In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was covered on news stations around the country. This website provides 230 of these video clips from two local television stations in Roanoke, Virginia. Clips feature both national events, such as the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, as well as footage of local school desegregation, protests, and interviews on the street.

Accompanying this footage are 14 oral histories (several from Virginians with firsthand knowledge of the Prince Edward Public Schools closing), and 23 documents that chronicle the official development of Massive Resistance in Virginia, in particularly the involvement of Senator Harry F. Byrd. "Essays and Interpretation" provides important historical context and analysis, with detailed pieces on "Virginia's Massive Resistance to School Desegregation" and the development of television news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia and Mississippi.

The Supreme Court is a companion website to a 2008 Parents' Choice gold-award-winning PBS series on the same topic. Under About the Series, episodes can be previewed online, or you can read full transcripts. Another option is to download the discussion guide, intended for use in 9th- through 12th-grade classrooms.

For Educators includes lesson plans, interactives and games, a link to the aforementioned discussion guide, and a list of external resources. Interactives include a timeline, which requires you to put 10 landmark Supreme Court cases in order; a game of memory which requires matching historical figures to facts (ex: Oliver Wendell Holmes to being known as "the Great Dissenter"); and a quiz where you match daily activities such as listening to music or saying the Pledge to relevant case names. The four available lesson plans cover federal v. state power, the 14th Amendment, civil liberties, and the legal importance of precedent.

Note the links to games and a timeline at the top of the home page will take you to a different timeline and set of games. This timeline shows you major Supreme Court and historical events which took place in the year of your choosing. The games include six additional interactives—an explanation of design and architectural decisions as they relate to the Supreme Court; how various types of texts have served as inspiration in Supreme Court decisions; an opportunity to decide which way you think majority rule fell in four cases; matching justices, cases, or issues to quotes; examples of reversal of precedent; and an opportunity to register and predict the outcome of current cases.

Other features available on the website include pages on Supreme Court history (in the top menu of the home page) and additional interviews with Sandra Day O'Connor and John Roberts (in a menu near the bottom of the home page).

This website offers an archive of more than 35,000 items from 75 individual collections at nearly 30 institutions in Illinois. Items include black-and-white and color photographs, post cards, audio recordings, maps, books, newspaper articles, newsletters and bulletins, handbills, and film clips. The focus of all the collections is the history of Illinois, its places, and people. A strength of the collections is the large number of photographs of residential and commercial buildings from cities and towns throughout Illinois.

Visitors can browse the contents of all collections by city, organization, or proper name. Once in a collection, other collections can be individually browsed by selecting from the collections dropdown menu. All collections are searchable by such fields as subject, description, creator, publisher, contributors, date, type, or format. Clicking on the thumbnail image brings up a new window with a large image and descriptive data. There are also 14 exhibits on various topics such as "History of Park Ridge, 1841-1926" and "Brides of Yesteryear." This is a useful collection of primary source material on the social and cultural history of Illinois.

ARC offers more than 78,000 digital government resources. Materials include textual records, photographs, maps, architectural drawings, artifacts, sound recordings, and motion pictures dating from the colonial period to the recent past. ARC includes items on presidents, the military, war, immigration, Japanese-American internment, slavery, science, prisons, federal programs, the environment, the National Park Service, foreign affairs, civil rights, African Americans, and American Indians.

To begin a search, click on the yellow "search" button near the top left of the ARC webpage. The search engine is clearly organized and invites queries on specific historical materials or general themes. To access digitized materials only, check the box marked "Descriptions of Archival Materials linked to digital copies." The site continues to expand, though, as it stands, it provides an exceptional collection of government material.

Joe Hill was created as a companion to PBS channel KUED's documentary on the c. 1900 labor movement figure of the same name. Born in Sweden, Joe Hill's life is largely an enigma. Over time, he became involved in the Industrial Workers of the World, and was known as a writer of labor movement songs. Eventually, Hill was tried for murder, resulting in an outcry from sources as varied as the Swedish ambassador to the American Federation of Labor.

