Teachinghistory.org (National History Education Clearinghouse) offers resources to teachers in multiple ways.  Three sections outline teaching materials, history content, and best practices in teaching history.  There are links for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, with everything from complete lesson plans to general outlines of historical events and skills.  You can also access research on the state of history education in the country, as well as a blog and the teachinghistory.org community.  

Baseball's growing popularity in the 1920s can be measured by structural and cultural changes that helped transform the game, including the building of commodious new ballparks; the emergence of sports pages in daily urban newspapers; and the enormous popularity of radio broadcasts of baseball games. Baseball commentators and critics expended much ink during the 1920s discussing the exact nature and composition of this new and expanding fan population. Some derided the influx of new fans to urban ballparks, in part because of the growing visibility in the bleachers of the sons and daughters of working-class Italian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants, and in part because the game seemed to be straying from its origins in traditional rural and small-town America. On the other hand, writer Edgar F. Wolfe argued in the 1923 Literary Digest that the urban ballpark was a meeting ground for Americans of all classes and backgrounds.

The anticommunist crusader Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped into national prominence on February 9, 1950, when he mounted an attack on President Truman's foreign policy agenda. McCarthy charged that the State Department and its Secretary, Dean Acheson, harbored "traitorous" Communists. McCarthy's apocalyptic rhetoric--he portrayed the Cold War conflict as "a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity"--made critics hesitate before challenging him. His purported lists of Communist conspirators multiplied in subsequent years to include employees in government agencies, the broadcasting and defense industries, universities, the United Nations, and the military. Most of those accused were helpless to defend their ruined reputations and faced loss of employment, damaged careers, and in many cases, broken lives. In protest, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith composed the following "Declaration of Conscience," condemning the atmosphere of suspicion and blaming leaders of both parties for their "lack of effective leadership." Although Smith convinced six additional Republican Senators to join her in the Declaration, the seven refused to support a Senate report prepared by Democrats that called McCarthy's charges against State Department personnel fraudulent.

Established in the mid-nineteenth century, Native American Boarding schools were created as an attempt to eliminate traditional Native American ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture. Often forcibly removed from their families, communities, and stripped of their cultural practices, Native American children experienced physical and emotional abuse at the hands of those in control of boarding school operations, resulting in intergenerational trauma. These sources bring users into contact with documents that help give them a sense of what life was like for students who attended Native American boarding schools. These sources also give users an understanding of the national perspective of how Native Americans and their culture were targeted.

The urban workplace changed dramatically in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The American Revolution, with its rampant egalitarianism, dissolved much of the paternalistic control once wielded by fathers, masters and other authority figures, as the anonymous author "Old Apprentice" made clear in his set of three letters to the New York Observer in 1826. But significant blame for this erosion rested with the manufacturers themselves. Eager to seize upon new markets with expanded production, they divided up tasks to produce cheaper clothing or shoes. Semiskilled and unskilled women and children performed this labor rather than apprentices or other workingmen of the traditional artisanal system. These changes also dissolved the traditional residential patterns, pushing working men out into the housing market. A loss of reciprocity and responsibility occurred on both sides.

The colonists 'revolutionary struggle against British political authority also raised issues about equality and human rights at home. Enslaved people throughout the colonies seized upon the rhetoric of liberty and equality to point out the contradiction of fighting Great Britain over principles not fully followed by the colonies themselves; they also appealed to Christian precepts. Scores of petitions flooded the newly established state legislatures. This one, submitted to the Massachusetts General Court in 1777, linked the cause of American freedom with the struggle of African Americans for liberty. Several lawsuits seeking freedom were successful. When Quok Walker sued for his freedom and back wages in 1781, the Massachusetts Chief Justice ruled that his enslavement violated the new state constitution's statement that "men are born free and Equal." His case effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts and other New England states.

Many artists working in the decades after the American Revolution came from the ranks of artisans and mechanics. In a republic that dispensed with aristocratic patrons and royal academies, art came to be supported by a middling populace more interested in portraits than grand history painting. Sculpture in marble, time consuming and expensive, was even more remote than paints, and the new nation lacked grand palaces or mansions for display. John Frazee, born in Rahway, New Jersey in 1790, lacked the benefit of formal instruction but still progressed from carving lettering on gravestones to fashioning busts of the rich and famous. Without formal knowledge or the constraints of European customs, American-born and trained artist-artisans such as Frazee resorted to indigenous and ingenious solutions to the problems they faced in a commercializing society, such as Frazee's mechanical invention to transfer an image from painting to a marble bust.

This lesson gives background to the rise of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party Party (Nazi Party) and in particular to their annexation of Austria through a powerpoint.  It then asks students to analyze three primary source documents to act as evidence in answering an historical question: How did the Nazi party convince 99% of Germans to vote in favor of the annexation of Austria?  Student then write a short argument based on their understanding of the texts and visuals.

Whether attempting to escape or simply traveling at night to visit friends or family in neighboring plantations, African-American slaves were threatened by the slave patrols. These squads, often including non-slaveholders who were required to serve under state law, were notorious for their brutality. Most feared were the dogs the pattyrollers" used to track down fugitive slaves. This 1856 advertisement promoted the sale of dogs trained expressly to hunt human beings."

