Rising immigration and increasing social stratification affected the development of American cities during the mid-nineteenth century. City guides, delineating the mysteries of the metropolis, as well as newspapers, magazines, and novels presented the East's industrializing cities New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore as fractured societies. According to these publications, each was really two cities: one orderly, prosperous, and bathed in sunlight

The first laws passed in the South to impose statewide segregation in public facilities, instituted in the 1880s and 1890s, applied to railroad car seating. During this period, railway lines spread rapidly from cities to rural communities. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court validated these early "Jim Crow" laws when it ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that a Louisiana statute requiring "separate but equal" accommodations for white and black railroad passengers did not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment clause guaranteeing all citizens equal protection of the laws. (Jim Crow, the colloquial term for segregation, referred to a blackface character popular on the minstrel stage.) Jim Crow legislation extended throughout the South to schools, hotels, restaurants, streetcars, buses, theaters, hospitals, parks, courthouses, and even cemeteries. Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1946 that a Virginia statute requiring segregated seating interfered with interstate commerce and was thus invalid, the following testimony in 1954 by former Air Force lieutenant Thomas Williams revealed that Jim Crow travel laws remained in effect in the South and that seats for blacks were unequal to those available to whites. Although Williams stressed the need for federal legislation, the bills under consideration by the committee never made it to the House floor for a vote. In 1956, following a boycott by the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, against the city's segregated bus system, the Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional.

During the "Gilded Age" of the 1880s and 1890s, the influence of large-scale corporations dominated not just the U.S. Congress but also the courts. Nowhere was this more evident than in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the 1886 Wabash case, excerpted below. With Wabash, the Court overturned its 1879 decision ( Munn v. Illinois ) allowing states to regulate railroads. Perverting the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court decreed that corporations were legally "persons" entitled to the Amendment's protections. (Just three years earlier, the Court had ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment was binding only on states, not individuals, thereby severely jeopardizing the very rights--of freed slaves--the amendment was explicitly designed to protect.) The Wabash case barred states from regulating interstate commerce, asserting that only the federal government could do so. In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which railroad barons found more appealing than the more restrictive state laws.

"I believe that the creation of an independent constitutional court, with the authority to declare unconstitutional laws passed by the state or federal legislatures, is probably the most significant single contribution the United States has made to the art of government."

— Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s remarks at the rededication of the National Archives (September 17, 2003).

"The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this constitution…"

— Article III of The United States Constitution

The federal judiciary, which includes the Supreme Court as well as the district and circuit courts, is one of three branches of the federal government. The judiciary has played a key role in American history and remains a powerful voice in resolving contemporary controversies. The first governing document of this nation, the Articles of Confederation, gave Congress certain judicial powers, but did not establish a distinct federal court system. During the Philadelphia Convention, discussion of a federal judiciary was not a critical part of the deliberations that led to the creation of the Constitution. However, debate over the exact nature and role of the federal judiciary did begin in the Constitutional Convention and continue through the ratification process and into the early years of the Republic.

This lesson provides an introduction to the Supreme Court. Students will learn basic facts about the Supreme Court by examining the United States Constitution and one of the landmark cases decided by that court. The lesson is designed to help students understand how the Supreme Court operates.
What powers are given to the judiciary in the Constitution?
How do the Constitution and government institutions protect judicial independence?
How does the federal judiciary system work?
Should Supreme Court justices have term limits?
Identify the key provisions in the Constitution relating the judiciary.
Explain the meaning of an independent judiciary and systems in place to protect this independence.
Evaluate how the power and influence of the Supreme Court over laws has changed over time.
Analyze the difference between a trial conducted in a district court and an appellate court hearing.
Evaluate the extent to which the U.S. judiciary system ensures justice for all.

This brief lesson and collection of primary sources look at the arrest of Susan B. Anthony following her casting her ballot in the 1872 Presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York. Documents include U.S vs. Susan B. Anthony, Indictment for Illegal Voting; U.S. vs. Susan B. Anthony, Exhibit B, a transcript of the hearing including examination of witnesses by the defense and prosecution attorneys, and Susan B. Anthony s testimony in her own defense; and U.S. vs. Susan B. Anthony, Record of Conviction. It also offers extension activities and links to additional primary sources.