This website provides a brief biography of Joe Hill (also known as Joel Hagglund), introductions to major protestors against his sentence, an overview of the impact of his songwriting, audio recordings and lyrics of several of Hill's songs, lengthy sections of the formal appeal against Hill's sentence, and an interview with a lawyer and professor concerning the case and its legal and social context. Low-resolution images of Joe Hill, his cartoons, labor propaganda, and correspondence related to his trial and sentence are located throughout the site. In some cases, transcriptions are available of historical documents.

Joe Hill also contains information on various labor professions in the early 20th century. You can read about mining, immigration, the Scofield Mine Disaster, and more. Included are five interviews with professors and authors who contributed to the documentary film.

A final section on labor today offers readers an opportunity to submit their own labor stories, as well as a list of publications related to the life and death of Joe Hill.

Site navigation is not as intuitive as it could be. The best way to peruse the "Story" section, for example, may be to use the timeline, rather than to move through the pages in the order the "next" arrows would have you do. Using the timeline, however, will link you to sections in both the "Story" and "Legal Battle" section of the site. Expect to use your browser's back button frequently.

This exhibit includes 21 "actuality" films from the Library's Westinghouse Works Collection. Actuality films were motion pictures that were produced on flip cards, also known as mutoscopes. These films, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1904, were intended to showcase the company's operations and feature the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and the Westinghouse Machine Company. They were shown daily in the Westinghouse Auditorium at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Brief (roughly 500-word) descriptive narratives accompany each film, along with three to five photographs of factory exteriors and interiors and male and female workers performing their duties. A timeline traces the history of the Westinghouse companies from the birth of founder George Westinghouse in 1846 to Westinghouse's last patent, awarded four years after his death in 1918. Another link offers a Wilmerding News article, dated September 2, 1904, about life in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, "the ideal home town," where the Westinghouse Air Brake factory was located. A bibliography of 18 scholarly works on Westinghouse and manufacturing in America is also included. The easily-navigable site is keyword searchable and can be browsed by subject. It is a good resource for information on labor and manufacturing in early 20th-century America, as well as on early film.

These multimedia resources for teaching American history focus on slavery, ethnic history, private life, technological achievement, and American film. There are more than 600 documents on the history of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and slavery, from "first encounters" through the Civil War.

A complete U.S. history textbook is presented, along with historical newspaper articles and more than 1,500 annotated links, including 330 links to audio files of historic speeches, and nine links to audio files of historians discussing relevant topics. Ten essays (800 words) address past controversies, such as the Vietnam War, socialism, and the war on poverty. Seven essays present historical background on more recent controversies and essays of more than 10,000 words each address the history of American film and private life in America. Exhibits offer 217 photographs from a freedmen's school in Alabama and seven letters between 18th-century English historian Catharine Macaulay and American historian Mercy Otis Warren.

An adjunct site to a PBS "Frontline" program exploring the claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one and maybe all of the children of his slave, Sally Hemmings. This view is supported by DNA testing and believed valid by a consensus of historians and experts. The site presents ten essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words in length by prominent historians and other scholars—including Joseph Ellis, Annette Gordon-Reed, Philip D. Morgan, Jack Rakove, and Gordon Woods—on the controversy, its historical background and significance, interracial sex in the antebellum Chesapeake region, Jefferson's legacy, and America's mixed-race heritage. The site also provides accounts by four Monticello slaves and the chief overseer; four video segments, from seven to nine minutes each; transcripts of interviews with Ellis, Gordon-Reed, Dr. Eugene Foster, who designed and carried out the testing, and Lucia Cinder Stanton, from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation; and links to a clearinghouse for information that argues against the claim.

These published works, manuscripts, images, and motion picture footage address the formation of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage. Materials include 62 books and pamphlets, 140 Federal statutes and Congressional resolutions, 34 additional legislative documents, and excerpts from the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record. An additional 360 presidential proclamations, 170 prints and photographs, two historic manuscripts, and two motion pictures are available.

Materials include Alfred Bierstadt paintings, period travel literature, a photographic record of Yosemite, and Congressional acts regarding conservation and the establishment of national parks. An annotated chronology discusses events in the development of the conservation movement with links to pertinent documents and images.