Practice working with elementary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.

Teach Immigration History from the University of Texas at Austin explains the important and complicated history of immigration to the United States for general audiences and high school teachers of U.S. history and civics courses.  The backbone of the website is an 80-item chronology of key events, laws, and court rulings that are further explained by a dozen thematic lesson plans on topics such as citizenship, an overview of major laws, gender and immigration, and migration within the Americas.

Students explore the concepts of audience and purpose by focusing on an issue that divided Americans in 1925, the debate of evolution versus creationism raised by the Scopes Monkey Trial.

This subject explores the legal history of the United States as a gendered system. It examines how women have shaped the meanings of American citizenship through pursuit of political rights such as suffrage, jury duty, and military service, how those political struggles have varied for across race, religion, and class, as well as how the legal system has shaped gender relations for both women and men through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, and the family. The course readings will draw from primary and secondary materials in American history, as well as some court cases. However, the focus of the class is on the broader relationship between law and society, and no technical legal knowledge is required or assumed.

This video segment, adapted from NOVA, chronicles the education of leading chemist Percy Julian. Although Julian began his elementary school years in the Deep South under Jim Crow laws, he became one of the few African Americans of his time to earn a Ph.D.

Learn about the trailblazing, gender non-conforming performer Gladys Bentley with this digital short from Unladylike2020. Gladys Bentley fled her homophobic Trinidadian immigrant family in Philadelphia, PA at age 16 to join New York's Harlem Renaissance jazz scene as a cross-dressing performer. In a time when homosexuality was widely considered sinful and deviant, Bentley wore men's clothing -- a tuxedo and top hat -- and became famous for her lesbian-themed lyrics covering popular tunes of the day, and for openly flirting with women in the audience. In the 1950s, succumbing to pressure from the black church and McCarthy Era harassment of the LGBTQ community, Bentley said of her gender identity, "I am a woman again!" Constantly reinventing herself, Bentley challenged norms and pushed boundaries. Support materials include discussion questions, vocabulary, a research project on queer identity during the Harlem Rennaissance, and a close reading of Bentley's famous essay, "I am a Woman Again".

Ever wondered how comics are made? How about how to draw your own? In this video, Thien Pham, a graphic artist from Oakland, CA, will show you step-by-step how to create your own comic, from writing the plot to drawing the four-panel itself.

Release of the film Green Book (2018) inspired renewed interest in the experiences of African Americans when traveling in the United States during the 20th century. This inquiry-based lesson combines individual investigations with whole or small group analysis of elementary sources and visual media to investigate the compelling question: How have the intersections of race and place impacted U.S. history and culture?

In this video from ThinkTV Dayton, learn about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the basis of her famous book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, that documented racial injustice before the Civil War.

Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a ńtime machineî to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.

The lessons in this unit are designed to help your students recognize how people of different cultures and time periods have used cloth-based art forms (quilts) to pass down their traditions and history.

This course examines the history of MIT through the lens of the broader history of science and technology, and vice versa. The course covers the founding of MIT in 1861 and goes through the present, including such topics as William Barton Rogers, educational philosophy, biographies of MIT students and professors, intellectual and organizational development, the role of science, changing laboratories and practices, and MIT's relationship with Boston, the federal government, and industry. Assignments include short papers, presentations, and final paper. A number of classes are concurrent with the MIT150 Symposia.

Students will identify how Martin Luther King Jr's dream of nonviolent conflict-resolution is reinterpreted in modern texts. Homework is differentiated to prompt discussion on how nonviolence is portrayed through characterization and conflict. Students will be formally assessed on a thesis essay that addresses the Six Kingian Principles of Nonviolence.

This course provides an overview of Asian American history and its relevance for contemporary issues. It covers the first wave of Asian immigration in the 19th century, the rise of anti-Asian movements, the experiences of Asian Americans during WWII, the emergence of the Asian American movement in the 1960s, and the new wave of post–1965 Asian immigration. The class examines the role these experiences played in the formation of Asian American ethnicity. The course addresses key societal issues such as racial stereotyping, media racism, affirmative action, the glass ceiling, the "model minority" syndrome, and anti-Asian harassment or violence. The course is taught in English.

This collection of free, authoritative source information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of many states and territories has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Teacher's Guide provides compelling questions, links to humanities organizations and local projects, and research activity ideas for integrating local history into humanities courses.

In this video from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, scholars discuss the author’s ideas about jazz music. Ellison recognized jazz as an art form that represented the complexity of America’s multicultural democratic society. This resource may be used alongside Ellison’s Invisible Man, but is also well suited for use in a lesson, unit, or course on African American literature.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

The month of May is an opportunity for reflection on and commemoration of all that Jewish Americans have accomplished and contributed to U.S. history and culture. This piece highlights NEH projects and classroom resources for teaching about these experiences in America.

A curriculum unit of three lessons in which students explore Hopi place names, poetry, song, and traditional dance to better understand the ways Hopi people connect with the land and environment through language. The unit is centered on the practice of growing corn. Students make inferences about language, place, and culture and also look closely at their own home environment and landscape to understand the places, language, and songs that give meaning to cultures and communities

Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.

An exploration of the symbolism and imagery of corn and environment as manifested in Hopi song and traditional dances. Students analyze examples of historical and contemporary Hopi song and examine images of Hopi dance in order to expand cultural awareness.