As a historic unit of the National Park Service, the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The site also is within the boundaries of the Logan Circle Historic District. This lesson is based on the Historic Resources Study for Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, as well as other materials on Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women. The lesson was written by Brenda K. Olio, former Teaching with Historic Places historian, and edited by staff of the Teaching with Historic Places program and Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site.

In this lesson students analyze a propaganda poster, a photograph, and a poem to understand the tensions unleashed by the entry of African Americans into the industrial workforce during World War II.

In this lesson students learn about the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th and 15th) that abolished slavery, guaranteed African American citizenship and secured men the right to vote.

Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounts the full trajectory of African-American history in his groundbreaking series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. The series explores the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed — forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds.

Using video clips from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, this collection of lesson plans addresses a wide range of themes of the African-American experience from 1500 to the present.

Rodney Leon, African Burial Ground National Monument, 2006, New York City, An ARCHES video, speakers Dr. Renée Ater and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.

This resource describes two primary sources that can be used in courses such as World History, African History, and the Atlantic World. 

This activity will allow students to explore some aspects of the political, economic, social, and cultural developments of major African empires from around 1500-1800 CE. It contains information about Songhai, Kongo, Asante, the Swahili Coast, and Ethiopia. 

A look at the Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall.

American History TV presented live coverage from the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall. They showed exhibits chronicling the African American story from slavery through the inauguration of the first African American president. This clip features elements surrounding the African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage

How a portrait of an African muslim came to hang side-by-side with the founding fathers in one of America's earliest museums. Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (Muhammad Yaro), 1819, oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art) Speakers: Dr. Carol Eaton Soltis, Project Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Find learning related resources here: https://smarthistory.org/seeing-america-2/

A pro-Republican campaign print casting Lincoln as peacemaker, and as the hope for reconciliation between the North and South. The top half of the composition represents the North and the bottom the South. In the center, Lincoln rides forth on a prancing horse, as a group of farmers at the left wave their hats and cheer, "All is right now! hurrah!" Below him is a streamer "Union Henceforth Now and For Ever." On the right the upper scene, in the North, shows a "Northern Fanatic" in a jail "Imprisonment for Life." Above the jail is a gallows, "Higher Law." The prisoner is jeered by a crowd, saying, "That serves them [him?] right." The bottom right scene in the South shows a "Southern Fanatic" jailed while several onlookers say, "They won't do any more mischief." In the center, to the left, a weary Jefferson Davis begins to dismount from his horse. Below him are two clasped hands, with the title "After a Little While."|Lith. by Chas. Magnus, N.Y.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1864-29.

Sometime after 1492, the concept of the New World or America came into being, and this concept appeared differently - as an experience or an idea - for different people and in different places. This semester, we will read three groups of texts: first, participant accounts of contact between native Americans and French or English speaking Europeans, both in North America and in the Caribbean and Brazil; second, transformations of these documents into literary works by contemporaries; third, modern texts which take these earlier materials as a point of departure for rethinking the experience and aftermath of contact. The reading will allow us to compare perspectives across time and space, across the cultural geographies of religion, nation and ethnicity, and finally across a range of genres - reports, captivity narratives, essays, novels, poetry, drama, and film. Some of the earlier authors we will read are Michel Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Jean de Léry, Daniel Defoe and Mary Rowlandson; more recent authors include Derek Walcott, and J. M. Coetzee.

A PowerPoint presentation that takes students through a choose-your-own adventure style activity simulating the life choices of Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late 19th/early 20th century.

In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, CT, students learn about and discuss renewed calls for gun control and the National Rifle Association's history of successfully resisting such reforms.

Students use Library of Congress primary sources to identify problems and issues facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction.

This site offers 12 hours of interviews recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than 200 individuals in cities and towns across the U.S. Audio and transcripts of the interviews are provided.

Conservators, scientists, and curators tell the story behind the unprecedented conservation of Tullio Lombardo's Adam. The life-size marble statue of Adam, carved by Tullio Lombardo (Italian, ca. 1455–1532), is among the most important works of art from Renaissance Venice to be found outside that city today. Made in the early 1490s for the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin, it is the only signed sculpture from that monumental complex. The serene, idealized figure, inspired by ancient sculpture, is deceptively complex. Carefully manipulating composition and finish, Tullio created God's perfect human being, but also the anxious victim of the serpent's wiles. In 2002, Adam was gravely damaged in an accident. Committed to returning it to public view, the Museum undertook a conservation treatment that has restored the sculpture to its original appearance to the fullest extent possible. The exhibition allows Adam to be viewed in the round and explains this unprecedented twelve-year research and conservation project. It also inaugurates a new permanent gallery for Venetian and northern Italian sculpture. The installation of this gallery was made possible by Assunta Sommella Peluso, Ignazio Peluso, Ada Peluso, and Romano I. Peluso.

This course asks students to consider the ways in which social theorists, institutional reformers, and political revolutionaries in the 17th through 19th centuries seized upon insights developed in the natural sciences and mathematics to change themselves and the society in which they lived. Students study trials, art, literature and music to understand developments in Europe and its colonies in these two centuries. Covers works by Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marx, and Darwin.

In this video from Nature, geological detectives use ancient diamonds to learn more about Earth's inner layers.

Agnes de Mille was one of the preeminent American choreographers of the twentieth century.

This resource is from a collection of biographies of famous women. It is provided by the National Women's History Museum, and may include links to supplemental materials including lesson plans about the subject and related topics, links to related biographies, and "works cited" pages. The biographies are sponsored by Susan D. Whiting.

Thinking about how we get Calories from the land limits human population densities. Created by Sal Khan.