From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 is precisely what it says, a collection of 396 pamphlets written by African Americans or by non-African Americans writing about slavery, Reconstruction, the colonization of Africa, and other pertinent topics.

According to the website, "[. . . t]he materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches." Prominent authors include, but are certainly not limited to, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Material can be browsed by title, author, or subject; or you can run a key word search. If you need more material than what is available in the collection itself, there is a list of external resources with related content.

Maintained by Steven F. Miller of the University of Maryland, this site provides 44 primary documents relating to the emancipation of African American slaves between 1861 and 1865. It includes a letter by General William T. Sherman explaining why he refused to return fugitive slaves to their owners; an 1864 letter from Annie Davis, a Maryland slave, to President Abraham Lincoln asking him to clarify her legal status; a description by a Union general of a bloody battle at Milliken's Bend, LA, where a brigade of black soldiers fought; and documents from the federal and Confederate governments relating to significant events.

The documents—transcribed from originals housed at the National Archives—are accompanied by sentence-long annotations, as well as an authoritative chronology of events leading to legal emancipation.

This site is part of a larger effort underway by the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, "supported by the University of Maryland and by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities" to publish the multivolume Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867.

Opening this website, visitors are greeted with several pictures of Frederick Douglass throughout his lifespan, while a five-part historical overview of his life explains what the exhibit entails. Visitors can access more of the site's content through the three key feature links in the lower right corner of the home page: the "House Tour," "Lesson Plans," and "Portraits." The "House Tour" takes the user on a virtual room-by-room tour of Frederick Douglass's home, which is physically located in Washington, DC. This link may be useful for educators who would like their students to experience Douglass’s home but who cannot reach DC, offering a memorable classroom experience for any K–12 classroom studying the life of Frederick Douglass or of African Americans during the Antebellum and Reconstruction eras.

Additionally, educators could assign this website to students for research using primary source artifacts and documents. "Portraits" provides not only portraits with captions explaining their significance in Douglass's life, but of his children and close abolitionist friends, as well as personal items such as his Panama hat, eyeglasses, coffee pot and articles from his paper, the North Star. In total, the site offers more than 150 primary source documents and artifacts from the time period and Douglass's life. Clicking on the link for “All Image Galley” allows the viewer to step into Frederick Douglass’s world, viewing all of the primary sources in one exhibit gallery with nine subsections, including "Leisure Time" and "Presidential Appointments." This truly brings history to life!

One of the most useful links for educators is "Lesson Plans." This takes the user to a section of the National Park Service's website called Teaching with Museum Collections, where educators can download two lesson plans on Frederick Douglass, or download lesson plan templates to create their own artifact-based lessons. The lessons are clear and include state standards as well as differentiated instruction ideas. "Frederick Douglass's Hat" is appropriate for middle school students, but can be modified and integrated to the needs of all students. "Forced March," created by an 8th-grade middle school teacher, can also be modified or enhanced to meet the needs of a differentiated classroom.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Lynn Roach wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

This subsection of the NBC Learn website offers 132 streaming short videos related to the civil rights movement.

Videos include commentaries following major events (closely or years in retrospect), original testimonies, and video of events such as the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Topics include Emmett Till, bus boycotts, Brown v. Board of Education, the Freedom Riders, Little Rock, African American attendance at the University of Mississippi, Medgar Evers, the March on Washington, the Birmingham Church Bombing, Malcolm X, 1964 voter registration volunteer disappearances, and King's assassination.

The last section, Finishing the Dream, contains footage from four town hall events, which brought together activists, educators, religious leaders, and high school and college students for discussion of issues related to the civil rights movement.

The 132 videos are divided into subsections by year, beginning with 1954 and continuing through 1968. All videos include a transcript. Select the clip, and the word "transcript" will appear to the right of the video. Click it to bring up a scrollable transcript alongside the film.

You may also be interested in exploring further on the NBC Learn website. However, the majority of the content is subscription-based. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial, though, in order to test the waters.

Part of the "Famous Trials" site created by Law Professor Douglas O. Linder, this collection provides documents, photographs, essays, and information about the controversial trials of nine African American youths for allegedly raping two white women on a train in the Depression South. Contemporary materials include 20 excerpts from the trials; 22 contemporary news articles; 10 appellate court decisions; eight letters; 28 photographs; 16 quotes from participants and others commenting on the trials; a political cartoon; and a postcard.