Susie King Taylor was born a slave in Savannah, Georgia, in 1848. In the summer of 1862, only 14 years old, she taught school to liberated slaves on St. Simon's Island, Georgia, behind Union lines. As this section of her Reminiscences began, King met Captain C.T. Trowbridge who, along with fellow Union officers, arrived on the island to gather black troops for what would become the First South Carolina Volunteers, the 33rd Regiment. When Trowbridge and the Volunteers left St. Simon's Island, King accompanied them. Initially taken as a laundress, her duties expanded to include clerical work and nursing. For the next few years, King assisted as the troops traveled and battled through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Taylor met her husband, Edward Taylor, a sergeant in the 33rd Regiment, on St. Simon's Island. After the war, the Taylors settled in Savannah. Later, after her husband died in an accident, King moved to Boston, where she remarried. She died in 1912.

In 1939, a federal Women's Bureau survey revealed that only one in fifteen union members was female. But the same observers also noted the truism that women workers, once organized, often became tenacious and militant unionists. Unionists saw women as temporary members of the work force (as indeed most were before 1940, when the average worker was a young single woman). They mistakenly assumed that such workers would not be dedicated union members. Some saw women as unwelcome competitors for "men's jobs" and worked to keep women out of better paid union jobs rather than recruiting them to join the union. Even the United Office and Professional Workers Association (UOPWA), a progressive union that focused its efforts on clerical workers, shared some of these demeaning views of women. A regular column in the UOPWA's publication, the Ledger, featured "Susie Steno," a condescending caricature of a clerical worker as a frivolous and naive young woman, albeit one who becomes a good unionist.

On February 15, 1898, an explosion ripped through the American battleship Maine, anchored in Havana harbor, sinking the ship and killing 260 sailors. Americans responded with outrage, assuming that Spain, which controlled Cuba as a colony, had sunk the ship. By April, 1898, the slogan "Remember the Maine " carried the U.S. into war with Spain. In the midst of the hysteria, few Americans paid much attention to the report issued two weeks before the U.S. entry into the war by a Court of Inquiry appointed by President McKinley. The report stated that the committee could not definitively assign blame to Spain for the sinking of the Maine. Most historians have focused on the role of sensationalist newspapers in fomenting public support for U.S. entry into war with Spain, and perhaps even causing it by deliberately misleading the American public about the Maine explosion. But not all newspapers engaged in sensationalist coverage of the incident. This New York Times editorial, dated February 17, 1898, sounded a note of caution about blaming the Spanish government for the explosion.

Part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was one indication of the breadth of that program. Perhaps best known for its trenchant political satire and innovative presentations, the FTP actually represented a much broader range of activity. But the FTP's mandate proved fragile. When the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established in May 1938, one of its first targets was the FTP, which it labeled a subversive organization. When FTP director Hallie Flanagan testified before HUAC in December 1938, she fought back against these attacks. But the FTP still fell victim to the Congressional cuts.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Asian and Latino immigrants flocked to the United States, rivaling in sheer numbers the trans-Atlantic immigration of a century earlier. Many came because even minimum wage work in the United States paid five to ten times more than they could earn in their homelands. These Asian workers, photographed in 1991 as they labored in a garment shop in lower Manhattan, typified the work experience of many immigrants: monotonous, low wage work in conditions reminiscent of clothing industry sweatshops from earlier in the twentieth century.

In the 1960s, lottery-like contests designed to publicize products through sweepstakes competitions spread rapidly. In the 19th century, every state banned lotteries--defined as competitions in which chances to win prizes were sold÷to protect citizens. In 1868, Congress prohibited the distribution of lottery materials through the mail. The mid-20th century sweepstakes, however, did not require contestants to purchase tickets or products to win prizes and were thus considered legal. In 1966, the number of national sweepstakes exceeded 600 and consumer groups accused them of deceptive practices. An FTC investigation in 1968 into sweepstakes from oil companies and supermarket chains found evidence of deception. In the following testimony to Congress in 1969, two executives representing firms that conducted large promotional sweepstakes defended them as fair and beneficial to consumers. Congress failed to pass a regulatory bill that year, and by 1998, the FTC estimated that more than 400 million sweepstakes flooded the mail annually and that consumers lost more than $40 billion each year through sweepstakes and telemarketing scams. In 1999, Congress passed the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act. Among other consumer protections, this Act required sweepstakes materials to clearly state odds of winning, value of prizes, and rules.

