Few terms have been surrounded with as much myth and misunderstanding as "anarchism." Part of the difficulty is that there are many kinds of anarchists. The high point of American anarchism surely came in the 1880s in the movement led by Chicago "Social Revolutionaries," such as Lucy and Albert Parsons. Contrary to the stereotype, anarchists like the Parsons did not object to order itself but to the oppressive forms of order imposed by the capitalist state. Albert Parsons also frankly acknowledged the belief shared by other anarchists in his circle that social transformation would only come through revolution, "through bloodshed and violence." What is perhaps less clear from the statement is Parsons's simultaneous commitment to trade unionism as the primary agency of social change. In this 1887 essay, "What Is Anarchism?" social revolutionary Parsons explained how his strain of anarchist socialism derived its name and purpose from the Greek words for "no" and "government."

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This lesson gives an article-by-article overview of the structure and function of the U.S. Constitution. Students learn about the duties and powers of the three branches, the amendment process, and the role of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. (Note: Anatomy of the Constitution now includes content previously covered by the lesson Directions for Democracy.)
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Student Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:
*Explain the structure, function, and powers of the U.S. government as established in the Constitution.
*Identify the roles of the three branches of government.
*Describe the constitutional amendment process.
*Interpret the intentions of the Preamble of the Constitution.

This course focuses on the archaeology of the Greek and Roman city. It investigates the relationship between urban architecture and the political, social, and economic role of cities in the Greek and Roman world. Analyzes a range of archaeological and literary evidence relevant to the use of space in Greek and Roman cities (e.g. Athens, Paestum, Rome, Pompeii) and a range of theoretical frameworks for the study of ancient urbanism.

With his famously laconic style, President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes that were required to accommodate a commercial civilization. Coolidge, as a son of rural Vermont and small-town Massachusetts, played a key role in reassuring people that the new business order was compatible with traditional American values. In this 1925 address to the New York State Chamber of Commerce, Coolidge mixed new prescriptions for a pro-business government with traditional homilies about the contributions of American business "to the spiritual restoration of the world." He insisted that "traditional" values could fit comfortably into a business civilization.

Ancient History Encyclopedia is a non-profit educational website with a global vision: to provide the best ancient history information on the internet for free.

This course will acquaint the student with some of the ancient Greek contributions to the Western philosophical and scientific tradition. We will examine a broad range of central philosophical themes concerning: nature, law, justice, knowledge, virtue, happiness, and death. There will be a strong emphasis on analyses of arguments found in the texts.

Although Cold War-era fears often focused on Communism and atomic warfare, the following 1949 editorial in the popular magazine Collier's showed concern about a broader threat to core American values posed by extremism, terrorism, and indoctrination of the country's youth. The editorial appeared beneath a photograph of a group of hooded Ku Klux Klan members, including at least three women. One of the women carried a young girl shrouded in a hood. Formally known as the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the group, founded in Atlanta in October 1915, took its name and inspiration from the vigilante organization in the Reconstruction South that terrorized blacks and Republican political leaders in order to restore white supremacist governments and black economic and social subordination. While the Klan of the 19th century died out as white supremacists regained power, the virulently anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner, and anti-black 20th-century "Empire" flourished in the nativist atmosphere of the early and mid-1920s. Although the Klan declined drastically following scandals and internal battles, it revived intermittently in the following decades. As the Collier's editorialist feared, the Klan again became "a serious threat to our democracy" following successes of the modern civil rights movement, as they perpetrated acts of terrorism against African Americans and their white supporters, most notoriously in 1961 attacks on Freedom Riders in Alabama, the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, that killed four young girls, and the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, during "Freedom Summer" in 1964. The editorial does not address cultural reasons for the Klans' persistence--historians have explored antielitism, fear of community domination by outside powers, and repugnance to modern, secularist morality as motivating factors in addition to white supremacy and nativism.

Malcolm X was a civil rights leader, a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, and a leading black nationalist during the early 1960's. Viewing integration as an illusory solution to the problems of black Americans, Malcolm X advocated self-reliance, black pride, and unity. Malcolm's message became popular among Northern blacks as the Civil Rights movement failed to alleviate problems such as poverty, joblessness, police brutality, and de facto segregation. Although many Northern whites felt uncomfortable confronting racial inequities close to home, conditions for African Americans living in Northern and Western cities rivaled those of the South. In 1962 the Los Angeles Police Department, notorious in the Watts section of L.A. for harassing and brutalizing black youth, targeted the Nation of Islam in an act of violence. Malcolm X spoke out about the incident on WBAI radio.

Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, by 1957 only 20 percent of eligible African Americans voted, due in part to intimidation and discriminatory state requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Despite the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, religion, national origin, or sex, efforts to register African Americans as voters in the South were stymied. In 1965, following the murder of a voting rights activist by an Alabama sheriff's deputy and the subsequent attack by state troopers on a massive protest march in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Congress in the following speech to pass a voting rights bill with teeth. As Majority Leader of the Senate, Johnson had helped weaken the 1957 Civil Rights Act. When he assumed the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, however, Johnson called on Americans "to eliminate from this nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based upon race or color," and in the following speech adopted the "We Shall Overcome" slogan of civil rights activists. His rhetoric and subsequent efforts broke with past presidential precedents of opposition to or lukewarm support for strong civil rights legislation. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6.

