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.

The following lesson is designed to help students explore the emergence of the American Indian Movement (c.1968 and beyond) in the context of the push for self-determination by native people, and within the broader movement for Civil Rights in American Society.

This resource would be appropriate for high school students, during a study of the Civil Rights Movement. It provides primary source materials for students to analyze using the APPARTS process.

This aligns to WI AIS Enduring Understanding #9 "American Indians and U.S. Citizenship".

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.

Many historians have posed the question: "Was World War II a watershed event in the African-American Civil Rights Movement?" During the war, the "Double V" campaign of the black press called for victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. In this lesson, students will investigate primary-source materials to develop an understanding of the experience of African Americans in the war overseas and on the home front. In doing so, they will consider whether the contradictory gains made in the areas of civil rights, housing, work, and military service represented a break with the past or a continuation of the status quo.
Students will examine the experience of African Americans during World War II by analyzing primary sources and formulating historical questions.
Students will evaluate if the African American experience during World War II represents continuity or change by writing letters to the editor.

This lesson introduces students to the complexity of history by focusing on the diverse activities of Black women in the nineteenth century. Historians have traditionally ignored free black women during this period, and furthermore oversimplified the lives of slave women. Using a variety of sources and documents, students will learn that many Black women, whether born slaves, free, or freed in later life, resisted the system that oppressed them, earned degrees, and became politically active before, during, and after the Civil War.
Students will learn how to read and interpret various primary and secondary sources and how to use them to draw conclusions about the issues that the authors faced during the nineteenth century.
Students will read historical narratives imaginatively and in their proper context.
Students will view evidence of historical perspectives and draw upon visual and literary sources while studying the lives of nineteenth-century black feminists, the issues they faced, and their methods for solving them.

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.

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.

History IT's mission is to digitize significant sources from US history. Among the items digitized are the diaries of Francis Willard. These journals are searchable using terms such as women's rights, suffrage, temperance, education, and many more.

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.

A social media app with 150 million American users — Tiktok — is under intense scrutiny by the U.S. government. The threat is "sell or be banned," but how and why can the government do that? What does this kind of business restriction look like? We talked to Steven Balla of George Washington University to get the low down on regulations and bans in the United States.

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.

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.