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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Student Leadership Days (SLD) offer opportunities to share the universal lessons of the Holocaust and are integral to the Museum’s ability to connect directly with students who are ready to take on a positive leadership role in their communities. The SLD program engages students in a variety of age-appropriate activities that inspire them to build leadership skills, explore their roles as citizens, and develop a deeper awareness and understanding of the Holocaust, genocide, and other human rights issues.

In a full-day session that includes guest speakers, group activities, presentations and discussions about perspectives other than their own, SLD offers participants an opportunity to engage with diverse peers, increasing their self-efficacy, and potential for learning. Participants return to their communities equipped to promote greater acceptance and understanding. Students leave with increased knowledge and tools and resources to stand up against injustice and bigotry.

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 is an anti-racism institution that uses objects to inform, to teach, and to create dialogues about race relations. They use primary sources to document and learn from the past. The mission of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery is to teach tolerance using objects of deeply rooted intolerance.

Resources promote personal and community awareness, social justice, and racial healing. The museum understands that all individuals have varying comfort levels when speaking about race and confronting racism. The Educational Resources include a virtual tour of the museum, curriculum guide, resource guide, media literacy unit and a unit that addresses racial disparity in Covid-19.

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.

Is the justice system in the United States responding to increased extremism appropriately? What is at stake? Who should address increasing violence? Students will engage in the inquiry process by developing questions related to extremism, building contextual knowledge, and assessing the effectiveness of interventions to address extremism.

Content Advisory:
This film and accompanying resources deal with sensitive topics that may be triggering for some students. The exploration of hate groups, white supremacy, and violence are topics that should receive great care in the classroom. Some school districts may employ YouTube content filters that block the material. If you need access, please email David Olson at dolson@retroreport.com.

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 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 eight-minute video explores how with the economic pain of the pandemic, new groups of American workers are pushing to form labor unions at restaurants, stores and warehouses. It’s the biggest surge of activism since the 1930s. At the height of the Great Depression, with as many as 13 million Americans out of work, President Franklin Roosevelt pushed New Deal reforms through Congress, including the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. It guaranteed private sector workers the right to form unions. This lesson asks students to examine the push for workers’ rights beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, continuing to the Great Depression in the United States and on to contemporary efforts.

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.