Make connections between Dorothea Lange's images and the history of the Dust Bowl, the Depression, World War II, and large-scale agriculture in the United States. Students learn about the role of photography in news stories and write their own news story.

The Gilded Age unit brings awareness to the turbulant changes that characterized the end of the nineteenth century. Students investigate the rise and fall of the Populist movement, the textbook's account of the Battle of Little Bighorn, the lead-up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the historic labor clashes surrounding Homestead, Haymarket, and Pullman. Three lessons--Populism and the Election of 1896, the Homestead Strike, and the Pullman Strike--help students develop the skill of close reading as they carefully go rthough documents and interpret the author's rhetorical choices.

(Taken directly from website) 
The constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction vastly expanded former slaves' rights and opportunities. At the same time, the Black Codes passed in most Southern towns, cities, and states curtailed those rights and opportunities. The tension between African Americans' federal and local rights raises questions about the impact of Reconstruction on the freedom of former slaves. In this structured academic controversy, students examine constitutional amendments, a Black Code, a personal account of a former slave, and other documents to answer the question: “Were African Americans free during Reconstruction?"

This lesson looks at how some American Christians in the nineteenth century came to see slavery as something that needed to be abolished. America in Class Lessons are tailored to meet the Common Core State Standards. The Lessons present challenging primary resources in a classroom-ready format, with background information and analytical strategies that enable teachers and students to subject texts and images to the close reading called for in the Standards.

In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, the Reverend C. T. Vivian remembers his leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement and the risks civil rights activists took in challenging segregation.

This lesson plan includes documents and images for learning about the American Revolution, the Constitution, the creation of the U.S. Navy, Eli Whitney's patent for the cotton gin, Thomas Cooper's violation of the Sedition Act, and the Electoral College.

This course uses readings and discussions to focus on a series of short-term events that shed light on American politics, culture, and social organization. It emphasizes finding ways to make sense of these complicated, highly traumatic events, and on using them to understand larger processes of change in American history. The class also gives students experience with primary documentation research through a term paper assignment.

In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, legendary civil rights activist Rosa Parks recalls her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In this video segment, produced for the Levine Museum of the New South, Joseph De Laine Jr. and Ophelia De Laine Gona describe conditions in segregated South Carolina schools.

Sheyann Webb was eight years old in 1965 when she marched for voting rights. In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, she recalls the events of the Selma march.

Through flashback, L.D.Cox tells how he survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis during World War II in this segment from History Detectives.

This lesson examines Native American sovereignty and the Constitutional power granted to the president and the Senate to make treaties with foreign nations. The site presents the Treaty and related documents, including a photograph of the Indian leader, Spotted Tail. Explanatory text, materials for teachers, and links to further resources accompany the documents.

This lesson considers how slavery shaped the family life of the enslaved in the American South. America in Class Lessons are tailored to meet the Common Core State Standards. The Lessons present challenging primary resources in a classroom-ready format, with background information and analytical strategies that enable teachers and students to subject texts and images to the close reading called for in the Standards.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on the civil rights struggle. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students.
Explore the variety of teaching strategies and guidelines, lesson plans and document-based questions (DBQs), and information about museum objects and other primary sources. You might get started by showing the video, in which Smithsonian curators examine a photograph of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. You can then help the students examine other historic photographs.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on the colonial period. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. The lesson plans and DBQs are organized by grade level. The DBQ primary sources can stand alone in DBQ exercises. Images of the primary sources are independent of any extensive explanatory information, so that the images can be used as handouts.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on American inventions and innovations. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. You might get started by showing the video, which traces the development of the electric guitar.
The lesson plans and DBQs are organized by grade level. The DBQ primary sources can stand alone in DBQ exercises. Images of the primary sources are independent of any extensive explanatory information, so that the images can be used as handouts.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on Native history. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. You might get started by reviewing the video on Lakota winter counts.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons that demonstrate the importance of travel and transportation in American life. The teacher-developed resources will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. You might start by viewing the short video, in which curators at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum discuss the achievements and legacy of Amelia Earhart.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on the expansion of the United States. The teacher-developed resources will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. You might get started by showing the video, in which Smithsonian art curator Richard Murray examines Emanuel Leutze's epic painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.

The struggle for woman suffrage lasted almost a century. The 1848 Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, initiated public discussion of votes for women, and serious campaigning began with the founding in 1869 of two original (and competing) suffrage organizations--the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The two groups joined forces in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA campaigned diligently for the vote in a variety of ways but did not achieve success until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Elizabeth Cady Stanton served for twenty years as the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association and as the first president of NAWSA. In 1892, she resigned at age 77. Her resignation speech, "The Solitude of Self," eloquently articulated the arguments for the equality of women that she had spent her adult life promoting.