Also offers two essays by Linder of 6,000 and 18,000 words each; 20 biographies ranging from 100 to 1,000 words each on participants in the trials, political figures, and historians who have chronicled it; and a bibliography of 30 entries, including five links to related sites. Of value to those studying American race and gender history, the South, legal history, and Depression America.

This section, recently added to the Avalon Project, contains complete copies of Martin Luther King Jr.'s August 28, 1963, "I Have A Dream" speech; Frederick Douglass' 1855 My Bondage and Freedom; The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, dictated by Sojourner Truth and edited by Olive Gilbert; W.E.B. Du Bois' 1903 The Souls of Black Folk; and Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington. All of the transcripts are legible and available in HTML format.

Offering more than 10,000 documents pertaining to Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, this website presents documents that include approximately 6,000 pieces of formerly-classified correspondence, reports, and memoranda. Topics include the Atlantic Charter; the United Nations; the Departments of War, Treasury, and State; and the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.

The site also offers 1,000 documents pertaining to U.S.-Vatican relations during World War II, 2,000 documents concerning U.S.-German relations, and full texts of 30 "fireside chats." An exhibit examines "The Special Relationship" between Winston Churchill and Roosevelt and the emergence of an Anglo-American alliance. A mini-multimedia showcase contains one video clip of Roosevelt walking and 11 audio clips of speeches. The site also provides information on Eleanor Roosevelt and the Depression, and includes more than 2,000 photographs.

This website is devoted to the life, work, and memory of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the U.S. Of primary interest to historians and teachers are the "Historical Resources and Education" and "Public Programs" sections of the website, which shed light on important events in early 1960s political history, including the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program, and the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Users unfamiliar with the history of the Kennedy White House might begin with the "Timeline," which puts events important to the Kennedy administration in a larger political and cultural context, or "Biographies and Profiles," which presents a Kennedy family tree and profiles of early 1960s notables such as Fidel Castro, Robert McNamara, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. "White House Diary" further familiarizes users with Kennedy's day-to-day activities as President.

The website also includes hundreds of historical sources including speeches, photographs, telegrams, correspondence, eulogies for Bobby Kennedy, JFK, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (all accessible through an Advanced Search feature), and transcripts of more than 170 oral interviews with notables such as John Kenneth Galbraith (Harvard University economic professor and Ambassador to India), Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, singer Harry Belafonte, and President Gerald Ford. In some cases, the original audio files of speeches are also included. Several lesson plans designed for elementary, middle, and high school students use materials from this archive to address topics such as Kennedy's inaugural address, the Cuban missile crisis, and the civil rights movement.

Part of the Library of Congress American Memory site, this online archive draws from two Library of Congress collections on the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. The Abraham Lincoln Papers in the Library's Manuscript Division contain over 20,000 items, over 2000 of which are contained on this site. Items include correspondence, speeches, and reports accumulated primarily during Lincoln's presidency (1860-1865). The documents are accompanied by annotated descriptions (roughly 150 words) composed by the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. The papers are in chronological order and are keyword searchable. The second collection highlighted in this exhibit is "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song," over 200 sheet music compositions that represent the popular music of the Civil War era. These pieces are drawn from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection in the Library's Rare Book and Special Collection division. The sheet music is searchable by title, composer, and subject. The site also offers links to other Library of Congress sources on Lincoln, including a photograph gallery of 16 images of the Lincoln family and other political figures of the Civil War era; over 50 Civil War maps; and a link to lesson plans for the entire American Memory Collection, including eight Civil War lesson plans appropriate for elementary and secondary students. This site is ideal for researching Lincoln's presidency and popular culture of the Civil War era.

This wealth of historical materials, in a variety of formats, addresses Abraham Lincoln's years in Illinois (1831–1860) and Illinois history during the same period. The website provides more than 2,300 transcriptions of documents, including correspondence, speeches, treaties, and other official papers. In addition, there are 295 images of Lincoln, his family, friends, associates, and contemporaries, as well as Illinois towns, homes, and businesses, and 63 recordings of songs.

Materials are organized into eight thematic sections: African American Experience and American Racial Attitudes; Economic Development and Labor; Frontier Settlement; Law and Society; Native American Relations; Politics; Religion and Culture; and Women's Experience and Gender Roles. Each theme includes a background essay, relevant documents and images, video discussions by prominent historians, and narrated slide shows. "Lincoln's Biography" divides his life into eight segments with a summary and biographical text by scholars, as well as a bibliography.