The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. It also granted them equal protection under the laws and guaranteed due process of law. Those are considered its most important provisions today. That wasn't always the case, however. Why did it take so long for the Supreme Court to affirm these provisions of this significant Amendment, and what does that say about politics at the highest court in the land?

Our guide to the 14th Amendment is Aziz Huq, professor of law at the University of Chicago School of Law.

This primary source is the speech given by Francis Willard, President of the World's Women's Temperance Union, at the organization's 20th annual convention. In it, she details women's roles in the Temperance Movement and how the Temperance Movement intersected with other social movements.

In this lesson, students interrogate their own assumptions about Abraham Lincoln in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of who Lincoln was. They investigate primary source documents in order to analyze the elements of Lincoln's life that have become legend and those that have been forgotten by history.

This supplemental lesson/activity from the Center for Civic Education looks at the concept of executive power and the challenges Lincoln faced as president. Students are asked to analyze and evaluate President Lincoln's decisions as they relate to decisions made during the Civil War.

In this lesson, students watch a clip from the episode Woolworth Sign in which they learn about the use of sit-ins and nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement. They then examine period images and news footage in order to analyze the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement and their effectiveness, and create a newspaper article about the events of the time period.

Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom.

Here you’ll find place-based educational resources relating to African American history and culture; including lesson plans and "Curiosity Kits" that are a series of articles that students can read individually or in a small group, in order to spark historical thinking.

The papers of Alexander Hamilton (ca. 1757-1804), first treasury secretary of the United States, consist of his personal and public correspondence, drafts of his writings (although not his Federalist essays), and correspondence among members of the Hamilton and Schuyler families. The collection, consisting of approximately 12,000 items dating from 1708 to 1917, documents Hamilton's impoverished Caribbean boyhood (scantily); events in the lives of his family and that of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton; his experience as a Revolutionary War officer and aide-de-camp to General George Washington; his terms as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress (1782-1783) and the Constitutional Convention (1787); and his careers as a New York state legislator, United States treasury secretary (1789-1795), political writer, and lawyer in private practice. Most of the papers date from 1777 until Hamilton's death in 1804. Additional details may be found in the collection's finding aid (HTML and PDF versions).
Speeches and Writings, 1778-1804 (Reels 21-23)
Drafts, copies, and notes of reports; political essays, speeches, New York legislative acts, and more composed by Hamilton from the American Revolution until his death. Of note is an outline of the speech he delivered at the Constitutional Convention on June 18, 1787; his notes on debates and speeches at New York's ratifying convention, June 1788; drafts of the four major economic reports he wrote as treasury secretary (on public credit, creation of a national bank, establishment of a mint, and development of manufacturing); drafts of the speeches he wrote for George Washington, including Washington's 1796 farewell address; notes he took at New York's constitutional convention of 1787; and drafts of some of his political essays. None of Hamilton's Federalist essays are included.

There are three American myths that define "Americanness." The frontier, the melting pot and the "self-made man." They're concepts that define how we are to think about transformation, progress and possibility in America. They also rarely hold up. Heike Paul, author of The Myths That Made America, is our guide to the stories we tell about how it is in this country (even when it isn't.)

America's Black Holocaust Museum's website is a virtual museum where one can:
Discover seldom-told stories in our Online History Galleries.
Plan your in-person visit to our On-Site museum's galleries.
Find out what the only publicly-known survivor of a US lynching did with the rest of his long life.
Learn about present and past challenges facing the African American community in our Breaking News blog.

ABHM is a one-of-a-kind historical and memorial museum about the Black Holocaust in America.

The Andrew Jackson Papers collection documents Jackson's life in its several phases, including Jackson's military career in the War of 1812, the Creek War, and Florida; his transactions as a land-holder and Tennessee businessman; his personal and family life, including correspondence with his wife, Rachel Jackson, and other family members and wards associated with the Hermitage; and his controversies with associates and strangers, which sometimes came to confrontation. Prominent is documentation related to his complex two-term presidency, during which the nation debated issues of nullification, tariff rates, banking procedures, Indian policy, public improvements, and the relative power and sovereignty of the individual states in the Union in relation to the federal government. The collection also contains information on military orders and court martial proceedings, diplomatic and Indian treaty negotiations, and the experiences and/or opinions of those Jackson led in battle, collaborated with or opposed in politics, or trusted as cabinet members, allies and friends.

The papers of lecturer, reformer, actress, and author Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932) span the period 1859-1951, but are chiefly concentrated in the years from 1859 to 1911. The collection consists of approximately 10,000 items (20,221 images), most of which were digitized from 25 microfilm reels. Included are family correspondence, general correspondence, speeches and writings, a legal file, financial papers, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and research notes of Dickinson's biographer, Giraud Chester.

Dickinson was a teenage phenomenon on the antislavery lecture circuit, whose electrifying speeches made her one of the campaign’s most sought-after speakers. In 1863, she toured the country on behalf of Republican Party candidates, and after the Civil War, she became a star of the lyceum circuit, drawing large crowds and commanding huge speaking fees. She was among the celebrities who were aboard the first transcontinental railroad trip to California and also grabbed headlines when she climbed Pike’s Peak and other summits. Her familiarity with the stage later led to a less successful career as an actress and playwright.

Dickinson had a particularly close relationship with Susan B. Anthony and shared the latter's interest in women's rights and temperance. She also advocated for the rights of African Americans and corresponded with escaped slave and abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass as well as with other notable figures of her time. Although Dickinson did not retain copies of most of her correspondence, she obtained many of the letters she wrote while on national lecture tours to Mary Dickinson, her mother, and Susan Dickinson, her journalist sister. This correspondence described her travel itineraries, her impressions, and her joys and misgivings. They show the reactions of a person whose plays and performances, including A Crown of Thorns and The Test of Honor, were not well received.