To many in the labor movement, the year 1892 brought only a string of defeats, as labor editor John Swinton said in this speech to the December 1892 convention of the American Federation of Labor. But Swinton managed to rally union members with an optimistic message. Although defeated, the workers who struck at Homestead and elsewhere prevented further attacks on labor in other places. Swinton, a former abolitionist, drew an analogy from the North's ultimate victory in the Civil War.

Lumberjacks often worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, faced incredible dangers on the job, and lived under horrendous conditions. They were one of the most abused groups of workers in the early 20th century. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was the only labor organization to pay any attention to workers in the lumber camps of the South and the Pacific Northwest. Although humorous in tone, the poem "The Lumberjack's Prayer" captured the grueling conditions that most lumbermen faced on and off the job. "The Lumberjack's Prayer" was written by T-Bone Slim and circulated on small colored cards that the IWW (also known as the "Wobblies") sold to raise money. T-Bone Slim (born Matt Valentine Huhta) was a popular Wobbly writer. The nickname "Slim" was often used by hoboes, perhaps because they tended to be skinny from lack of food. In Wobbly publications, Christ was sometimes called "Jerusalem Slim."

The fundamental appeal of the saloon to its working-class customers was social and recreational. The saloonkeeper presided over and fostered an atmosphere of good-hearted, informal socializing, in part by supplying jokes and stories. For those whose own supply of humor ran low, the A. V. Newton's Saloon Keeper's Companion provided bar owners with about fifty pages of assorted jokes and stories with which to amuse their customers. The jokes most often ridiculed hypocritical temperance advocates, dishonest police and politicians, unsophisticated and easily fooled clergy and church-goers, and stupid or pompous judges. Included here are two brief excerpts from The Saloon Keeper's Companion. The first, "The Use of Slander," expressed a cynical view of politicians that seems remarkably contemporary. The second, "Farmer and the Crow," wryly satirized the bartender's own profession. It also seems likely that bawdier, masculine humor circulated through nineteenth-century saloons, but genteel conventions probably prevented authors like A. V. Newton from publishing such jokes and stories.

"This document is a one-week lesson plan consisting of five one-hour lessons on the
history of Uyghurs and East Turkistan, and on the modern-day repression campaign being
perpetrated against Uyghurs in China by the government of China and the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). Through teaching about Uyghurs, these lessons teach skills such as reading
comprehension, source analysis, argument analysis and synthesis, research, summary and
verbal presentation, and argumentative writing. These lessons are designed for 11th and 12th
grade social science and history students but could be taught in other grade levels. The
activities in the lessons are ideally suited to classroom learning. However, acknowledging that
many schools have transitioned to distance learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic, each lesson
contains a note on how to adapt the lesson for distance learning. "

TeachingBooks.net has a blog that includes monthly author posts.  These guest posts are written by a variety of authors and illustrators ranging from picture books to YA.  In the posts, the authors writing about their books and the writing process they go through while creating them.  They frequently include photographs of the work in progress to demonstrate to students their steps.  
This resource can be used to supplement an individual author study, to demonstrate the writing process in professional work or to simply expose students to new authors and their works.

Teaching Hard History resources for high-school educators include a framework, as well as student-facing videos and primary source texts. Educators will also find teaching tools and professional development resources. The Key Concepts pinpoint 10 important ideas that all students must understand to truly grasp the historical significance of slavery. Explored through Summary Objectives in grades 6–12 the Key Concepts serve as tools educators can use to structure their teaching.Includes Student Texts, Videos, Quizzes and Inquiry Design Modules.

This section contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government and cross-curricular connections.

Teaching About Wisconsin is from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's social studies webpages.

Many resources for teaching about Wisconsin can be found through our state agencies and organizations. Primary sources about Wisconsin are available through the Wisconsin Historical Society, Recollection Wisconsin, and digital archives from many Wisconsin universities. The resources are divided into geographic, historic, government, and economic themes.

Note: These are not lesson plans, but basic information and data about Wisconsin. To meet standards, students will have to DO something with the information.

The slinky style of the flapper" was celebrated in the popular press during the 1920s