This blog post exploring the true facts of Columbus’s journey, the history of Columbus Day, and different sources for information.

On Constitution Day, students will examine the role of the people in shaping the United States Constitution. First, students will respond to a provocative statement posted in the room. They will then watch a video that gives a brief explanation of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, or listen as the video transcript is read aloud. A Constitution poster is provided so students can examine Article VII and discuss it as a class.
The elementary and middle school educator will then
guide students through a read-aloud play depicting two Constitutional Convention delegates who disagreed about ratifying the Constitution.

This assessment measures students' ability to contextualize and periodize two historical documents by placing them on a timeline. The first document is a 1942 letter from the U.S. secretary of state to the American ambassador in Mexico, and the second is an excerpt from a newspaper published in Brownsville, Texas, in 1931. This HAT draws on students' historical knowledge, but in a way that requires more than the simple recall of information. Students must understand how and why the United States' policies on Mexican migration changed from the Great Depression to World War II and use their understanding to place historical sources in time.

This series of eight lessons is organized as a mini-unit for teaching the Armenian Genocide. They were designed to complement Facing History and Ourselves' resource books, Holocaust and Human Behavior and Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians. Most of these lessons are designed to be used with the film The Armenian Genocide (Two Cats Productions), which aired on PBS on April 17, 2006 and is available to borrow from our library or stream if you are in our educator network. These texts depict, in words or images, evidence of horrible atrocities such as murder and starvation. We recommend previewing materials in order to gauge if they are appropriate given the maturity level of your students.

While we estimate that teaching all eight lessons would require approximately 10 hours of class time, we know that the actual pacing of these lessons depends on your students and your context. These lessons can also by used individually with the understanding that the later lessons rely on students' previous knowledge of the Armenian Genocide. It is our hope that you use these lessons as a jumping off point in creating learning experiences that will engage students in the history of the Armenian Genocide and the important questions this history raises about human behavior.

Language note: While this unit is titled "The Genocide of the Armenians," the word genocide did not exist in 1915 when the Armenians were being massacred and forced on death marches. To avoid historical anachronism, the first seven lessons of this unit circumvent the use of the word "genocide" with students. The final lesson introduces students to the modern term "genocide," and to the different ways people claim or deny this term. You might choose to introduce students to the term "genocide" earlier in the unit, while informing them that the events they are learning about inspired the genesis of this term.

Something to think about: The purpose of these lessons is to help students understand a particular moment in history, the Armenian Genocide, as a way to explore core questions about human behavior. While students are asked to travel across time and space in order to connect this history to their own ideas and experiences, it would be irresponsible for students to make generalizations about a particular religious or national group that cuts across time and place. In other words, students should be strongly discouraged from seeing this history as a lesson about all Turks, all Muslims, all Armenians, or all Americans, in the same way that scholars who teach about the Holocaust are careful not to condemn all Germans or all Christians for acts committed by the Nazis and their followers.

Background
In our increasingly interconnected world it has become clear that what happens in one country affects all of us in many ways, some more visible than others. Responding to genocide, ethnic violence, and abuses of human rights stand as the primary challenges of our day. There was great hope that the end of the Cold War would usher in a new era with a blossoming of democracy and human rights; instead violence around the world makes it clear that finding the tools to prevent genocide is as urgent as ever. Historians note that in the last hundred years more human beings died through genocidal violence and state-sanctioned murder than on that era's countless battlefields.

It was no accident that the failure to prevent escalating abuses of the human rights of Ottoman minorities climaxed with the systematic deportation and mass murder of the Armenian population of the empire in World War I. While other minority groups had broken free from the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians hoped that reforms--supported by the Western powers-would bring change. Instead a new nationalism spread through the Ottoman leadership that left no place for the Christian minorities within the empire. Under the cover of World War I the genocide of the Armenians began.

In 1915 journalists, politicians, and ordinary people considered how best to respond to the accounts of "horrors" and "outrages" in Turkey's Anatolian desert. Unable to remain silent, local and national leaders challenged tradition by boldly proclaiming that responsibility for human life does not stop at national borders. Their solutions set important precedents for international law. In fact, the phrase "crimes against humanity," made famous as one of the counts at the post-Holocaust Nuremberg Trials, was first used to describe the massacres of Armenian civilians in the spring of 1915.

As the pillaging of Armenian villages continued, diplomats debated questions of national sovereignty. In the absence of military intervention, coalitions of individuals, religious groups, and voluntary associations were able to raise millions of dollars to house and feed refugees from the slaughter. While those efforts saved many, humanitarian relief alone could not stop the mass murder of women, children, and men. In the wake of the genocide, official promises to hold the perpetrators accountable faded, as did support for the new Armenian state.

To many who had followed the bloody history of Turkey's campaign against its own people, the impunity enjoyed by those who had ordered and carried out the killings was unbearable. One of them was Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and a law student. Lemkin confronted one of his law school professors. He asked, "Why is the killing of a million people a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?" His professor used a metaphor to explain that courts did not have any jurisdiction: "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing." But, replied an incensed Lemkin, "the Armenians are not chickens." Lemkin dedicated the rest of his life to finding a way to make sure that the law would recognize the difference. In 1944 Lemkin coined the word "genocide" and later he drafted the United Nations Convention on Genocide. The convention was ratified on December 9, 1948, one day before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Although this convention requires that its signatories take whatever steps are necessary to prevent genocide, too often the international community does little but stand by while mass killings continue in places like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In his role as a columnist for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff warns readers about the consequences of silence. "There is something special about genocide," he writes, "When human beings deliberately wipe out others because of their tribe or skin color, when babies succumb not to diarrhea but to bayonets and bonfires, that is not just one more tragedy. It is a monstrosity that demands a response from other humans. We demean our own humanity, and that of the victims, when we avert our eyes."

