Doing Oral History

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Photo, From project, "The Stonewall Riots and Their Aftermath"
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A collection of 17 oral histories conducted by secondary students focusing on topics relating to "The American Century": World War II; the Cold War; Vietnam; the "rights revolution"; immigration; education; and science and technology. Each oral history entry contains a biography of the interviewee, historical contextualization and evaluation essays, and bibliography.

The site provides tools for teachers to use in designing oral history courses: release form for interviewees, pre-interview worksheet, "do's and don'ts," guidelines for transcribing and editing interviews, how to analyze the historical value of an interview, grading rubrics, and student feedback. Also offers a 36-title bibliography, including 24 links to related sites. Of interest to teachers preparing oral history courses and for those studying selected 20th-century American history topics.

The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History

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Logo, North Star Journal
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The complete archives and current editions of a journal about African-American religious history from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The first issue was published online in the fall of 1997. Each issue includes one or two scholarly articles of 30 to 40 pages, two to four book reviews, and a 200- to 2000-word discussion of research resources. In addition, each issue provides a list of Internet resources for research in African-American Religious history. Articles address topics such as "church media and racial discourse" (Lawrence Little) and "rap, religion and the politics of a culture," (Charise Cheney). The site will be useful for research in African American history and the history of religion in America.

Voices of Civil Rights

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Photo, Protesters on Beale Street, 1968
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This website represents the initial effort to create an archive of stories about the civil rights movement (both historical and contemporary), including essays, interviews, project updates, and special reports. While the site is under construction, currently there is already substantial material available, most of which is organized into one of five sections.

An interactive "Timeline" serves as in introduction to the Movement, highlighting major events and accomplishments. "Stories" allows visitors to read more than 100 personal stories about America's civil rights history (10 stories include audio excerpts). Visitors can peruse the section devoted to the contemporary civil rights movement and its historical legacy. Here visitors can listen to interviews about the promise of equal education with Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, as well as many other activists. Students and teachers will find this site a convenient collection of primary accounts of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Chicano Movement and the National Organization of Women.

The History of Jim Crow

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Lithograph, African American man with chained parrot, 19th century
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This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to the four sections, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as Jackie Robinson and the lynching of Emmett Till. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.

Making History on the Web: Creating Online Materials for Teaching U.S. History

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Cartoon, Of McKinley, From Puck
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Designed around a sample American history survey course, this site offers 10 teaching units, each comprised of eight to 12 documents (texts and images), and introductory essays by various scholars. Additionally, some units provide manuscript sources from the University of Virginia's (UVA) archival collections.

The units, covering American history from the Revolution to the First World War, are uneven, and the teaching suggestions are sparse. Still, the materials here are useful as a general introduction. The site, which includes links to teaching and history resources, is a product of a 1996 summer seminar held at UVA.

Click "A Sample U.S. History Resource Course" to reach the available units.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence: History & Social Studies

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Portrait, George Washington
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This megasite brings together resources for teaching U.S. and world history from the far corners of the web. Most of these websites boast large collections of primary sources from the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the National Archives and Records Administration, and prominent universities. There are more than 600 websites listed for U.S. history alone, divided by time period and topic: Business & Work, Ethnic Groups, Famous People, Government, Movements, States & Regions, Wars, and Other Social Studies. While most of these websites are either primary source archives (for example, History of the American West, 1860-1920) or virtual exhibits, many offer lesson plans and ready-made student activities, such as EDSITEment, created by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A good place to begin is the (Subject Map), which lists resources by sub-topic, including African Americans (67 resources), Women's History (37 resources), and Natural Disasters (16 resources). Each resource is accompanied by a brief annotation that facilitates quick browsing.

Who Killed William Robinson?

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Text, "Who Killed William Robinson?"
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The deaths of William Robinson and two other black men on the British colony of Salt Spring Island (British Columbia) between 1867 and December 1868--attributed by an all-white jury to an aboriginal man--are examined in this site, which offers inquests, trial records, newspaper accounts, diary entries, maps, private correspondence, and artists's depictions and reconstructions. Through these hundreds of images and documents--which together constitute a social history of ethnically and racially-mixed Salt Spring Island--students may pursue explanations for Robinson's murder, and, more broadly, relations among white colonists, black settlers, and aboriginal peoples. Also gives four links and a 39-title bibliography for further research. A "teacher's guide" is available upon request. The authors are affiliated with the history department at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Useful for student-teacher explorations into race relations in 19th-century Canada.

The Making of Modern Michigan

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Photo, Man with war bond ticket. . . , 1943, The Making of Modern Michigan
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This archive affords access to the local history material and collections in more than 45 Michigan libraries, including photographs, family papers, oral histories, public reports, notices, and documents. More than 3,000 items are available, on a wide range of subjects that include architecture, automobiles, churches, cities and towns, commerce and business, factories and industry, families, farming, geography and landscapes, housing, schools, and sports and recreation. The time period of the material is primarily from the post-Civil War era to the early 20th century. The material can be browsed by subject or institution and a keyword search is also available. A useful site for researching the cultural history of Michigan and its localities.

Exploring Amistad: Race and the Boundaries of Freedom in Maritime Antebellum America

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Barber, John W. "Hist of the Amistad" New Haven, Ct.: E.L. & J.W. B., 1840.LoC
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Presents more than 500 primary documents relating to the 1839–1842 revolt of enslaved Africans aboard the schooner Amistad, their legal struggles in the United States, and the multifaceted cultural and social dimensions of the case. The site features a searchable library that contains 32 items from personal papers, 33 legal decisions and arguments, and 18 selections from the popular media, including pamphlets, journal articles, reports, a playbill, and a poem.

In addition, 100 government publications, 28 images, 11 maps and nautical charts, and 310 newspaper articles and editorials are available. The website provides suggestions for using these materials in the classroom, a timeline, links to other resources, and a "living the history" component that encourages user feedback and participation. This visually attractive, well-conceived site provides a wealth of materials for students of slavery, race, politics, and print culture in antebellum America.