Lesson Plan Black Women and the American Revolution 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this lesson plan.
Spotlight on: Primary Source Theodore Roosevelt supports women’s suffrage, 1912 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 In this letter written in July 1912, during his campaign for a thrid term as president, Theodore Roosevelt informs the state and county chairmen of the Progressive Party of his plan to support women’s suffrage. The document shows the...
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 The American Revolution: The Boston Massacre, “Yankee Doodle,” and the Declaration of Independence, 1770-1776 Art 3, 4, 5 Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622 Economics, Geography 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, who arrived in 1607, were eager to find gold and silver. Instead they found sickness and disease. Eventually, these colonists learned how to survive in their new environment, and by...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, 1693 Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy Most Americans’ knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch...
Spotlight on: Primary Source George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786 Economics, Government and Civics 9 Of the nine presidents who were slaveholders, only George Washington freed all his own slaves upon his death. Before the Revolution, Washington, like most White Americans, took slavery for granted. At the time of the Revolution, one...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Sharecropper contract, 1867 Economics, Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Immediately after the Civil War, many former slaves established subsistence farms on land that had been abandoned by fleeing white Southerners. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and a former slaveholder, soon restored this land to...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Herbert Hoover on the Great Depression and New Deal, 1931–1933 Foreign Languages The stock market crashed on Thursday, October 24, 1929, less than eight months into Herbert Hoover’s presidency. Most experts, including Hoover, thought the crash was part of a passing recession. By July 1931, when the President wrote...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Runaway slave ad, 1852 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Broadsides and notices posted by slave owners or their agents offer dramatic and concrete evidence of the inhumanity of slavery. Defined as both property and responsible persons by law, slaves were sold with cows, sheep, and furniture...