Known best by his knack for moneymaking, turn-of-the-century steel magnate Andrew Carnegie nonetheless found a moment to pen a one-sided poetic tribute to the "eighth wonder" of the world--steel manufacturing in his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, plant. This brief poem reflected how he (and other contemporaries) viewed the monumental process of steelmaking. The poem was notable for its use of passive voice and the absence of workers--miners, railroad men, or blast furnace crews--from the process by which "one pound of solid steel" came to be.

The Andrew Jackson Papers collection documents Jackson's life in its several phases, including Jackson's military career in the War of 1812, the Creek War, and Florida; his transactions as a land-holder and Tennessee businessman; his personal and family life, including correspondence with his wife, Rachel Jackson, and other family members and wards associated with the Hermitage; and his controversies with associates and strangers, which sometimes came to confrontation. Prominent is documentation related to his complex two-term presidency, during which the nation debated issues of nullification, tariff rates, banking procedures, Indian policy, public improvements, and the relative power and sovereignty of the individual states in the Union in relation to the federal government. The collection also contains information on military orders and court martial proceedings, diplomatic and Indian treaty negotiations, and the experiences and/or opinions of those Jackson led in battle, collaborated with or opposed in politics, or trusted as cabinet members, allies and friends.

General George Washington and the patriot leaders faced an enormous challenge in mounting a military campaign against the British forces during the revolutionary war. For soldiers, they drew upon existing state militias and also raised a Continental army. But no such source for a naval force existed. Instead, Washington's officers acquired the services of American captains and sailors by commissioning them as privateers, or private citizens authorized to attack a military enemy. Colonists had long experience serving as privateers for the British forces during numerous eighteenth-century wars against Spain, France, and the Netherlands. They now turned their skills against Great Britain. Andrew Sherburne's memoirs capture the youth's enthusiastic desire to participate in the military campaign against the British; many others were less enthusiastic about their military service due to its infrequent pay and poor living conditions.

Most of the major categories of adaptive behavior can be seen in all animals. This course begins with the evolution of behavior, the driver of nervous system evolution, reviewed using concepts developed in ethology, sociobiology, other comparative studies, and in studies of brain evolution. The roles of various types of plasticity are considered, as well as foraging and feeding, defensive and aggressive behavior, courtship and reproduction, migration and navigation, social activities and communication, with contributions of inherited patterns and cognitive abilities. Both field and laboratory based studies are reviewed; and finally, human behavior is considered within the context of primate studies.

This activity allows students to see the growth of America through animation. It covers 1790-2002.

The papers of lecturer, reformer, actress, and author Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932) span the period 1859-1951, but are chiefly concentrated in the years from 1859 to 1911. The collection consists of approximately 10,000 items (20,221 images), most of which were digitized from 25 microfilm reels. Included are family correspondence, general correspondence, speeches and writings, a legal file, financial papers, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and research notes of Dickinson's biographer, Giraud Chester.

Dickinson was a teenage phenomenon on the antislavery lecture circuit, whose electrifying speeches made her one of the campaign’s most sought-after speakers. In 1863, she toured the country on behalf of Republican Party candidates, and after the Civil War, she became a star of the lyceum circuit, drawing large crowds and commanding huge speaking fees. She was among the celebrities who were aboard the first transcontinental railroad trip to California and also grabbed headlines when she climbed Pike’s Peak and other summits. Her familiarity with the stage later led to a less successful career as an actress and playwright.

Dickinson had a particularly close relationship with Susan B. Anthony and shared the latter's interest in women's rights and temperance. She also advocated for the rights of African Americans and corresponded with escaped slave and abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass as well as with other notable figures of her time. Although Dickinson did not retain copies of most of her correspondence, she obtained many of the letters she wrote while on national lecture tours to Mary Dickinson, her mother, and Susan Dickinson, her journalist sister. This correspondence described her travel itineraries, her impressions, and her joys and misgivings. They show the reactions of a person whose plays and performances, including A Crown of Thorns and The Test of Honor, were not well received.

By 1900, Dickinson was estranged from her sister Susan, formerly her closest friend and housemate, and she had outlived most of her associates. As recorded in the legal file and in her scrapbooks, she initiated several lawsuits between 1895 and 1901 as a result of her confinement at the State Hospital for the Insane in Danville, Pennsylvania. Other topics include the elections of 1872 and 1888, the Republican Party, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and education.

A challenging, fun card game that helps students learn about their rights under the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. The game offers three levels of play: Easy, Normal, Difficult.

Because most early-eighteenth century European colonization occurred in coastal areas, Native Americans living in interior regions maintained greater control over their lands and culture. In the lower Mississippi Valley (as in the Great Lakes region), the contest between European imperial rivals for control of North America strengthened the natives' hand. No group--European or Indian--held sovereign power, and diplomatic, military, trading, and social exchanges continued for much of the eighteenth century. But the treaties that concluded the Seven Year's War and ended French colonization of North America changed that situation. The lower Mississippi valley was partitioned between the British colony of West Florida and the Spanish colony of Louisiana. Native occupants perceived the dramatic consequences as Alibamon Mingo, elderly leader of the Choctaw nation, indicated in his meetings with the British in Mobile in 1765. Mingo remembered the French fondly and spoke of his expectations of fair trade and just treatment from the British.

This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology—ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic—are changing. It examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, and asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 question, “What Is Life?” today.

This lesson uses a poster decrying the disruptive influence of railroads on local culture to launch a discussion on local differences and their effect on American politics. Explanatory text, materials for teachers, and links to further resources accompany the documents. This lesson correlates to the National History Standards and the National Standards for Civics and Social Sciences. It also has cross-curricular connections with history, government, and art.