Slavery in New York

Image
Annotation

Focusing on the experiences of Africans and African Americans in New York City, this collection presents nine galleries that explore various themes and time periods in the history of slavery. These include the Atlantic slave trade; slavery in Dutch New York; the growth of slavery in British Colonial New York; freedom for blacks during the Revolutionary War; the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799; free blacks in public life; Emancipation Day (July 4, 1827), and the history of scholarship on slavery in New York City. Each gallery has three panels: a gallery overview, a main thematic presentation, and one focusing on people, places, and documents. Of special interest are two interactive maps with timelines in the Dutch New York gallery and the Revolutionary War gallery; a picture gallery on the portrayal of blacks in New York City's public life; and profiles of nine African Americans who lived in New York City during the early republic.

Territorial Kansas Online

Image
Annotation

These Territorial Kansas collections convey the growing divisions in Kansas and the nation over the expansion of slavery, federalism, nationalism, industrialization, and changing political coalitions in Congress. Materials include government documents, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, rare secondary sources, historical artifacts, and images of historic sites. The website is divided into five sections: Territorial Politics and Government; Border Warfare; Immigration and Early Settlement; Personalities; and National Debate about Kansas. Each is searchable by keyword, author, and county. Topical sections are subdivided into relevant themes and include an introductory essay. Visitors will find essays on territorial politics, the rights of women and African Americans, military organizations, and free state and pro-slavery organizations. "Personalities" lists 32 individuals, including John Calhoun, and the final section presents both anti-slavery and pro-slavery perspectives of the national debate about Kansas. The site also includes a timeline with links and an annotated bibliography.

Teach Women's History Project

Image
Annotation

These teaching and reference materials focus on the women's rights movement of the past 50 years and its opposing forces. Teaching materials include 40 primary documents selected from The Feminist Chronicles: 1953–1993, ranging from the first National Organization for Women (NOW) statement of purpose to topical task force statements. Twenty-eight suggestions for further reading in women's history, feminist theory, and contemporary women's issues, as well as listings for 20 relevant organizations, appear in the Additional Resources section. A current "Feminist Internet Gateway" provides 15 annotated links in "History of Women/Social Studies." Additional topics ranging from arts and media to reproductive rights and their annotated links are available in the "Reviewed Links" section.

Marchand Archive

Image
Annotation

A memorial to Roland Marchand, the late historian of popular culture and advertising, this website presents a slide library with more than 6,100 images, including more than 2,000 advertisements, drawn from Marchand's collection. The images are organized into more than 40 major categories and close to 200 subcategories.

The site also offers 48 lesson plans designed by Marchand, each with an introduction, an essay assignment, and 10 to 40 primary source documents. The lessons cover a diverse range of controversial topics, including the Antinomian Controversy, the reactions against Chinese immigrants, the Pullman Strike, the Women's Suffrage Movement, and Watergate. The site will be useful for researching popular culture and advertising, as well as numerous other topics in American history, such as women, wars, immigration, labor, and African Americans.

Tangled Roots

Image
Annotation

These more than 200 documents explore cultural connections between the experiences of African Americans and Irish immigrants in America. Materials relate to individual leaders, historical events, economic, political, and social factors, and cultural achievements. A section entitled "Making Connections" offers 15 questions about historical events and people that represent the intertwined histories of Africans and Irish in America.

Other topics include the end of English participation in the slave trade, the emergence of the nativist Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s, and Ku Klux Klan activities against Catholics and blacks after the Civil War. A section on "Acceptance" explores perceptions of individual and group identities and four timelines focus on displacement, oppression, discrimination, and acceptance in America. "Voices" provides a sample of 13 public statements and interviews on ethnicity and race from ordinary modern Americans. The site also provides a bibliography; an essay by writer James McGowan, a black American with an Irish paternal grandfather; and links to related websites.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

Image
Annotation

Created by two history professors, this site was designed to provide "a resource and a model for teachers of U.S. women's history." It currently offers 45 mini-monographs, each comprised of a background essay and relevant primary source documents, organized around an analytical question concerning a social movement. Projects are organized into five subject categories: peace and international; politics and public life; sexuality, reproduction, and women's health; work and production; and race and gender. The site includes more than 1,050 documents and 400 photographs. Keyword searching, links to more than 400 sites, and more than 24 lesson plans are also provided. The site has expanded to include thousands of new documents starting in 1600 in a joint project with Alexander Street Press. The joint site requires subscription.

Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963

Image
Annotation

This well-organized website offers more than 900 items related to Hull House—including newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, letters, memoirs, reports, maps, and photographs. Materials are embedded within a clear historical narrative that illuminates the life of Jane Addams in addition to the history and legacy of Chicago's Hull House.

Users can search the site or focus on any of the 100 topics arranged in 12 chapters that begin with settlement life in Chicago in the 1880s and end with the movement after Addams's death. Topics include the reform climate in Chicago; activism within the movement; the immigrant experience of race, citizenship, and community; education within the settlement house; and cultural and leisure activities at Hull House and in Chicago. The site provides a timeline, featuring a pictorial biography of Addams; a geographical section that includes maps of Chicago; and an image section, with 12 photograph sections and essays.

Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America

Annotation

James Allen has assembled a collection of chilling photographs of lynchings throughout America, primarily from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many were circulated as souvenir postcards. The site is a companion to Allen's book Without Sanctuary. The exhibit can be experienced through a flash movie with narrative comments by Allen or as a gallery of more than 80 photographs with brief captions. Most images also have links to more extensive descriptions of the circumstances behind each specific act of violence.

While the vast majority of lynching victims were African Americans, white victims are also depicted. Individually and as a group, these images are disturbing and difficult to fathom. They provide, however, an excellent resource for approaching the virulence and impact of racism in late 19th and 20th-century America.

Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in 19th-Century America

Image
Annotation

These full-text transcriptions and page images of 163 "Sunday school books" address religious instruction for youth published in the U.S. between 1815 and 1865. Materials include texts used by Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, and other denominations and are searchable by subject, author, title, and keyword.

Books are categorized according to nine types: "Advice Books, Moral Tales"; "Animals, Natural History"; "Child Labor, Orphans, Poverty"; "Death, Dying, Illness"; "Holidays"; "Immigrants"; "Slavery, African Americans, Native Americans"; "Temperance, Tobacco"; and "Travel, Missionaries." There are 67 author biographies and an essay on Sunday school books. This collection offers valuable materials for studying antebellum culture, American religious history, print culture, and education.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture

Image
Annotation

This well-designed, comprehensive website explores Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as an American cultural phenomenon. "Pre-Texts, 1830–1852" provides dozens of texts, songs, and images from the various genres Stowe drew upon, including Christian texts, sentimental culture, anti-slavery texts, and minstrel shows. The section on the novel includes Stowe's preface, multiple versions of the text, playable songs from the novel, and Stowe's defense against criticism.

A third section focuses on responses from 1852 to 1930, including 25 reviews, more than 400 articles and notes, as well as nearly 100 responses from African Americans and almost 70 from pro-slavery adherents. "Other Media" explores theatrical and film versions, children's books, songs, poetry, and games. Fifteen interpretive exhibits challenge users to investigate how slavery and race were defined and redefined as well as analyze how various characters assumed a range of political and social meanings.