U.S. marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. By 1919, Haitian Charlemagne Péralte had organized more than a thousand cacos, or armed guerrillas, to militarily oppose the marine occupation. The marines responded to the resistance with a counterinsurgency campaign that razed villages, killed thousands of Haitians, and destroyed the livelihoods of even more. In 1926 the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) organized a committee to look into conditions in Haiti and offer alternatives to the American policy of routinely sending in the marines.

The nationwide labor upsurge of 1934 reached its peak in San Francisco. On May 9, 1934, leaders of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) called a strike of all West Coast dockworkers, demanding a wage scale, a "closed shop" (union membership as a requirement of employment), and union-administered hiring halls. A few days later seamen and teamsters joined the strike, effectively stopping all shipping from San Diego to Seattle. Enraged employers, backed by a sympathetic mayor and police chief, used every means available to open the waterfront and protect strikebreakers, whom they imported in large numbers. Working closely with local politicians and the press, the employers set out to convince the public that the strike was controlled by "Reds" intent on overthrowing the government. These scare tactics led to an investigation of employer actions by a Senate subcommittee. Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, the subcommittee's 1942 report, described the concerted efforts of the Industrial Association, the newspapers, and the San Francisco police to discredit the strike.

Congress is made up of a group of people who work together to improve the quality of lives of citizens throughout the nation. Long ago Congress decided that it was important to pass labor laws to protect children. Students will answer the question why child labor was a problem? They will explore this question by investigating a series of photographs of children working in fish factories long ago.
In addition,
In this episode, students will engage in careful observation to identify objects and note details (See), generate and test hypotheses based on evidence they have collected (Think), and reflect on their learning by applying it to related questions (Wonder).

Students will explore records from the U.S. House of Representatives to discover the story of Harriet Tubman’s Civil War service to the government and her petition to Congress for compensation. Although her service as a nurse, cook, and spy for the federal government is less well known than her work on the Underground Railroad, it was on that basis that she requested a federal pension after the War. Using historical thinking skills, students will examine the evidence of Tubman’s service and assess Congress’s decision to grant her a pension. Despite the endorsements of a number of highly ranked Civil War officials indicating the breadth of her service, Tubman ultimately secured a pension only as a widow of a Civil War veteran, not on the basis of her own service.

Need to teach the legislative branch in a hurry? This lesson is designed to cover the basics in a single class period. Students learn what Congress is, what the Constitution says about the legislative branch, and how a bill becomes law. They analyze some actual language from the Constitution, compare the House and the Senate, and simulate the lawmaking process by reconciling two versions of the same fictional bill.

In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Justice Constance Baker Motley recalls her role as an NAACP attorney in landmark school desegregation cases.

While experimental television broadcasts were first transmitted in the 1920s, mass production of television sets did not occur until after World War II. By 1960 the number of sets in the U.S. had surpassed the number of homes. With this relatively swift introduction of television into domestic American life, concern was voiced over the harmful influence that watching television might have on the nation's children. Earlier in the century, anxieties by both Progressives and traditionalists about harmful effects of movies on youth had led to Congressional hearings regarding Federal censorship. Reformers, however, lacked convincing evidence to support their claims and the motion picture industry developed an effective self-censoring mechanism to maintain control over screen content. Similarly, after Congress held its first hearing in 1952 on the effect of television on children, they chose not to take any action to interfere with the industry, in part because that year the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters adopted a code to regulate broadcast content. A Senate report issued after hearings in 1954 and 1955 on the possible influence of television on juvenile delinquency summarized studies to determine the quantity of criminal and violent acts on television shows accessible for children to view. The report also presented a range of views on whether a "cumulative effect of crime-and-horror television programs" could be harmful to children. Excerpts from the report are followed by additional opinions submitted by the National Association for Better Radio and Television, an advocacy group organized in 1949.

Constitution 101 is a 15 unit curriculum that provides students with a basic understanding of the Constitution’s text, history, structure, and caselaw. Using multiple primary source documents students will study the historical and philosophical foundations of America’s founding principles from a range of diverse voices The curriculum guides students to think like constitutional lawyers—cultivating the skills necessary to analyze all sides of constitutional questions. Each unit contains detailed materials for classroom teachers, as well as opportunities for guided discovery and practice and tools to check for understanding.

