In this lesson, students read about anti-New Deal decisions by the Supreme Court and President Roosevelt's response. A set of discussion questions is provided. In an associated activity, students examine Supreme Court reform proposals and decide if any of them should be adopted today.

In this activity students learn about the goals of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the opportunities it provided for young men. Students create poster presentations about different aspects of the CCC by combining photographs and quotes from primary sources. Students will need poster-making supplies (including poster board or paper, markers, scissors, and glue/markers).

Students will hear stories from former civil rights activists, analyze what motivated students to join the movement, what their experiences were like, and consider the relevance of this history today.

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.

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "The Great Depression."

In this lesson, students will identify the themes within political cartoons from the Great Depression Era and identify the perceived role of political parties during the depression, the programs used for recovery, and the resistance to change of the Great Depression Era. Students will identify the cartoonists' intentions and evaluate the effectiveness of each cartoon's message.

This curriculum unit from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is designed to help students explore the essential question of "How has fear threatened freedom over time, with special emphasis on the Cold War and the McCarthy Era?" Each student will be able to evaluate the effect of fear on civil liberties, with special emphasis on the Fifth Amendment, and will be able to connect the Cold War and McCarthyism with current events.

About a century has passed since the events at the center of this lesson-the Haymarket Affair, the Homestead Strike, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. In this lesson, students use primary historical sources to explore some of the questions raised by these events, questions that continue to be relevant in debates about American society: Where do we draw the line between acceptable business practices and unacceptable working conditions? Can an industrial-and indeed a post-industrial-economy succeed without taking advantage of those who do the work?

Over a three day period students will examine the important foreign policy events since Vietnam.  The compelling question “Did presidents since 1975 succeed in making all Americans safer?” asks students to grapple with the challenges and achievements of six chief executives that led the nation through the unstable years after the Vietnam War.  This inquiry based project would ideally be included at the beginning or at the conclusion of Unit 8: Contemporary America. 

 Inquiry: Who had the best plan for African Americans to achieve greater freedom and equality? (Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, or Marcus Garvey)

In this lesson, students will get an overview of the Iraq War through a montage from the PBS NewsHour and discuss views and knowledge of the Iraq War.

In this activity, students read a series of primary source documents, including the 1872 print "American Progress," that depict the social, political and cultural conflicts between settlers and Native Americans during the 19th century. Then, working in small groups, students will consider the events from the perspective of Native Americans, and create an illustration to counter George A. Crofutt's famous print of "American Progress" moving across the Great Plains.

Students will be able to describe three specific moments in the Civil Rights Movement: the Freedom Rides, the 1963 Birmingham Movement, and the 1963 March on Washington; contrast the different roles of activists such as the Freedom Riders, demonstrators in Birmingham, and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X; analyze and evaluate the relationship between civil rights activists and the Federal Government, specifically the Kennedy Administration.

In this lesson, students gain a sense of the dramatic effect of FDR's voice on his audience, see the scope of what he was proposing in these first two "Fireside Chats," and make an overall analysis of why the series of speeches were so successful.

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.

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.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union had deteriorated to the point of "cold war," while domestically the revelation that Soviet spies had infiltrated the U.S. government created a general sense of uneasiness. This lesson will examine the operations of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the late 1940s.

This lesson engages students in the debate over the Social Security Act that engrossed the nation during the 1930s.

American foreign resonates with the debate over U.S. entry into the League of Nations-collective security versus national sovereignty, idealism versus pragmatism, the responsibilities of powerful nations, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals, the idea of America. Understanding the debate over the League and the consequences of its failure provides insight into international affairs in the years since the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students read the words and listen to the voices of some central participants in the debate over the League of Nations.

In this lesson, students learn how Progressive reformers in government used the public outrage over Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle as a catalyst for legislation. The story of how two progressives, Theodore Roosevelt and Harvey W. Wiley, worked together within the federal government is not as well-known as the role played by Sinclair's The Jungle, but it provides the needed historical and political context for the landmark Progressive era legislation.