Students will begin to learn about the changes that occured on the American homefront because of World War I by analyzing correspondence from Assistant Sec. of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and Boston Red Sox owner Harry H. Frazee.
Students will see and read about the differences in food manufacturing practices before and after the new food laws passed in 1906: the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
Students will analyze documents pertaining to the woman suffrage movement as it intensified following passage of the 15th Amendment that guaranteed the right to vote for African American males. Documents were chosen to call attention to the struggle's length, the movement's techniques, and the variety of arguments for and against giving women the vote.
Students will study a letter from Annie Davis, a woman who was enslaved in Maryland and wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War to find out if "we are free." Students will examine three documents: a proposed amendment from 1861, the Emancipation Proclaimation, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Students will analyze these documents to compare the changing roles of minorities on American society.
This is an activity which has the students interacting with a primary source document dealing with the annexation of Hawaii. This document is a petition against the United States against annexation in both Hawaiian and English.
Students will examine several documents related to the life of Solomon Northup, whose life story is told in his autobiography Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River in Louisiana.