Spotlight on: Primary Source Japanese announcement of the attack at Pearl Harbor, 1941 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 In January 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto began developing a plan to attack the American base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For eleven months, the Japanese continued to refine their plans while at the same time working diplomatically to...
Video: Read Along "Brick by Brick" Government and Civics The home of the United States president was built by many hands, including those of enslaved persons, who undertook this amazing achievement long before there were machines to do those same jobs. Stirring and emotional, Floyd Cooper...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inauguration, 1933 Economics, Government and Civics, Literature When Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, the nation was reeling from the Great Depression and was dissatisfied with the previous administration’s reluctance to fight it. Roosevelt declared that...
Essay The Human Toll of the Great Depression Steven Mintz Economics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in the American psyche—breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Campaigning against Franklin Roosevelt’s third term, 1940 Government and Civics Franklin Roosevelt’s run in 1940 for a third consecutive term as president was unprecedented. George Washington established a two-term tradition when he declined to run for a third term in 1796, and until 1940, no other president...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Creating the Air Force, 1924 In this July 1924 letter to aviation pioneer and publisher Lester D. Gardner, Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell prophesied the coming tide of Japanese militarism. Concerned about Japan’s growing military power in the skies,...
Video: Book Breaks Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross - "A Black Women's History of the United States" Daina Ramey Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kali Nicole Gross is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies at Emory...
Video: Read Along "Before She Was Harriet" This lush, lyrical biography in verse begins with a glimpse of Harriet Tubman as an old woman, and travels back in time through the many roles she played through her life: spy, liberator, suffragist, and more. Illustrated by James...
Video Introduction to Supreme Court Controversies throughout History Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+