We hope that this series of lessons will help a new generation to understand that genocide is a threat to all of us: it is indeed a "crime against humanity."

Introduction
Raphael Lemkin devoted much of his life to a single goal: making the world understand and recognize a crime so horrific that there was not even a word for it. By coining the word "genocide" and drafting the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Lemkin's actions have influenced the way we are able to respond to acts of genocide. In this way, a study of Raphael Lemkin's work not only helps students understand traditional world history themes such as sovereignty, diplomacy, and law, but also provides a powerful historical example of how moral outrage can be translated into action-an example that can spur students to reflect on their ideas about crimes against humanity and their own role in preventing future genocides and promoting human dignity.

Facing History and Ourselves has developed the following three lesson plans to accompany the case study Totally Unofficial: Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention, which can be adapted to fit the needs of your students. They were developed as a mini-unit but can also be used independently if students have the prerequisite knowledge to use the material. Each lesson is designed to run between 60 and 90 minutes long. Lessons contain options regarding how to use the accompanying case study text, primary source materials, and videos.

This Google Book includes a look at the Congressional record of debate in both the House and the Senate regarding creating a "Leif Ericson Day" in 1964.

Using resources from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the American Battle Monuments Commission, students will learn about the recovery and identification pro- cess of missing service members’ remains. The students will demonstrate their understanding of the recovery process by researching the location of a missing service member and developing a pre-mission report for that area.

Students will be able to identify the differences between suffragettes and suffragists and the goals of the suffrage movement. After reading about the twentieth-century suffrage movement, students will be able to create either a protest poster, political cartoon, or speech that accurately portrays the arguments of suffragists, suffragettes, and anti-suffragistsStudents should have learned about Jane Addams as a Progressive Era figure, especially her role in Hull-House. Students should also have learned about the Seneca Falls Convention and the earlier suffrage work of the nineteenth century.

During the Civil War women played an important role both on the battlefield and on the home front. They helped after battles as nurses, ran businesses and farms, and worked in munitions factories while their fathers and brothers were off at war. They supported the war effort by contributing to organizations like the United States Sanitary Commission, and in rare cases even disguised themselves as soldiers and participated in battles.
Students will be able to:
1. Name four roles that women had during the Civil War.
2. Describe four contributions women made to the war effort.
3. Explain three difficulties women faced during the Civil War.

Who comes to mind when considering the Modern Civil Rights Movement (MCRM) during 1954 - 1965? Is it one of the big three personalities: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Rosa Parks? Or perhaps it is John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Abernathy, or Medgar Evers. What about the names of Septima Poinsette Clark, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Daisy Bates, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ruby Bridges, or Claudette Colvin? What makes the two groups different? Why might the first group be more familiar than the latter? A brief look at one of the most visible events during the MCRM, the March on Washington, can help shed light on this question.Students will be able to conduct an inquiry into the following research questions through this source:Who were some of the women leaders of the Modern Civil Rights Movement in your local town, city, or state? What were the expected gender roles in 1950s - 1960s America?Did these roles vary in different racial and ethnic communities?How would these gender roles affect the MCRM?Who were the "Big Six" of the MCRM?What were their individual views toward women in the movement?How were the ideas of gender similar or different from the MCRM and the later Black Power Movement?How did African American women in the MCRM relate to women in other women movements of the era (ex. Chicano, LGBT, or American Indian Movement)? 

The 1830s and 1840s were an era of reform and revival for the United States. In the wake of the spiritual renewal of the Second Great Awakening, many were demanding religious and societal change in order to provide for marginalized people. Women took a leadership role in reform efforts, tackling a broad range of issues from prisons to education to the abolition of slavery. Ultimately, many diverse campaigns merged into activism against slavery. Women reformers saw the results of their efforts during these decades, though some of their goals would have to wait till after the upheaval of the 1850s and the bloodshed of the Civil War in the 1860s. This set highlights several women reformers. For more information on the women’s suffrage movement in particular, see the primary source set on Women’s Suffrage. For a broader picture of the abolitionist movement, visit the source set on The American Abolitionist Movement.

The decades leading up to the Civil War were a time of great change in the United States — politically, economically, and socially. Rapid economic growth brought about a growing middle class, in which many women were better educated than previous generations of their peers. At the same time, a greater number of lower-class women began working outside the home to earn a living. These and other changes led to gender equality becoming one of the most important societal issues of the era.Students will examine an 1850 Census questionnaire and an 1851 political cartoon to understand women’s rights issues during the Antebellum Period. 

The goal of this module is to provide resources and information about the history of women’s vote in the U.S. Looking at the women’s suffrage movement provides a framework for exploring the changing role of women in politics and society in the 19th and 20th centuries. The history of suffrage offers an opportunity to examine women’s roles at critical points in the nation’s history, and to think about the impact of women’s voting behavior on politics in our time.
Activities and discussion questions are designed to explore the changing role of women in society and in politics. The module includes ideas for developing lessons on women’s suffrage and integrating the issue of suffrage into lessons on US history and politics, and to consider the impact of full suffrage on politics and society today.

The Norwegian art of rosemaling. Rosemaling is an art style preserved thanks in part to 19th century immigration from Norway’s farming communities to those of Wisconsin. Since that journey, rosemaling has worked its way into the identity of the state.