This lesson tells how and why our Navy was created. After the Revolutionary War, Barbary pirates preyed on American vessels and held seamen for ransom. In 1794, Congress reestablished the Navy with authorization for six vessels.

Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on June 25, 1938, the last major piece of New Deal legislation. The act outlawed child labor and guaranteed a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour and a maximum work week of 40 hours, benefiting more than 22 million workers. Although the law helped establish a precedent for the Federal regulation of work conditions, conservative forces in Congress effectively exempted many workers, such as waiters, cooks, janitors, farm workers, and domestics, from its coverage. In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949, raising the minimum wage to 75 cents hour and extending coverage, but still leaving many workers unprotected. In the following statement to the 1949 Senate subcommittee on FLSA amendments, an advocacy group representing power laundries warned that such legislation would result in a "ruinous effect" on the industry.

In order to challenge the emphasis on extreme economic individualism espoused by Gilded Age industrialists and laissez-faire theorists, labor writers drew on diverse historical and religious traditions. William Law, writing in the Detroit Labor Leaf in 1886, cited a variety of historical events, starting with the Magna Carta, to argue for collective organization. Law reminded his readers that some of history's most notable changes came about only as a result of organized effort on the part of the masses.

In the war for independence, the life of a common soldier was a rough one. Soldiers served relatively short periods in state militias or longer periods in the Continental Army, raised by Congress. About two hundred thousand men enlisted for one period or another. Militias supplied the greatest number of soldiers, comprised of farmers, artisans, and some professionals. The Continental Congress recruited the young and those with fewer resources, such as apprentices or laborers. Some enlisted voluntarily while others were drafted; the more affluent hired paid substitutes. All faced war's hardships of severe food shortages, discomfort, low morale, and danger. Joseph Plumb Martin, born in western Massachusetts, joined the militia in 1776 before his 16th birthday and served in the Continental Army from 1777 to 1783. In 1830, he wrote a colorful portrayal of the life of a common soldier, Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier. In this excerpt, Plumb described the British surrender at Yorktown in October 1781.

The history of American higher education reflects a long struggle between faculty and the business and political interests typically assembled on the governing boards of universities and colleges. By World War I, university and college faculty had become professionalized, governed by organized bodies that set general standards for promotion and tenure as well as for ethical conduct and for accuracy in research and scholarship. Assisted by organizations like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), faculty had acquired a substantial degree of autonomy and authority over the conduct of their own business. But academics remained subject to both economic and political pressures, pressures that exploded during World War I era loyalty crusades. Thorstein Veblen's 1918 essay "The Higher Learning" accused American academics of capitulating to business. Veblen, a noted economist and social critic, argued that the pursuit of knowledge should answer to higher priorities than the pursuit of money, and that it demanded freedom of expression and thought. In American higher learning, Veblen thought, the interests of politics were so like the interests of business that the two had merged, leaving professors doubly vulnerable to intimidation.

With depression looming as a continual threat to the U.S. economy in the late 19th century, Americans debated how the government should respond to hard times--a question still unanswered today. Manufacturers--then as now--usually took the position that government should not interfere with the workings of the "free market." When J. H. Walker, a shoe manufacturer from Worcester, Massachusetts, testified in 1878 before a congressional committee investigating "the causes of the general depression in labor and business," he argued simply that the government should do nothing at all for the vast army of unemployed. "Leave them alone; that is the remedy," he declared.

In Legend of the Lost Emerald, kids take on the role of maritime archaeologists exploring shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Like real archaeologists, players use sonar and GPS coordinates, dive down to take underwater photos, and search for clues in historical artifacts, like letters and ship manifests, to tell the story of each shipwreck. We teamed up with maritime archaeologists at Wisconsin Sea Grant and amazing teacher fellows from across the state of Wisconsin to design a game that works in the classroom and introduces kids to the tools and practices of the field.

Teachers can use this game to introduce kids to historical practices and themes from ecology, technology, and Wisconsin history. Students will learn about the role of maritime archaeologists, archivists, historians, and museum curators. The game introduces four different time periods in maritime history, ranging from wooden schooners in the mid-1800s to steel freighters in the 1960s.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, symbolized the anti-labor climate of postwar America. The act expanded the power of employers and the government to prevent union organizing and strikes, and made it difficult for unions to take industrial action. The most difficult aspect of the bill for many unions to swallow required labor leaders to declare themselves to be non-Communist if they wanted to participate in NLRB elections. While many union members, like Leon Sverdlove of the Jewelry Workers union in New York, resented having to divulge their political views, they accepted the act's requirement in order to protect what union rights they had left. As Sverdlove found, however, even accepting the act's dictates did not protect unions and their members from accusations of communism, and many unions and workers suspected as communist sympathizers were forced out of organized labor.