By 1900, Dickinson was estranged from her sister Susan, formerly her closest friend and housemate, and she had outlived most of her associates. As recorded in the legal file and in her scrapbooks, she initiated several lawsuits between 1895 and 1901 as a result of her confinement at the State Hospital for the Insane in Danville, Pennsylvania. Other topics include the elections of 1872 and 1888, the Republican Party, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and education.

In the 1870’s, the United States Government began a system of education for Native Americans in the U.S. Richard Pratt, a military veteran of the Civil War, was chosen to lead a school intended to assimilate Native American children into white American culture. Students there would be forced to cut their hair, speak the English language, change their names to Christian names, and change from their traditional religious beliefs to Christianity. Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA in 1873. The boarding schools would have a profoundly negative impact upon generations of Native Americans and forced many to lose contact with their traditional culture. Several boarding schools were operated in Wisconsin, including one in Lac du Flambeau, WI.

You may recall the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) from the 1992 film, A League of Their Own starring Geena Davis and Tom Hanks. Who will ever forget that “there’s no crying in baseball!” But did you know the AAGPBL has deep roots in the upper Midwest, including Wisconsin? This online exhibit pairs research and primary sources, documenting the AAGPBL in Wisconsin.

Video collection of Park rangers discussing the events of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The unit includes student activities.

The papers of statesman, publisher, scientist, and diplomat Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) consist of approximately 8,000 items spanning the years 1726 to 1907, with most dating from the 1770s and 1780s. The collection's principal strength is its documentation of Franklin's diplomatic roles as a colonial representative in London (1757-1762 and 1764-1775) and France (1776-1785), where he sought to win recognition and funding from European countries during the American Revolution, negotiated the treaty with Britain that ended the war, and served as the first United States minister to France. The papers also document Franklin's work as a scientist, inventor, and observer of the natural world, and his relations with family, friends, and scientific and political colleagues.

Notable correspondents include John Adams, Sarah Franklin Bache, Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, Edmund Burke, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Cadwallader Colden, Peter Collinson, Thomas Cushing, Charles-Guillaume-Frédéric Dumas, Charles James Fox, Deborah Read Franklin, William Franklin, William Temple Franklin, Joseph Galloway, George III, King of Great Britain; Rodolphe-Ferdinand Grand, David Hartley, Mary Stevenson Hewson, Jan Ingenhousz, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette; Henry Laurens, Antoine Lavoisier, Arthur Lee, Jane Franklin Mecom, Robert Morris, Richard Oswald, Joseph Priestley, William Strahan, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes; George Washington, Jonathan Williams, Jonathan Williams Jr., and more.

The Picturing Women Inventors poster series starts and ends with big ideas and questions. Each set of inventors answers the question asked at the top of the poster. Using an inquiry-based approach, we invite you to first explore the stories of women inventors who are often overlooked or forgotten altogether. While doing so, connect the inventors’ experiences to your own lives. Next, develop your own research question and undertake an investigation of the past to uncover the story of a woman inventor. Throughout this process, continue to think outwardly about the ways your classroom experiences could and should impact your community and the world around you.The Picturing Women Inventors poster exhibition and this accompanying Educators’ Guide engage students by revealing these hidden inventors’ stories and, in the process, help redefine who gets to be an inventor. This activity guide contains aligned standards and objectives, learning strategies, supplementary primary and secondary materials, and inquiry-based learning methods that help students see themselves reflected in the stories of inventors past and present through discussion and a research project. 

The Blackwell Family Papers span the years 1759-1960, with the bulk of the material dating from 1845 to 1890. Consisting of approximately 29,000 items (58,002 images), most of which were digitized from 76 reels of microfilm, the collection predominantly represents two generations of the Blackwell family and twenty individual family members. Nearly two centuries of the family’s daily lives are documented in correspondence, diaries, speeches, and other papers, exemplifying the family’s long commitment to social reform movements, such as abolition; women’s rights, including the right to equal education; women’s suffrage; and temperance.

Click! In the 1970s that word signaled the moment when a woman awakened to the powerful ideas of contemporary feminism. Today “click” usually refers to a computer keystroke that connects women (and men) to powerful ideas on the Internet. Click! aims to bridge the gap between those two clicks by offering an exhibit that highlights the achievements of women from the 1940s to the present. This exhibit explores the power and complexity of gender consciousness in modern American life.
Students will be able to explore, research, and analyze various topics such as women in politics, the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, Body and Health, and Workplace and Family.
Educators will have the ability to retrieve lesson plans on various topics such as free lesson plans to give teachers content materials and activities that will allow them to integrate the history of the modern women’s movement into their curriculum and help students engage with important historical questions about the struggles that have made the United States more equal and democratic. Each lesson plan focuses on a historical topic that engages with the concerns of students: politics and social movements; body and health; and workplace and family. These topics are investigated through the histories of individual women, their organizations, and their struggles for greater rights and social justice. Their stories are situated within larger histories to help students connect the modern women’s movement to other changes in post-World War Two America.

A 2018 TIme Magazine Article that explores the evidence for early European Exploration throughout North America.

Four Presidents called Illinois home – Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Each presided over the country at a unique time in U.S. history, and this can be seen in the messages they communicated to the nation in their inaugural addresses. All four were reelected to a second term in office. Analysis of each president’s 1st and 2nd inaugural addresses provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the priorities, goals and intentions he outlined, as well as how the nation may have been changing at that time.