The Zora Neale Hurston Plays

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This site offers 10 unpublished plays (four sketches or skits and six full-length plays) written by American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. Although the plays were written and submitted to the Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944, they remained unknown until 1997. The plays reflect Hurston's life experiences.

As an anthropologist and folklorist, Hurston traveled the American South, collecting and recording the sounds and songs of African Americans. Her research in Haiti is reflected in the voodoo scenes and beliefs woven into several of the plays.

The collection holds approximately 700 digitized pages. These are scanned as she wrote them and have not been transcribed. This site would be useful for research in early-20th-century southern or cultural history.

Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories

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This site captures the recollections of 23 former slaves, born between 1823 and the early 1860s. Several of the people interviewed were more than 100 years old. In the recordings, subjects discuss their entire lives, not just their lives as slaves, but they provide an important glimpse of what life was like for slaves and freedmen. They discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, how slaves were coerced, their families, and, of course, freedom.

Each of the 23 subjects' testimony is presented in four formats: Real Audio sound, MP3, Windows WAV, and transcription. Many of the subjects sang as part of their testimony; those songs are collected here, as well.

Visitors should not miss the Faces and Voices from the Presentation section, where photographs and short biographies are posted for seven of the subjects. The father and grandfather of one of the subjects, George Johnson, were owned by Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Johnson shares his recollections of Davis.

This site contains extraordinary primary sources, and is a tremendous resource for research into slavery and Reconstruction.

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: .

The Story of Virginia

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This attractive website offers a presentation on the history of Virginia from prehistoric times to the present with essays, images, and teaching resources. There are 10 chapters: the first Virginians; the settlement of colonial Virginia; Virginia's society before 1775; Virginians in the American Revolution; Virginians as Southerners, Confederates, and New Southerners; Virginians in the 20th century; the struggles of African American and female Virginians for equality; and a final chapter on images of Virginia in popular culture. Each chapter has an essay featuring images of relevant items in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society.

The "resource bank" collects all 95 images from the chapters of people, documents, places, and objects. Additionally, the site offers a teacher's guide for each chapter listing the standards of learning, a summary of key points, classroom activities and lesson plans, links to related websites, and information on tours, outreach programs, and hands-on-history programs.

An excellent introduction to the history of Virginia and its people with useful resources for class projects and classroom instruction.

Presidents of the United States - POTUS

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A reference resource for basic information about the U.S. Presidents. Each president's page includes election results; cabinet members; a list of notable events during term of office; and historical documents, such as inauguration speeches, proclamations, and significant public addresses.

The site provides links to sites about important events and biographies of family and cabinet members. Audio files are available for presidents from Grover Cleveland to George W. Bush. Links to two to 10 internet biographies and one to 13 related sites are provided.

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media

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In the past decade new media and new technologies have begun to transform even the ancient discipline of history. CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web challenge historians to rethink the ways that they research, write, present, and teach about the past. The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) was established in the fall of 1994 to contribute to and reflect upon this transformation and challenge. The Center produces historical works in new media, tests the effectiveness of these products in the classroom, and reflects critically on the promises and pitfalls of new media in historical practice. The Center's resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history.

Includes links to more than 1,000 history departments around the world; and a wide variety of teaching, scholarly, and exhibition resources—online databases, informative sites, and software. For example, Declaration: Interpreting the Declaration of Independence by Translation provides translations of the American Declaration of Independence into French, German, Polish, Russian, and Spanish, along with commentaries on the practice and problems of translating documents.

With the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York (ASHP/CML), CHNM produces History Matters, a resource site for teachers and students of American history.

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.

Investigating the Vietnam War

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This site was designed to help students research projects about the Vietnam War. It is one of the 20 sections on Spartacus Educational, an encyclopedia of English and U.S. History created by John Simkin, a history teacher. The Vietnam site links to more than 100 sites, including timelines, personal accounts, statistics, visual images, and biographies of figures such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Ho Chi Minh. A smaller, annotated list links to 22 recommended sites.

The site provides students with approximately one hundred 1000 word biographies and email addresses of 11 people willing to be interviewed about their involvement in the war.

The site currently offers two collections of study questions, one produced at the University of California, Berkeley, and one produced by Simkin. Two professional historians host a discussion about the history of the war and help students explore the topic.

The site is slightly difficult to use; however, it is still an excellent resource for understanding the connections between personal experience and public narratives of war.

Voice of the Shuttle: Web Page for Humanities Research

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This gateway website was created by English professor Alan Liu. It contains over 70 pages of links to humanities-related resources on the internet and provides a guide to online resources in 26 subject categories, including anthropology, legal studies, history, women and gender, and minority studies.

Each link is subdivided. For example, the Minority Studies link is divided into 11 subcategories, including African American, Chicano Latino Hispanic, and Native American history. The History category is subdivided into 19 sections, such as Family History, Military History, and national and regional categories like North America, with subheadings for Canada and United States. The United States history subheading contains over 500 links to primary documents from all periods of American history.

This site contains both primary and secondary resources, and there is a History Teaching Resources link that provides resources for teachers of World History, syllabi for women and gender-related courses, and a guide to using historical places as teaching tools. The site is easy to navigate and contains a keyword search engine.

Pluralism and Unity

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Presents a wide array of materials that explore "the struggle between these two visions" of pluralism and unity in early 20th-century American thought and life. Arranged into six major sections: The Idea of Pluralism; The Idea of Internationalism; Culture and Pluralism; Labor and Pluralism; Race and Pluralism; and Gender and Pluralism.

The site links to major sites on such topics as ethics, politics, culture, sociology, anthropology, religion, economics, imperialism, hegemony, world systems theory, the League of Nations, Jim Crow laws, eugenics, the Niagara Movement, NAACP, KKK, unions, strikes, modernism, the genteel tradition, localism, and ragtime.

Outlines the perspectives of important public figures including William James, Eugene Debs, Randolph Bourne, Daniel DeLeon, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Horace Kallen, Scott Nearing, Max Eastman, William Cowper Brann, Madison Grant, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Charles S. Peirce, Margaret Mead, Woodrow Wilson, John Reed, and Irving Berlin.

Although many of the site's direct links to texts by these figures are no longer operable, users can access sites containing important writings through the "Concepts" section of each of the six major parts. Also includes 12 audio components and dozens of photographs.

For its inclusion of links to many extremely useful sites from a variety of perspectives, this site will be valuable to those studying early 20th-century American ideas and debates and their resonance throughout later times.