56 items
On June 25, 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula when the Soviet-backed Communist forces in North Korea invaded the recently founded democratic republic of South Korea. Following a unanimous UN resolution condemning the...
The Origins of US Cold War Fears, 1946–1961
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
The Cold War as a Culture War: Visualizing Values and the Role of Pop Culture
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America: An Introduction
Whatever else the Declaration of Independence encompassed—a proclamation of political sovereignty, an indictment against the King of England, an appeal for allies—its assertion that “all men are created equal” shines as the polestar...
The Cold War: Discussing the Speech of President Kennedy in 1963
Introduction The Cold War is the term for the rivalry between the two blocs of contending states that emerged following the Second World War. It was a series of confrontations played out on the world stage between the non-Communist...
America’s First Ladies on Twentieth-Century Issues
Unit Overview Over the course of three to four lessons the students will analyze five primary source documents. These documents are the abridged transcripts of speeches by five of our country’s first ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty...
The Cold War in the classroom, 1952
As the Cold War pervaded domestic as well as international spheres, Duck and Cover , an educational film produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration and Archer Productions Inc., showed children how to react in case of a...
Robert F. Kennedy on Vietnam, 1967
On May 15, 1967, CBS broadcast Town Meeting of the World , a program in which Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Governor Ronald Reagan of California answered questions posed by the moderator, Charles Collingwood; students from...
JFK’s Inaugural Address
Unit Objective This lesson on President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original...
Hubert Humphrey’s Speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention
Unit Introduction As the United States moved into the post-WWII world, it faced struggles over diversity and race relations. Soldiers returning from Europe recognized the disparities between races in the United States and, by the late...
Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims a national day of mourning for JFK, 1963
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. The next day, the newly sworn-in Lyndon B. Johnson issued his first presidential proclamation. In a statement that was broadcast...
The Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
Click to download this three-lesson unit.
The Battle to Expand Access to the Ballot from 1920 to 2000
Paragraphs
> Access this essay as a PDF , including key vocabulary terms and discussion questions, or read the text of the essay below. State and local governments have primary responsibility for setting the...
Breaking Diplomatic Ties with Iran during the Hostage Crisis, 1980
On April 7, 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced the breaking of diplomatic ties with Iran as a result of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1981. The US had first become actively involved in Iran in 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow...
Address to the Nation Announcing Operation Desert Storm, 1991
On January 16, 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced the beginning of the military campaign to end an Iraqi occupation of neighboring Kuwait. The address was broadcast live on radio and television. It was the culmination of five...
The Age of Reagan
The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s sought to change Americans’ attitudes toward their country, their government, and the world, as the United States emerged from the 1970s. Ronald Reagan entered the White House in January 1981...
Anti-Communism in the 1950s
In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical...
To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon
In the early hours of June 17, 1972, police officers arrested five men suspected of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate office building. This building would lend its...
September 11, 2001
"9/11" has emerged as shorthand for the four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists from the Islamist extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four...
J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970
In September 1970, J. Edgar Hoover composed an open letter to American students detailing his view on civil unrest at the nation’s colleges and universities and warning against the elements he believed responsible. Hoover opened with...
Securing the Right to Vote: The Selma-to-Montgomery Story
Essential Question What conditions created the need for a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, and what did that march achieve? Background Throughout American history, African Americans have struggled to gain...
The United States and the Space Race
On July 20, 1969, 650 million people witnessed an astounding event. They tuned in to live broadcasts of the first lunar landing and heard American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap...
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. His short, fourteen-minute inaugural address is best remembered for a single line: "My fellow Americans: ask not what your country...
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