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.

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.

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

The BlackPast has an interactive African American history timeline that can be used to contextualize the history being studied. BlackPast has an extensive database to search within. The website is in encyclopedia format and has both written and primary visual sources available. A narrative written by professional historians accompanies each source.By clicking the "African-American History" link at the top of the page you can see a drop down menu with multiple types of primary sources, timeline, documents and speeches, and links to other museums and records.

The summer of 1919 saw over 20 race riots break out across the United States. Chicago was the site of particularly high violence. In this lesson, students deliberate the origins of the Chicago race riots by exploring five documents (both primary and secondary) that reflect different social, cultural, and economic causes.

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.

Genocide is one of the tragic repeating features of history. It elicits feelings of horror and revulsion throughout the world. Yet both the international community and the United States have struggled to respond to this recurring problem. Confronting Genocide: Never Again? allows students to wrestle with the reasons why local actors, the international community, and the United States responded as they have to various cases of genocide over the past century. The unit is divided into two parts. Each part includes:

Student readings
Accompanying study guides, graphic organizers, and key terms
Lessons aligned with the readings that develop analytical skills and can be completed in one or more periods
Videos that feature leading experts

This unit also includes an Options Role Play as the key lesson and additional synthesis lessons that allow students to synthesize new knowledge for assessment. You do not need to use the entire unit; feel free to select what suits your classroom needs.

Using primary sources related to the official proclamation of Columbus Day as a holiday at the national level, this activity asks students to analyze the documents (official proclamation and a newspaper advertisement) to determine why President Harrison chose to declare it as a holiday. Accessing the lesson/document does require setting up free account.

The National Park Service has created a K-12 curriculum that focuses on scaffolded lessons that focus on Martin Luther King’s advocacy, the March on Washington and other leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

This is a text based website with detailed information about the life and activism of Frances Willard.

Short reading describing the importance General Pulaski played the importance in the American Revolution and the importance of his legacy.

This mini-lesson looks at the variety of roles that George Washington played in America's early years. From commanding the Continental Army, to presiding over the Constitutional Convention, to setting the standard for the American presidency, Washington led the way.

Template to guide students when analyzing primary and secondary sources. Teachers can use this template to create assessments that can be cycled and assessed multiple times throughout a grading period.

Field trips offer opportunities to explore our exhibitions that address the history of the Holocaust, genocide, human and civil rights, as well as local and global social justice issues.

This packet provides an explanation of Ireland’s Great Hunger and provides ideas for primary source materials to use to describe the event A variety of discussion questions, writing activities, and other activities are provided that allow students to explore the facts and how different Irish artists used art and other media forms to depict the effects of the famine.

Anthony’s speech helps students understand the Constitution as a living document. She uses a variety of techniques of legal reasoning and interpretation to challenge other, exclusionary uses of the document. She bases an argument for change on an interpretation of a founding document.
Reconstruction is a challenging era for students to understand. Anthony’s speech captures the complexities of the Reconstruction Amendments and how they opened new avenues for disenfranchised groups to assert their rights. It also explores the interrelationship of the women’s suffragists with other movements. Anthony highlights the cultural, social, and political aspects of women’s struggle for equal rights. The speech does not simply assert women’s right to vote, but also more broadly addresses the subordinate position of women within the home and in other areas of public policy.

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.