The American civil rights movement incorporated a variety of cultural elements in their pursuit of political and legal equality under law. This lesson will highlight the role of music as a major influence through the use of audio recordings, photographs, and primary documents. Students will participate in their own oral history, examine lyrics, and work with case studies such as the Freedom Rides to gain an appreciation of how music influenced the early 1960s.

In this activity students read letters from ordinary people to government leaders in the Roosevelt Administration. Then they interpret the range of attitudes about the changing role of the federal government during the New Deal. The letters for this activity all contain reading supports and teachers can differentiate this activity for different levels of learners by choosing which letters to use in the activity.

Students learn about President Obama's visit to Hiroshima, Japan by watching videos and researching images of the Hiroshima bombing then and now.

This inquiry uses the Industrial Age as a context for students to explore the compelling question "Is greed good?" In the Taking Informed Action sequence, students investigate the present-day issue of wealth inequality in the United States and whether or not government action on the issue would be worthwhile.

In this lesson, students will gain historical reasoning skills by studying primary sources and
comparing them to secondary sources. They will become more familiar with the conditions in Japanese American concentration camps through the personal writings of Stanley Hayami, a high school student who was incarcerated in the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming.

This lesson focuses on the constitutional arguments for and against the enactment of federal anti-lynching legislation in the early 1920s. Students will participate in a simulation game that enacts a fictitious Senate debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. As a result of completing this activity, students will gain a better understanding of the federal system, the legislative process, and the difficulties social justice advocates encountered.

Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate the possibilities for black American progress in the 1960s.

In this lesson students will participate in a role-play activity that has them become members of a newspaper or magazine editorial board preparing a retrospective report about the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s.

Students listen to a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., view photographs of the March on Washington, and study King's use of imagery and allusion in his "I Have a Dream" speech.

This collection offers a brief video introduction into the March on Washington in 1963, which brought national attention to many of these issues, and asks students to analyze a photograph and three artifacts from the March. Students will answer the question "What problems did participants in the March on Washington aim to solve?" and consider how these issues continue to have relevance in the United States today.

This lesson from the Smithsonian has students taking the roles of Japanese Americans who faced internment during WWII. Students will read, sythesize and respond to first-hand accounts of internment and publish their responses on a Smithsonian blog page.

In this lesson, students examine the Great War through analysis of primary and secondary sources with an emphasis on different viewpoints and types of mediums. Students will then choose their own medium to demonstrate views of the different countries and the impact of the Great War on individuals.

This Educator Notebook provides information on Women’s History in North Carolina for teachers to use as a resource, either as stand-alone units, or integrated into standard curriculum. Included is research from museum curators and educators, and articles published in the Tar Heel Junior Historian magazine which are written for students in grades 4-12. Lesson plans and suggested activities complement many of the topics. Adaptable to multiple ages, they meet curriculum goals set forth by the NC Department of Public Instruction and connect to classes in national and world history, geography, economics, and the arts, and can be part of any unit of social studies. This resource's link takes you to a very short form that gives you free downloadable access to the complete PDF book.

Little known about our state’s history is the brave confrontation North Carolina’s Lumbee staged to protest a KKK rally near Maxton, NC on the night of January 18, 1958. In this lesson, students learn about North Carolina’s Lumbee and their heroic resistance to hatred and bigotry on this night, known as “The Battle of Hayes Pond.” Students will explore the night’s events as well as design an active citizenship award to honor the Lumbee for their vigilance in fighting for their rights.

In this lesson, students will explore the human dimension of the September 11 attacks as a turning point by conducting an oral history interview.

This learner resource includes a 26 minute documentary where Charles Moore explains the context of many of his most famous civil rights images. Then, students examine the images and think about the importance of photojournalism to the civil rights movement. Finally, students are presented with Andy Warhol's image based on a Charles Moore photograph and asked to consider why certain images remain culturally significant.

In this lesson, students explore the 1912 presidential election and how its outcome had far reaching social, economic, and political consequences for the nation. Discussion questions are provided. In an associated activity, students will role play as one of the candidates and present how they are the most capable of advancing progressive ideas in the United States.

This series of lessons can be used when teaching about the Progressive era. In the first lesson, students will be able to define Progressivism and link it to past and present social issues. In the second lesson, students will learn about the formation of labor unions in the United States and how businesses responded. The third lesson provides background information about stikes in the United States during the progressive era, including the Homestead and the Pullman strikes. Lessons 4-7 focus on the coal mining industry and the lifestyles of those who worked in the mines. In the eighth lesson, students will examine problems between management and labor, and what happens when compromises cannot be achieved. In Lessons 9, 10, and 11, students learn about the Ludlow Massacre and examine the link between history and current events. Lesson 12 examines the long-term effects of the Progressive Era and labor strikes in the United States. In the final lesson, students analyze oral histories to better understand the Progressive Era.

In this extensive, PDF unit focused on the Red Scare, Palmer raids, and civil liberties, the lessons will root the events of 1919-1920 in the disruptions generated by the First World War. The rise of Soviet Russia after 1917, as well as the wave of labor strikes that reverberated across the United States following the Armistice, serve as an entry point for this unit’s analysis of attacks on civil liberties during this period. Students will examine the American state’s suppression of dissent in the name of domestic security. It introduces students to the popular discourse that framed social critics like Emma Goldman as dangerous agitators. It also discusses legislation (such as the Sedition Act of 1918) and statements by American government officials (A. Mitchell Palmer’s “The Case Against the Reds”) that justified the arrest and deportation of individuals whom the United States deemed “undesirable.” Red Scare! encourages students to analyze and debate the often tenuous nature of constitutionally-protected freedoms in times of civil distress.

In this activity, students will use primary and secondary sources to learn about the roles of women on the homefront during WWII. Students will research and write their parts for a class play that will be video-recorded. Students will also compare the effects on the people on the Homefront during WW2 with the people on the Homefront during the U.S. conflicts of today in Iraq and Afghanistan.