Mission to Arizona, 1916–1940: Father Augustine Schwarz, O.F.M.

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Photo, Fr. Augustine on location with film Westerners
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This exhibition presents photographs taken by Father Augustine Schwarz (1887–1946) while he served as a Catholic missionary to American Indians in Arizona. The images, donated by the Schwartz family, depict missionary scenes and workers, church buildings, and other landmarks.

The site focuses on three American Indian groups—Pima, Papago, and Apache Indians—and serves as an accessible portal to Catholic missionary activities among those three groups. Many of the photographs are accompanied with brief descriptions and annotations by Father Schwarz. A brief biography of Father Schwarz is included.

Along with images of Whiteriver Apaches of northern Arizona taken by Father Schwarz's brother, Arnold Schwarz, the entire collection consists of 179 images.

Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains

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Image for Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains
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These 685 items represent 27 current and former American Indian tribes of the Northern Great Plains and cover a period from 1870 to 1954. Most of the materials are photographs with identifying text. The collection also includes stereographs, ledger drawings, and other sketches.

Users can view three unique collections. The Barstow Ledger Drawing Collection offers 66 Crow and Gros Ventre drawings from the late 19th century. A portfolio entitled Blackfeet Indian Tipis, Design and Legend includes 26 works and an introductory essay. Another collection offers treaties with the Assiniboine, Blackfeet, and North Piegan tribes from 1874 and 1875.

Searching is available by subject, date, location, name, tribe, collection, and artist or photographer. This valuable site documents folkways, material culture, and the history of American Indians from the Northern Great Plains region.

Images of Native Americans

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Image for Images of Native Americans
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This collection of materials (more than 80 items) comes from rare books, pamphlets, journals, pulp magazines, newspapers, and original photographs. The illustrations reflect European interpretations of Native Americans, images of popular culture, literary and political observations, and artistic representations. The three main sections are "Portrayals of Native Americans," "The Nine Millionth Volume," and a timeline.

"Portrayals" is divided into four online galleries: Color Plate Books, Foreign Views, Mass Market Appeal, and Early Ethnography. The galleries incorporate the renowned works of George Catlin and Edward S. Curtis, and the lesser-known works of early 19th-century Russian artist-explorer Louis Choris. "Mass market" features 32 illustrations, including colorful images of western novel covers and portraits of southwestern Indians. "Early ethnography" contains a newspaper article about a Native American family, five photographs, and 15 illustrations of Indians at play and at war. "The Nine Millionth Volume" is devoted to James Otto Lewis's historic volume, The Aboriginal Port Folio, a series of hand-colored lithographic portraits of American Indian chiefs.

American Indians of the Pacific Northwest

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northwest indians
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These 2,300 photographs and 7,700 pages of text focus on the lives of American Indians in the Northwest Coast and Plateau regions of the Pacific Northwest. Materials illustrate housing, clothing, crafts, transportation, education, employment, and other aspects of everyday life among American Indians in this region. Most of the photographs were taken before 1920.

Texts include more than 3,800 pages from the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior from 1851 through 1908; 89 Pacific Northwest Quarterly articles from 1906—1998; and 23 titles in the University of Washington Publications in Anthropology series. The site also offers 14 maps and 10 lengthy essays authored by anthropologists on specific tribal groups and cross-cultural topics.

American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election

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Photo, detail from "James W. Gerard. . . ," 1915, American Leaders Speak
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These 59 sound recordings document speeches by American leaders produced from 1918 to 1920 on the Nation's Forum record label. The speeches—by such prominent public figures as Warren G. Harding, James M. Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, John J. Pershing, Will H. Hays, A. Mitchell Palmer, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise—deal for the most part with issues and events related to World War I and the 1920 presidential election. Additional topics include social unrest, Americanism, bolshevism, taxes, and business practices.

Speeches range from one to five minutes in length. A special presentation, "From War to Normalcy," introduces the collection with representative recordings, including Harding's famous pronouncement that Americans need "not nostrums but normalcy." This site includes photographs of speakers and of the actual recording disk labels, as well as text versions of the speeches.

All Hands on Deck

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Oil on canvas, 1884, USS Constitution. . . , Davidson, USS Constitution Museum
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The USS Constitution Museum developed All Hands on Deck as a means of introducing K–12 educational elements across subjects (math, art, and more) using the history of one of the United States' most renowned military vessels, the USS Constitution.

The website itself is somewhat disorganized. However, there are a plethora of lesson plans embedded within it for students of any grade level.

The available lessons are divided into five sections—preview activities (to determine pre-existing knowledge), the building of early U.S. military frigates, the War of 1812 and the Barbary Wars, 1800s life aboard a warship, and the lasting legacy of the USS Constitution. These sections have subsections, within which you can find individual lessons intended for grades K–4, 5–8, and 9–12. Alternatively, visiting "How to Use This Online Curriculum" includes a linked list of states. Clicking on any of the available states—IL, MD, WA, SC, TN, MO, TX, NM, CO, MT, and VA—offers a list of the activities available on the website which correlate with state standards. The individual subsections also include recommended field trip sites, films, books, games, music, and more; as well as anecdotes, literature, and other "grab bag" additional items of interest.

The Image Gallery offers a smattering of paintings, illustrations, and photographs of the vessel and its officers. The gallery also contains a single newspaper recruitment ad dating to 1798.

Educators who would prefer a tangible copy of the curriculum can send an electronic request.

Alternatively, you may want to brush up on your USS Constitution history yourself. In that case, the website offers a 19-minute video in which a young girl meets a variety of figures aboard the ship—a captain's wife, a powder monkey, and an African American sailor among them.

