24 items
Throughout the twentieth century, many influential Hollywood films, such as Birth of a Nation , Gone with the Wind , Glory , and Amistad , have helped shape the way Americans have thought about slavery and its legacy. Birth of a...
The First Thanksgiving Celebration
Learning Objectives Students will use literature to gain insight into the lives of the Wampanoag people and their participation in the first Thanksgiving celebration. Students will present information on different aspects of the...
Singing for Freedom
Background In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with most non-white families living well below the poverty line. Although African Americans made up nearly half of the state's population, few were...
Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England
Background Wampanoags Much of what is known about early Wampanoag history comes from archaeological evidence, the Wampanoag oral tradition (much of which has been lost), and documents created by seventeenth-century English colonists....
The Conquest of Mexico: Past and Present Views
Introduction The conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortez in 1519 is one of the most well-known examples of encounters between Europeans and Americans prior to 1600. Some primary sources that document the event still exist, though...
Native American Housing
Historical Background American Indians (First Nations in Canada) constructed homes to conform to their needs and environment. Housing for some tribal groups was permanent, while other residences reflected the need to relocate, often...
Study Aid: Cultures of the Americas, 1200 BC–AD 1600
Mound Builders (Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River) Key Groups : Adena (500 BC), Hopewell (100 BC) Religion and Culture : Known as mound builders because they buried the dead in large earth mounds, these groups lived in small...
John Philip Sousa critiques modern music, 1930
John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), an American composer of classical music, served as the director of the United States Marine Band from 1880 to 1892. During Sousa’s time as leader of "The President’s Own," as the band was called, he...
The Boston Massacre (Grades 4–6)
View the engraving The Bloody Massacre in King Street in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units...
America in Song
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry
Unit Objectives Students will analyze a variety of primary sources related to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. investigate celebratory images and a poem to discover some of the key outcomes that arose from the ability...
All Aboard: Making Connections with the Transcontinental Railroad
LESSON 1 Objectives Students will Read and understand primary source writings from two key documents that encouraged settlers to go west and that established congressional support of what would eventually become the transcontinental...
A World War II poster: "Starve the Squander Bug," 1943
Before he became world-renowned as Dr. Seuss for his children’s books and illustrations, Theodor Geisel worked for the US government during World War II designing posters such as this one, encouraging patriotism and investment. The...
The Civil War and Reconstruction in the American West
The histories of the Civil War and of the emerging West were tangled together from their beginnings. Although the war was fought mostly in the East, the events that set it off were born of the expansion of the 1840s, and in turn the...
A Civil War soldier’s satirical take on the news, 1863
Between battles, marches, and military exercises, Civil War soldiers spent their free time in camp playing music, writing and reading letters, and, for those with the skill, sketching scenes from the day. This unknown soldier’s...
Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students
Some 40,000 years from now, give or take a few millennia, someone, somewhere in the universe may find and listen to the Golden Record, NASA’s attempt to describe Earth and its peoples to anyone out there who might be interested. There...
Davy Crockett on the removal of the Cherokees, 1834
In this letter, written in December 1834, Davy Crockett complains about President Andrew Jackson’s forced removal of the Cherokees from their homes to Oklahoma. Crockett opposed that policy and feared Vice President Martin Van Buren...
Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585
In the 1570s and 1580s, John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. White made numerous watercolor sketches depicting the Algonquian people and stunning American landscapes. This engraving...
Native American Cultures and the Impact of the Boarding Schools
Click to download this four-lesson unit.
“Columbia’s Noblest Sons”: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1865
Abraham Lincoln’s death on April 14, 1865, stunned the nation. He was the first US president to be assassinated and the third to die in office. As Americans mourned, they also began to see him as a martyr and the savior of the Union....
Showing results 1 - 24