This video from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross recaps the Nat Turner Rebellion, and how it affected Southern slaveholders.

In this interactive experience, students can explore the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia, the only museum solely dedicated to the American POW experience. The museum is one of three features at the Andersonville National Historic Site, along with the Andersonville National Cemetery and the former Andersonville Prison.

Native American: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations—from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments? Answers emerge from an archaeologist excavating America’s oldest temple in the Peruvian Andes, a tribe initiating a new chief at a ceremony surrounded by cedar totem poles in the Pacific Northwest, an expert reading ancient hieroglyphs from a sarcophagus to tell a forgotten history of Maya kings, and the return of an ancient shell wampum belt to the birthplace of democracy.

Take a look at Indigenous art, history, and culture as told through the historians, artists, students, and scientists in this featured resource collection.

This resource is part of The Ways, a collection of educational media resources from PBS Wisconsin Education for middle and high school classrooms. The collection explores connections between traditional ways and those of today and expands and challenges current understanding of Native identity and communities through language and culture stories from First Nations communities around the central Great Lakes.

Examine how the United States acquisition of Florida in 1821 impacted the Native American population in this video from Secrets of Spanish Florida: A Secrets of the Dead Special. Utilizing discussion questions, vocabulary, teaching tips, and primary source documents, students learn how the United States set out to dismantle the Native American population of Florida and how the tribes in this region found ways to survive.

Students will explore a physical map of West Africa that includes the location of natural resources, main transportation routes, and most populous cities. Then the students will complete a chart to help them take notes on the features of the map. Finally the students will apply what they have learned from the map to come to some conclusions about what these features suggest about the legacy of colonialism in West Africa. To launch the activity, click the "Map-Based Exploration" image.

In 1889, Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps) emerged in the New Mexico Territory and American Southwest to protect land rights. Three brothers, Pablo, Nicanor, and Juan Jose Herrera, organized this resistance movement to protect half a million acres of land from encroachment by cattle ranchers.

Using segments from the film Dutch New York, students learn about the early years of the New Netherland colony and identify economic, political and social objectives of the Dutch West India Company, the settlers of the colony, and the native population. Then, they role play a scenario from the perspective of each of these three groups.

Learn how enslaved African Americans in Richmond, Virginia, established what a historian in this clip calls “quasi-free communities, where they etched out lives for themselves, that paved the way forward.”

In the years immediately following the American Revolution, many citizens still felt ill-at-ease with the state of the union. Patriots felt the right to assert their victory over the land, and Loyalists felt oppressed and belittled over their defeat.

In this lesson, students will explore the expeditions of four French explorers. After viewing three short videos about Samuel de Champlain, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, students will analyze a painting that shows Champlain leading a fleet of canoes on an expedition and then read journal entries that describe Jolliet and Marquette’s expeditions. The lesson will conclude with students creating a game that encompasses the travels, settlements, and expansion of French territory in North America during the 1600s.

As he formed his own political voice and ideologies, Frederick Douglass broke away from his abolitionist mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, to start the newspaper "The North Star" and give Black abolitionists a voice. This caused a rift in their relationship, as Douglass started to emerge as a political leader in his own right. He used words as battle axes, which can be seen fully in one of his most famous speeches, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?".

This document includes images of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Officially titled An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North-West of the River Ohio, the Northwest Ordinance was passed on July 13, 1787.

Examine the social inequities that existed between the wealthy and the poor through Dickens’s use of irony, in this excerpt from Oliver Twist | MASTERPIECE. Like the title character, poor and orphaned children who ended up in workhouses during 19th-century England were at the mercy of parish officials. These officials, who assumed moral superiority and blamed the impoverished for their problems, provided the needy with inadequate food, shelter, and care.

Analyze how sights and sounds in a film adaptation of Oliver Twist symbolize Oliver’s inner thoughts and feelings as well as help establish the setting, in this excerpt from Oliver Twist | MASTERPIECE. As Oliver escapes the mistreatment of his life in the country, he journeys toward London with hopes for a better future in the city. Without dialogue in this scene, information about Oliver is conveyed through visuals, perspective, movement, and sound.

Students undertake the task of organizing their ideas by grouping individual ideas together into clusters of related content in this lesson plan from NOVA Education. Once the organization process is complete, the students generate a list of criteria that they then use to judge the viability of their ideas in the real world.

This is an image of the original design of the Great Seal of the United States, submitted just a few hours after the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. After undergoing numerous changes, the seal was officially adopted by the Continental Congress on June 20, 1782.

Explore the origins of the Orphan Train movement that took place at a time when there were no systems in place to help the poor and homeless in this video adapted from the documentary West by Orphan Train produced by Colleen Bradford Krantz and Clark Kidder. Educational resources created and published by Iowa PBS. Charles Loring Brace decided early in his life that he wanted to work with the homeless children of New York. He witnessed firsthand the poverty impacting children in New York and knew he had to take action. In 1853 he founded the Children’s Aid Society and the first Orphan Train left New York in 1854 with a goal of placing children in homes.

This inquiry kit features Library of Congress sources and examines the impact of outlaws during the Westward Expansion.