Lesson Plan Native American Cultures and the Impact of the Boarding Schools 3, 4, 5 Click to download this four-lesson unit.
Lesson Plan What Does Liberty Look Like? Government and Civics " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of...
Lesson Plan World War I, African American Soldiers, and America’s War for Democracy 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this lesson plan.
Lesson Plan Native American Housing Geography 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 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...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A report from Spanish California, 1776 Foreign Languages, Government and Civics Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
Lesson Plan Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England Economics, Government and Civics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 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....
Spotlight on: Primary Source Jefferson on the French and Haitian Revolutions, 1792 Geography, Government and Civics, World History When Thomas Jefferson wrote this letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, three revolutions—the American, French, and Haitian—occupied the minds of these two renowned leaders. While the American Revolution had been won nearly a decade...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The New York Conspiracy of 1741 Economics, Government and Civics In New York City in 1741 an economic decline exacerbated conflict between enslaved men and women engaged in commercial activity and working-class White colonists who felt their jobs were threatened. This tension boiled over in the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Slave revolt in the West Indies, 1733 Economics, Geography, World History The prevalence of slavery in pre-Revolutionary America made actual and threatened uprisings of enslaved people of intense interest throughout the British colonies in North America. The West Indies, or Caribbean islands, where slavery...
Lesson Plan The Virginia Colony 9, 10 Objective In presenting to students documents dating from the earliest European contact with the Americas, teachers are faced with problems of accessibility. The language is often daunting, and the relevance for students of American...
Lesson Plan The French and Indian War Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ 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...
Lesson Plan Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 7, 8, 9, 10 Click to download this five-lesson unit :
Spotlight on: Primary Source Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769 Government and Civics This document records that the representatives of the Six Nations, who signed using totems to designate individuals and tribes, received $10,000 as payment from the Penns for land the tribes had ceded in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Slave auction catalog from Louisiana, 1855 On March 13 and 14, 1855, the firm of J. A. Beard & May placed on the auction block 178 enslaved men, women, and children at the Banks Arcade in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were part of the estate of William M. Lambeth, who had...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942 Economics, Government and Civics In early 1942, as men of working age enlisted in the military and war production accelerated, US industries experienced a labor shortage. President Roosevelt established the War Manpower Commission "to assure the most effective...
Spotlight on: Primary Source FDR urges NAACP support before WWII, 1940 On June 14, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Arthur B. Spingarn, president of the NAACP, to praise the NAACP’s fight for "increasing participation by Negroes in the benefits and responsibilities of the American democracy."...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Nominating an African American for vice president, 1880 Government and Civics Born a slave in 1841, Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American to be elected to a full term in the US Senate. During his term as a senator from Mississippi (1875–1881), he advocated the rights of African Americans and other...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek War, 1814 On May 12, 1814, Tennessee settler Isaac Stephens wrote to his uncle Henry Mackey in Virginia about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In that battle on March 27, 1814, US Army and Tennessee militia troops under General Andrew...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Racism in the North: Frederick Douglass on "a vulgar and senseless prejudice," 1870 In 1870 Thomas Burnett Pugh, an ardent abolitionist prior to the Civil War, invited Frederick Douglass to participate in the "Star Course" lecture series he had organized at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. However, Douglass ...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780 During the French and Indian War, the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians of New Jersey were among the tribes that signed the Treaty of Easton of 1758. The tribes agreed not to support the French in the colonial conflict and to leave...
Spotlight on: Primary Source An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780 Economics During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Frederick Douglass’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 1880 Literature Despite initial differences, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln forged a relationship over the course of the Civil War based on a shared vision. Fifteen years after Lincoln’s death, Douglass described him as "one of the noblest...
Lesson Plan The Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X Government and Civics Click to download this three-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ "Among the stories of the stormy days of the Republic, few will longer be remembered than the heroic defense and almost utter annihilation of the garrison of Fort Pillow." —Mack J. Leaming, April 1893 On April 12, 1864, fifteen...