This collection uses primary sources to explore Negro League Baseball. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Journalist Theodore H. White received widespread acclaim for his "The Making of the President" series that analyzed election campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. As White points out in the following Collier's article, African-American migration to Northern cities from the South made the black voter an important player in national politics by the mid-1950s. From 1910 to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans came North, with 3 million arriving in cities between 1940 and 1960. During the 1956 presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson attempted to win this black vote by voicing support for the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing segregated schools, a ruling incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower had refused to approve. Stevenson's appeal to black voters, however, was muted by his opposition to using Federal funds or troops to enforce desegregation, a position he adopted to avoid alienating southern voters. In addition, in the 1952 race, Stevenson had selected as his running mate a segregationist Senator from Alabama, John Sparkman. In October, African-American Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., announced his support of the President, and on election day, more than 60 percent of black voters also chose Eisenhower. This marked a shift in party allegiance by blacks who had voted overwhelmingly Democratic since the 1930s, when many changed from the party of Lincoln to support Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although Eisenhower's rout of Stevenson was attributed more to foreign affairs than domestic, the black vote continued to be a major factor in national politics.

World War I wartime production demanded the mobilization of thousands of workers to make steel and rubber, work in petrochemical industries, and build ships. Few immigrants left Europe for the United States, and workers were desperately needed to replace those who had left for military service. The following excerpts from African-American newspapers described the new opportunities and continuing struggles that black workers confronted, noting both interracial conflict and cooperation during wartime. "Organized Labor Not Friendly?" exemplified a widely held suspicion of unions among African Americans, who had previously been excluded from organized labor's ranks. "Negro Workers Are Organizing" described one response: the formation of alternative unions organized for black workers on a city-wide basis. "Big Labor Day Celebration" reported on a parade and baseball game that included black and white unionists. In "The Negro and the War," the writer found reason for optimism that President Woodrow Wilson's war aims--"to make the world safe for democracy"--might also find expression in the realization of democratic ideals at home.

Alan Paton's first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), communicated the tragic dimensions of South Africa's system of apartheid to a world audience. In 1954, Paton was asked by Collier's magazine to observe and interview Americans about this country's system of racial segregation. In the first of two articles, Paton interviewed students, government officials, NAACP members, church leaders, and soldiers in Washington, D.C., and in the Deep South around the time that the Supreme Court, in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, ruled segregated "separate but equal" public schools unconstitutional. Like earlier visitors from abroad--such as St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Gunnar Myrdal--Paton offered a uniquely comparative perspective as he searched for answers on the current state of segregation and future prospects for the integration of American institutions.

Alan Paton's first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), communicated the tragic dimensions of South Africa's system of apartheid to a world audience. In 1954, Paton was asked by Collier's magazine to observe and interview Americans about this country's system of racial segregation. For this second of two articles, Paton, a co-founder and president of the Liberal Party of South Africa, traveled to urban areas in the West and North in order to relate personal stories behind practices such as the restrictive covenant in housing markets, mob violence against blacks in housing projects, and discrimination in employment. Despite the widespread racial injustice he found, Paton predicted that "segregation is dying" in the U.S. due in large part to the struggles of blacks themselves. He concluded that Americans could find hope in the "advance of the Negro" and the recent Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Engaging PowerPoint or Standalone Executable File Presentation and coordinating materials about Internet Safety for High School students.  The lesson is done for you, all you have to do is download the presentation and materials and present it to your high school students.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the New Deal. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

As immigration dropped sharply during World War I and many native-born women left domestic service for wartime jobs, middle-class women lamented the shortage of domestic workers. This spurred efforts to reorganize housework and a fostered a new breed of home economists who argued for "scientific" housekeeping. By applying the methods and theory of scientific management to the home, these experts argued, housework could be rendered less arduous and time-consuming. The "new housekeeping" often relied solely on the unpaid work of the middle-class wives. A leading proponent of household scientific management, Christine Frederick answered common criticisms of domestic workers by turning a critical eye on their employers. The "servant problem," she argued, was a problem of bad management--middle-class women needed to abandon unsystematic methods and arbitrary supervision for the new principles of scientific management. She expressed unusual empathy for women in domestic service, perhaps because she herself had cleaned houses to help pay her expenses as a college student at Northwestern University.

As immigration dropped sharply during World War I and many native-born women left domestic service for wartime jobs, middle-class women lamented the shortage of domestic workers. New experts offered their advice to the middle-class woman who decided to tackle housework without the assistance of paid help. Gladys Hutton Chase, writing in Good Housekeeping in 1918, explained the new middle-class housekeeping. Chase celebrated her newfound freedom from the "work and worry" of employing domestic workers. Notably, her solution was doing her own work with the help of a professional home economics course, rather than getting other household members to pitch in. And even as she enthused about the efficiency of her new methods, Chase revealed the escalating standards that expanded and complicated middle-class housekeeping.

In the years immediately following World War I, tens of thousands of southern blacks and returning black soldiers flocked to the nation's Northern cities looking for good jobs and a measure of respect and security. Many white Americans, fearful of competition for scarce jobs and housing, responded by attacking black citizens in a spate of urban race riots. In urban African-American enclaves, the 1920s were marked by a flowering of cultural expressions and a proliferation of black self-help organizations that accompanied the era of the "New Negro." Many black leaders, including religious figures, embraced racial pride and militancy. This 1921 article by Rollin Lynde Hartt, a white Congregational minister and journalist, captured well what was "new" in the New Negro: an aggressive willingness to defend black communities against white racist attacks and a desire to celebrate the accomplishments of African-American communities in the North.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the New Woman ideal. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.