HERB: Social History for Every Classroom

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Photo, Before-and-After Photograph. . . , War Department, NARA
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HERB consists of three TAH projects, History for All, History Matters, and Our American Democracy, as well as a wide variety of non-TAH collections, primarily related to social history. If you're wondering where the name came from, HERB's namesake is Herbert Gutman, a labor historian and co-founder of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, which has been involved with K-12 education since 1989.

On HERB, you can keyword search for resources such as prints, posters, advertisements, and other artworks; oral history transcripts; statistics; documentary-viewing guides; timelines; activities; worksheets; explanation by historians; letters; songs; and more. From the main page, you can also browse by selecting your time period of interest or a major theme—immigration and migration, civil rights and citizenship, slavery and abolition, work, reading supports, expansion and imperialism, gender and sexuality, Civil War, or social movements.

Search results do not give suggested grade levels for any of the materials, including classroom activities, so be prepared to do some thinking about what might be best for your classroom's collective interests and ability levels.

John Brown's Holy War

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Logo, John Brown's Holy War
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This companion site to the 1999 PBS documentary on John Brown uses special features, a timeline, an interactive map, short biographies and histories, and a teacher's guide to explain the story of Brown's life and times. The site offers special features on the Maryland farmhouse where John Brown assembled his men before their raid on Harpers Ferry, the Harpers Ferry firehouse where Brown's raiders were captured, a history of the famous song "John Brown's Body," and a short essay on Brown's failures as a businessman before he became a radical abolitionist. The timeline traces the major events of Brown's life from 1800 to 1865. An interactive map follows Brown's movements across the country from his birth in 1800 to his execution and burial in 1859. The "People and Events" section features short biographical essays on Brown, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, abolitionist newspaper editor James Redpath, writer Henry David Thoreau, 1859 Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise, and "The Secret Six"--the radical abolitionists who funded Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The section also features short histories of four events of Brown's radical abolitionist crusades: the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas, Brown's Missouri raid, the Harpers Ferry raid, and Brown's hanging. The teacher guide offers discussion questions and four classroom activities.

Savannah Images Project

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Painting, "Vue du Port de Savannah"
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This site, funded by the Georgia Humanities Council and the National Endowment for Humanities, is part of a project that involves teachers and students in historical study by investigating local history and helps them develop technology skills by conducting historical research. The site features more than 300 images of places and events in Savannah and coastal Georgia divided into 17 subjects, such as "First Baptist Church of Savannah", "Fortresses of Savannah," and "James Oglethorpe and the Native Americans". Each topic offers a 750-2500 word essay written by Armstrong Atlantic State University students and professors. Because the authors' levels of expertise vary, the essays are of uneven quality and length. Some essays have links to specific images and bibliographies of suggested scholarly readings. Images offer brief (10-20 word) descriptive captions. This site is ideal for those interested in the history of Savannah and coastal Georgia, and it would also be a useful model for similar local history projects at the high school and college level.

Goldband Records: "Every One a Musical Treat"

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Cover, Recording, Swampland Jewels
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An exhibit devoted to the Goldband Recording Corporation, a Southern regional recording company, located in Lake Charles, LA. From its inception in the mid-1940s, Goldband produced recordings in "some of the South's most important and distinctive musical styles and sounds, including Cajun, zydeco, blues, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and swamp pop."

The site includes 23 selections in both streaming MP3 and Real Audio formats; short biographical notes of 100–200 words in length on 24 artists who recorded at Goldband studio—including Freddie Fender and Dolly Parton at age 13; 32 photographs; and a 1,600-word essay on musical genres.

Provides three links to related sites, a 10-title bibliography, and an inventory of the full collection of corporate materials available at the UNC Library. Valuable for those studying Southern culture, music history, and postwar American popular culture.

John Brown and the Valley of the Shadow

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Photo, Portrait of John Brown
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Using contemporary newspaper accounts, eyewitness testimonies, photographs, maps, drawings, and later texts, this site presents "narrative threads" linking the events leading up to John Brown's raid in 1859 on the Harper's Ferry arsenal to "the latent history of life in the two Shenandoah Valley towns of Staunton, Virginia, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania." Includes 13 issues of newspapers from the towns; five eyewitness accounts ranging from 2,500 to 9,800 words in length; 30 images of the Brown family members and conspirators; approximately 25 additional photos, published drawings, and maps; a brief listing of Brown's day-to-day movements during the latter half of 1859; and short biographical entries of up to 500 words on each conspirator. This site, parts of which are presently under construction, will be of special interest to teachers who want to use contemporary images and written accounts in their classes on Brown and abolitionism, and for those looking to investigate local history perspectives on events of national importance.

Oral History Digital Collection

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Image for Oral History Digital Collection
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These full-text first-person narratives present the voices of more than 2,000 people from northeast Ohio discussing issues significant to the state and the nation. These oral histories, collected since 1974, focus on a range of topics such as ethnic culture, including African American, Greek, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Romanian, and Russian, and industry, such as steel, pottery, brick, coal, and railroads.

Others discuss labor relations, including women in labor unions, wars (World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War), college life (including the shootings by National Guard troops at Kent State in 1970), the Holocaust, and religion. Subject access is available through more than 200 topics listed alphabetically.

Independence Daze: A History of July Fourth

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According to BackStory:

"In the early days of our nation, July Fourth wasn’t an official holiday at all. In fact, it wasn’t until 1938 that it became a paid day-off. So how did the Fourth become the holiest day on our secular calendar? Historian Pauline Maier offers some answers, and explains how radically the meaning of the Declaration has changed since 1776. James Heintze chronicles early Independence Day Bacchanalia. And historian David Blight reflects on Frederick Douglass’ arresting 1852 Independence Day speech."