Despite major cultural, legal, and medical impediments the use of birth control, including abortion, by American women was widespread at the turn of the century. In their quest to control unwanted pregnancies, American women could be surprisingly resourceful in the methods they used. In this audio excerpt from a 1974 interview with historian Sherna Gluck, Miriam Allen deFord described methods of birth control in vogue in the 1910s, including spermicides, douches, the Dutch pessary (an early diaphragm), and the use of ergot pills to induce abortion.

This lesson from Facing History and Ourselves asks students to analyze and storyboard Dr. King's "Mountaintop Speech" and discuss how humans can respond to injustice. It also challenges students to reflect on the world in which they would like to live.

This six-minute video takes students “behind the stage” at political party conventions by interviewing the convention manager and speechwriting team who launched Barack Obama’s national political career by choosing him to make the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Deconstructing how conventions function as a complex messaging operations involving the coordination of hundreds of speakers, the video provides students with insight into one of the most important moments in modern American politics, and would be useful in any sequence of lessons focused on the election of presidents or modern campaigning methods.

This 12-minute video and lesson plan explore the September 11 terrorist attacks, which occurred 20 years ago, before any of today’s K-12 students were born. How can we examine the events of that day and the aftermath as historians would? This activity asks students to examine primary sources, pose questions for investigation and gather additional narratives from this time period.

After the 2000 election night ended with no clear winner and exposed flaws in our voting system, there was a push for reforms to make elections run more smoothly. This 12-minute video introduces students to the turmoil and confusion of the Bush v. Gore election recount and illustrates the surprising and unintended aftermath of that event: Instead of reforms, there was a change toward an even more politicized electoral process. Useful as an introduction to the Bush v. Gore election controversy, the video can also be used to set up a conversation about the past and future of voting rights and voter suppression.

This four-minute video explores the causes and consequences of the Democratic Party’s division into two parties following the Democratic national convention of 1860. After rejecting Stephen A. Douglas’s failed attempt to reconcile the Northern and Southern factions of the party with his doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” the Southern delegates walked out of the convention. That decision led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and 50 years of Republican dominance in national politics. A concise summary of the unusual events that allowed Abraham Lincoln to win the election of 1860, the video fits into any sequence of lessons on the factors leading to secession and the Civil War.

This seven-minute video and accompanying lesson plan looks at how throughout the 1960’s and 70’s the second wave feminism movement worked to address gender inequality across the United States. While the movement had several important victories, the Equal Rights Amendment was not passed. Was the second wave feminist movement a success nonetheless?

This ten-minute video examines what obligation countries have to refugees. It’s a question as important today as it was in 1975, when the United States evacuated 130,000 South Vietnamese allies during the fall of Saigon and brought them to this country to start new lives. Today, as Afghan and Ukrainian migrants settle in the United States, students will explore whether refugee resettlement is better now than it was for the Vietnamese 50 years ago, and what is owed to people fleeing war, destruction and despair across the globe.

This lesson and its accompanying seven-minute video introduce students to a professional fact-checker, who describes the methods and processes he employs to verify information that appears in news stories. The video explains which claims can be fact-checked, and why some sources are more reliable than others. How do fact-checkers engage in analysis of contemporary and historical claims? How do we distinguish between “bad facts” and “bad narratives” when critiquing media sources? Examine the tools that fact-checkers use to identify and interrogate claims, and put those skills into practice.

This 9-minute video illustrates how demographic trends and a changing California economy in the 1990s created a backlash against immigration, only to be followed by another swing in the ideological pendulum. This lesson examines how economic and demographic forces affect the strategies of the political parties, and demonstrates how policies like Proposition 187 can produce unintended and surprising consequences.

This 11-minute video tells the story of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, their raised-fist Black Power salute on the medal podium during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, and the consequences they went on to face. This video shows the development of the civil rights protests of the 1960s, and how the cultural context of that decade led to a wave of protests by athletes. It illustrates how the cultural context of the 1980s caused a decline in political consciousness among athletes. Finally it addresses how recent shootings and misconduct by police officers have fueled a resurgence of athlete activism. The video includes footage and discussion of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and O.J. Simpson. It will help students understand the complexities and challenges that black athletes face on the public stage. Students will learn how the modern take-a-knee protest movement, started by Colin Kaepernick, is directly linked to the Olympics protest in 1968.

Content Advisory:
This video contains graphic depictions of police shootings.

This 14-minute video shows students how the federal government’s botched raid on the compound of the Branch Davidian religious sect in 1993 gave rise to a nationwide militia movement of people advocating an expansive and individualistic interpretation of the Second Amendment. Students will learn how this movement included terrorists like Timothy McVeigh as well as lawful activists, many of whom continue to influence the national conversation on gun rights. Including interviews with militia activists as well as their opponents, the video provides students with context and insight on a defining cultural and political moment in the tug-of-war between individual rights and government powers. Useful for any lesson introducing Second Amendment controversies, the video illustrates why the right of individuals to own firearms remains one of the most contentious issues in American government.

Content Advisory:
This video includes footage of gun violence during a law enforcement raid that left 80 people dead.