Constitution 101 is a 15-unit asynchronous, semester-long curriculum that provides students with a basic understanding of the Constitution’s text, history, structure, and caselaw. Drawing on primary source documents from our new, curated online Founders’ Library—containing over 170 historical texts and over 70 landmark Supreme Court cases selected by leading experts of different perspectives—students will study the historical and philosophical foundations of America’s founding principles from a range of diverse voices The curriculum guides students to think like constitutional lawyers—cultivating the skills necessary to analyze all sides of constitutional questions. Each module includes detailed materials for classroom educators, as well as opportunities for guided discovery and practice and tools to check for understanding.

C-SPAN's Constitution Clips makes the U.S. Constitution come alive by providing teachers and students with video clips from C-SPAN's Video Library of the Constitution in action. Click on any text link or image link to view video clips correlating to their respective section of the U.S. Constitution

iCivics offers a variety of different ways to engage in the celebration of Constitution Day. They offer a simple one-day lesson, but also expand to more in-depth WebQuests, DBQs, and online games related to the Constitution and its effect on our government and our way of life. To gain full access, educators must establish a free account.

This lesson focuses on the drafting of the United States Constitution during the Federal Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. Students will analyze an unidentified historical document and draw conclusions about what this document was for, who created it, and why. After the document is identified as George Washington’s annotated copy of the Committee of Style’s draft constitution, students will compare its text to that of an earlier draft by the Committee of Detail to understand the evolution of the final document.

This interactive guide to the U.S. Constitution provides the original text and an explanation of the meaning of each article and amendment. The guide is an excellent research tool for students to use to gain a deeper understanding of one of our nation’s founding documents and the establishment of the federal government.

Website Description:
Magna Carta, Montesquieu, the Mayflower, and more! Follow this WebQuest through history to the events, people, and documents that inspired the writers of the Constitution.
This WebQuest serves as an introduction or review. Students will learn how documents from the Middle Ages and thinkers from the Enlightenment had an impact on the system of government that was formed in the Constitution, and how that has an impact on them today.

Student Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to...
*Identify documents and ideas that shaped the U.S. Constitution
*Compare American and British governing documents
*Explain key constitutional principles and their impacts

This lesson explores the important Constitutional mechanism providing for the separation of powers of government among three branches so that each branch checks the other two. Lesson plans use the New Deal to help teach this concept.

This lesson plan examines Constitutional issues surrounding the resignation of President Nixon and looks at the specific question: Should the Watergate Special Prosecutor seek an indictment of the former President?

Website Description:
When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they didn’t pull their ideas out of thin air. They created a government based on a set of fundamental principles carefully designed to guarantee liberty. This lesson lets students look at the Constitution from the perspective of its foundational principles. Students make direct connections between these principles, the Founders’ intentions, and the Constitution itself, and they learn why the constitutional principles are critical to a free society.

Student Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:
*Analyze the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution
*Identify relationships among popular sovereignty, consent of the governed, limited government, rule of law, federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances
*Describe how these principles are incorporated into the Constitution
*Explain the concerns that led the Founders to value these principles

During World War II, the defense industry expanded and American men mobilized for military service. Many women found jobs previously unavailable to them in aircraft plants, shipyards, manufacturing companies, and the chemical, rubber, and metals factories producing war materials. These jobs paid higher salaries than those traditionally categorized as "women's work," such as teaching, domestic service, clerical work, nursing, and library science. Married women were discouraged from working outside the home during the Depression to lower competition with men for limited jobs. After the U.S. entered the war, though, the Federal government encouraged housewives to join the work force as a patriotic duty. The number of employed women grew from 14 million in 1940 to 19 million in 1945, rising from 26 to 36 percent of the work force. Most industry analysts and government planners expected this situation to be temporary. At the end of the war, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor asked women workers about their future work plans. The bulletin excerpted below revealed that most women wanted to keep their present jobs. Immediately after the war, the percentage of women who worked fell as factories converted to peacetime production and refused to rehire women. In the next few years, the service sector expanded and the number of women in the workforce--especially older married women--increased significantly, despite the dominant ideology of woman as homemaker and mother. The types of jobs available to these women, however, were once again limited to those traditionally deemed "women's work."

After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, the Union Army under General William T. Sherman marched through Georgia to the sea, bringing destruction in its wake. Nearly 18,000 slaves left plantations and attached themselves to the army during its march. This 1865 illustration showed a stereotyped view of the men, women, and children who followed Sherman's army. But to northern readers, the engraving's significance may have lay in its unmistakable message about slaves' utter hatred of slavery. The oft expressed fallacy that they preferred slavery to freedom

Why are the founding principles essential for a free society? This civics and government lesson plan was developed to facilitate instruction and discussion concerning the United States’ founding principles versus totalitarian systems of government. Students will contrast a totalitarian system of government with the founding principles of the United States as established in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.