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This curriculum addresses labor politics and economics from the colonial period to the present day. Conceived and written by James D. Brown, Jr, "in cooperation with teachers from the metro Chicago area and local union members," it is divided into 11 chronological sections, each comprised of several elements: a 100–200-word overview; an inventory of major themes, episodes, and concepts; and a feature entitled "Integrating Labor History into Effective Teaching of the Period." This last portion recommends questions and lessons for students, and, for several sections, provides primary source materials. Thus "The Growth of a New Nation" outlines a lesson that asks students to compare Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence with an 1829 essay by George H. Evans—a founder of New York's Working Man's Party—entitled "The Working Men's Declaration of Independence."

The 11 sections emphasize gains achieved by organized labor and invite teachers to "highlight the stark contrast between today's working environment and the relationship between workers and owners of the past." Includes a list of 44 "Significant People in America's Labor History"; a 16-title bibliography; a link to an international news desk providing daily stories dealing with labor groups and issues; and additional material on Illinois labor history.

Some sections of the curriculum are thinner than others. More curiously, the site does not furnish any primary documents from the 20th century, and generally relies more on lists of events and issues than the sort of narrative prose that can enliven the past.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection

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On order of an Act of Congress signed into law in 1992, the National Archives has gathered federally-created material relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy—including declassified material from every relevant presidential commission, congressional investigation, and executive-branch agency—and placed it in a single collection, supplemented with materials donated by local governments, presidential libraries, institutions, and private individuals.

While original records are not available online, this site presents a searchable database and extensive finding aids and includes full texts of the reports issued by the Warren Commission, published in 1964, and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations.

This is a well-designed site that will be of most value to scholars of the assassination who plan to conduct research at the Archives.

Seneca Village

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An introduction to Seneca Village, a multi-ethnic community of African Americans and Irish and German immigrants destroyed by New York city officials in 1857 to clear land for Central Park.

Through a selection of materials, currently limited to maps, images, and secondary essays, the site furnishes background on both Seneca Village and Central Park more generally. Also suggests "classroom activities" and provides a list of 63 related titles.

Based on The Park and the People—an award-winning history of Central Park by Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar—the site promises to expand significantly (but, as of October 2000 had not changed significantly from when it was launched a few years earlier). "Primary documents will include the New York State Manuscript Census for 1855; birth and death records; church registers and records; newspaper articles; political cartoons, drawings, illustrations, photographs, and maps. Many of these will be interactive, so that students can query the data directly. "

Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices

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An exhibit of primary source material relating to slavery from the late 18th century to emancipation in the 19th century.

It reproduces or describes 33 documents, such as a broadside announcing a reward for the return of a runaway slave, a map delineating slave labor on an indigo plantation, a New York bill of sale for the purchase of a slave in 1785, and an 85-page memoir written in 1923 by Elizabeth Johnson Harris, an African American woman from Georgia who relates stories and experiences of her parents and grandparents, who had been slaves. The site "showcases the kinds of rare materials that under scrutiny reveal the ambitions, motivations, and struggles of people often presumed mute."

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.