History Now: American History Online

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Logo, <em>History Now</em>
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A quarterly journal inaugurated in September 2004 designed to "promote the study of American history" with articles by historians and teaching resources. Past issues on elections, primary sources on slavery, immigration, and American national holidays are also available on the site.

Each issue has six main features. "In This Issue" provides an introduction and overview. "The Historian's Perspective" offers four to six scholarly essays by noted historians on the issue's topic. "From the Teacher's Desk" has lesson plans for high school, middle school, and elementary school levels with links to related websites. "Interactive History" provides either timelines, quizzes, or interactive maps. The "Digital Drop Box" allows site visitors to post comments, suggestions, sample lesson plans, or stories from the classroom. "Ask the Archivist" has suggested sources and a section for questions and answers.

National Women's History Project

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Logo, National Women's History Project
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Introduces the National Women's History Project, "a non-profit organization dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information as well as educational material and programs." Includes a 5,000-word essay on the history of the women's rights movement and a 7,000-word timeline. The site gives detailed information about the organization's activities, including efforts to bring women's history into public life, a list of curricular ideas for teachers, material concerning National Women's History Month, and a 15-question quiz on Women's History.

Perhaps most valuable, the site furnishes approximately 200 partially annotated links, arranged into 12 broad categories such as "Politics," "World History," and "Math and Science." Though lacking in primary source material, this site provides useful beginning resources for the study and practice of women's history.

Eugenics Archive

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Image for Eugenics Archive
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The history of the eugenics movement in the United States, from its inception in the decades following the Civil War through its height in the first few decades of the 20th century, is traced on this website. As we move into the age of genetics, this movement, that sought to filter "bad" traits from the human population, becomes increasingly important to understand.

The movement's history is told through a narrative divided into eight themes, including social and scientific origins, research methods and traits studied, flaws in these methods, ways in which the movement was popularized, immigration restriction, and marriage and sterilization laws. Each narrative is accompanied by roughly 10 primary sources—reports, articles, charts, legal documents, and photographs. These materials provide a succinct introduction to eugenics in the U.S.

In addition to the narratives, visitors can search or browse the Image Archive, featuring more than 2,000 primary sources, including documents, artwork, photographs, and more. Visitors may browse by topic, object type, time period, or the archive sources' originals are held by, or search by keyword or ID number. Note that primary sources cannot be downloaded from the Flash version of the Archive, though they can be from the HTML version of the site.

Coming of the American Revolution, 1764-1776

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Detail, The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, Number 779
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A well-designed introduction to the major political events in Massachusetts that preceded and coincided with the beginning of the American Revolution. This website provides a series of 15 essays on the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty, the Townshend Acts, boycotts, the Boston Massacre, the Committees of Correspondence, the Tea Party, the Coercive Acts, the First Continental Congress, Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress, the Battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington, and the Declaration of Independence.

Each of these essays is keyed to a selection of the site's more than 150 primary documents—letters, newspaper articles, government acts, broadsides and more—that are available in high-resolution scanned versions on the site. The essay on the Declaration of Independence, for example, links to images of the various drafts of the document, as well as letters between John and Abigail Adams exalting over the Declaration.

The website also has brief biographies of the political actors in the historical drama that was unfolding. In addition, the website has a section that approaches the same material with lesson plans and curriculum objectives appropriate for the use of American history teachers. A short orientation for students is also included.

Agents of Social Change: 20th-Century Women's Activism

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Photo, Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Dan Wynn, c. 1970
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Selected materials from the personal papers of Mary Metlay Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyon, Constance Baker Motley, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Frances Fox Piven, and Gloria Steinem. Also includes papers of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW) and the Women's Action Alliance (WAA). The six women and two organizations are introduced with biographical essays (300-700 words). For each woman, the site provides from three to six texts, of 100 to 1,000 words, including correspondence, photographs, articles written by or about them, and bulletins and newsletters for movements with which they worked. Material includes fan mail received by Steinem, a letter from William Z. Foster to Kaufman, and a five-page speech Motley made to the Children's Organization for Civil Rights.

Papers for the NCNW include two photos, one poster, a brochure, and six pages of projects and activities. The WAA exhibit presents one photo, a press release, a mission statement, and a brochure. There are six high school lesson plans using the primary documents. The site will be useful for research in 20th-century feminism and women's activism.