9/11 Memorial

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Rendering, 9/11 Memorial Names and Waterfall, 9/11 Memorial website
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Exactly one decade from the events of September 11, 2001, a new memorial is slated to open at Ground Zero. The memorial website offers the expected information on visiting the memorial, as well as a wealth of information which can be of use well outside of the state of New York.

Plan Your Visit is the place to go if you are considering visiting the memorial yourself or taking a class to the site. Note that there are restrictions on items and bag sizes permitted, that the site contains no public restrooms, and reservations are required with the number of group visits per day limited. Prior to the official opening, visitors can view a preview museum, which includes a StoryCorps recording booth for sharing your own 9/11 story. However, there is still a hefty amount of information here for "digital only" visitors. For example, you can read about how names will be grouped on the memorial—by location at the time of the incident, by company affiliation, and by relationships requested by next-of-kin. What does this system say about how we define ourselves today with and against other people and organizations?

In the same section, you can also find a link to a free iPhone 9/11 history application. This app provides images, a timeline, and a tour of the World Trade Center area. The tour can be used to guide an actual walk, or it can be accessed from elsewhere to explore digitally.

About the Memorial provides an overview of the memorial's design and the reasoning behind these artistic and practical choices. This can be used to get your students to question the purpose of memorials and/or how environmental designs can codify collective experience and relate to the values of their time. One simple example is the use of natural elements—trees and water—in this memorial. How do these choices relate to concepts of healing, Romanticism, sustainability, etc.

Collections includes a variety of potentially useful subpages which present a smattering of 9/11 stories with artifact images and links to oral histories, as well as a small list of international tribute projects. The subsection "Contribute" also allows you or your students to upload reaction artwork, photos, videos, or stories.

Finally, there's "Teach + Learn," a section specifically dedicated to 9/11 and contextual education. Read through the key questions for a list of a number of the big issues brought up when discussing 9/11, such as how crisis and fellowship work in tandem and how to avoid the idea of the "Other," as fundamentally unlike oneself. There are also two teaching guides, one on artistic response and another on volunteerism. Another feature is a PDF on talking to children about 9/11. One suggestion listed is that 9/11 be addressed through the stories of individuals rather than themes of good or evil. Finally, this section includes webcasts on Middle Eastern culture, memory and memorials, the aftermath of 9/11, and the building of the 9/11 memorial; an interactive timeline; an interactive version of Lady Liberty, a statue bedecked in 9/11 artifacts and ephemera; and information on domestic and international attacks.

Curating the City: Wilshire Blvd

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Photo, Prize-winning fashionable women at Beverly Wilshire Easter brunch, 1955
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Wilshire Boulevard runs for 16 miles in Los Angeles, from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica to Grand Avenue in Downtown. This website offers an interactive journey down the length of this historic street, with more than 100 stops at parks, buildings, and historic landmarks in Westwood/Brentwood, Beverley Hills, Miracle Mile/Carthay Circle, Windsor Square/Hancock Park, Wilshire Center, and the Parks District.

Virtual visitors to Palisades Park in Santa Monica, for example, can see 14 photographs and drawings of the park, spanning from the early 1900s, through the 1940s, and to contemporary photographs, and read a brief description of the park's history. Those interested in the history of architecture will find useful a website feature that allows users to filter all monuments by architect, style, and function. The website also includes a "Memory Book," allowing users to contribute their stories about Wilshire Boulevard and read the stories of others, as they talk about their favorite pizza restaurant in Westwood or their childhood in Beverly Hills in the early 1960s.

Seattle Power and Water Supply Collection

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Photo, Man standing in completed penstock. . . , 1925, University of Washington
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This collection features images of dams, hydroelectric power plants, and water supply facilities built in Washington State from the late 1890s to the 1950s. The archive contains 695 items, primarily photographs but also some maps, diagrams, and other documents. A book excerpt on Washington's public water projects from Building Washington: A History of Washington State Public Works (Seattle, WA: Tartu Publications, 1998) by historians Paul Dorpat and Genevieve McCoy provides perspective on the photographs. The collection is notable because "many of these dams, power plants and reservoirs were built in some of Washington's most rugged terrain and had features that represented significant engineering feats of their time." Each image is accompanied by full descriptive and bibliographic data.

The site offers three ways to search the archive of photographs: keyword search, search by collection, or an advanced search option by selected fields and subjects. Or the visitor can browse all the items by selecting "view all items" in the search drop-down menu. This website is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Western hydroelectric dams and other water projects in the first half of the 20th century.

Shaping the Constitution

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Print, The Age of Brass. . . , 1869, Currier and Ives, Shaping the Constitution
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Shaping the Constitution revolves around the role of Virginia in early American military and political history.

The first section, Becoming Free and Independent States, offers an overview of the perspectives of early Virginians on the Revolutionary War. The page includes biographies of figures of note, ranging from George Washington to Billy, a slave impressed by the British Navy. Each biography offers titles and/or web links for further reading. The main draw of the section, though, is a collection of 32 primary sources—broadsides, portraits, maps, warrants, petitions, a cartoon, and more. Each primary source can be selected for additional information, a transcript, related sources, and/or a high-resolution copy of the source. One surprise worth noting is that selecting the high-res copy of the source sometimes provides a PDF file with multiple related sources, rather than just the one you may have thought you were downloading.

Each of the following sections follow a similar structure—biographies, primary sources, and a short text overview. Topics include Virginia and the Constitutional debate; Bill of Rights; and 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments.

An additional feature, located within the majority of the individual sections is a "For Educators" button. This button opens a list of lesson plans and their respective Virginia standards. Only the 15th and 19th Amendment portions of the site lack this option.

A laudable fact about this website is that it provides unpleasant sources (such as a photo of an Alexandria slave pen) as well as copies of major government documents. These sources are useful for showing precisely what facts of historical life various political decisions and amendments were created to change.