A Cybrary of the Holocaust

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Oil on Canvas, Marching Out to Work, Mieczyslaw Koscielniak
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Created in 1995, this site presents an impressive body of primary and secondary source materials about the Holocaust. Offers an wide range of contemporary and historical resources, including more than 100 images from concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto; more than 30 drawings and paintings by Holocaust survivors; interactive maps of two concentration camps; the text of the 1942 Wannsee Protocols; four interviews with historians; lesson plans for teaching about the Holocaust to school children; background essays; survivor narratives, poetry, and literature; letters, speeches, and posters by Nazi perpetrators; and scores of links. A sophisticated search engine guides users through the site's poorly organized and sometimes confusing interface. The site's author is a website marketing consultant. Particularly useful for secondary school teachers seeking to design student projects, this is an extremely rich collection of material.

HarpWeek: Explore History

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Image, "Get Behind Me, Satan!," Nast, T., Harper's Weekly, 17 Feb., 1872.
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[FREE AND SUBSCRIPTION]

These 22 exhibits present free access to a wealth of texts and images on a variety of subjects dealing with 19th-century American history. Each section provides illustrations, articles, editorials, and overviews. Materials include four exhibits on politics and elections, including the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Six exhibits deal with race and ethnicity, including slavery and Chinese Americans. Three exhibits offer material on business and consumer culture, such as advertising history and tobacco.

Additional exhibits include "The American West"; "A Sampler of Civil War Literature"; "Russian-American Relations, 1863–1905"; and "The World of Thomas Nast." A subscription-based website presents the entire run of Harper's Weekly. With free registration, Nineteenth-Century Advertising presents an archive of 40,000 advertisements that appeared in Harper's Weekly.

Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library

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Image, Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library
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These 29 collections document the history of Hawaii and Micronesia from 1834 to the 1990s. "Annexation of Hawai'i," for example, contains thousands of pages of documents concerning the U.S. plan to annex Hawaii, realized in 1898. Materials include the 1,437-page Blount Report of 1894–95, initiated by President Grover Cleveland on the history of relations between the U.S. and Hawaii and the planned annexation; Congressional debates on the Hawaii Organic Act, passed in 1900 to establish a territorial government; and Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions and protest documents from 1897–98.

"Hawaii War Records" presents 880 photographs documenting the impact of World War II on Hawaii and its people. The "Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands" photo archive provides 52,000 photographs on programs in education, health, and political and economic development in the 2,100 islands of Micronesia administered by the U.S. from 1947 to 1994. The website also includes a collection of 16 Hawaiian-language newspapers.

Japanese-American Internment

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Photo, Oakland Store, from the National Japanese American Historical Society
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In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were U.S. Citizens, into internment camps. This site, created for a class project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides a gateway to brief essays and samplings of primary sources about the internment period from 1942-1945, a time line, oral histories, and photographs. There are links to 34 electronic essays and roughly 50 websites. Some of the more useful links are to the the National Archives and Records Administration, which documents the rights of American Citizens and actions of the Federal Government; the War Relocations Authority Camps in Arizona; the Museum of the City of San Franciso; the Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project; and Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project. The site also contains personal reminiscences of life in the camp. Though many links on this site are useful for research on Asian-American history and the history of the World War II home front, this site should be used carefully. Some of the information presented as "fact" is highly controversial, some links present hearsay or speculation as fact, and several of the links are broken or obsolete.

Japanese American National Museum Collections

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Drawing, Playing Go K5-BA, 8-24-42, George Hoshida, Japanese American Nat. Muse.
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This site provides access to the digitized resources of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Collections include more than 300 letters sent to Clara Breed, a San Diego librarian, by her former patrons after their relocation to internment camps; panoramic photos from Buddhist Churches of America events; artwork by Hideo Date, Hisako Hibi, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugomoto, and Benji Okubo; the diary of Stanley Hayami, a high school student during the internment years, later killed in combat at age 19; sketches and watercolors from the diary of George Hoshida; photographs of Manzanar and Tule Lake by Jack Iwata, as well as other photographs of daily life in the internment camps; a major collection of issei immigrant artifacts and plantation clothing; and photographs for the Rafu Shimpo, one of the oldest Japanese American newspapers in the U.S.

This is an excellent source for anyone seeking primary sources related to Japanese American experience in the U.S., particularly with an emphasis on the years of internment.