In this special revised and updated feature for Black History Month, teachers, parents, and students will find a collection of NEH-supported websites and EDSITEment-developed lessons that tell the four-hundred-year old story of African Americans from slavery through freedom and citizenship to the presidency.

Created through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, Chronicling America offers visitors the ability to search and view newspaper pages from 1690-1963 and to find information about American newspapers published between 1690"“present using the National Digital Newspaper Program.

The delegates at the 1787 Convention faced a challenge as arduous as those who worked throughout the 1780s to initiate reforms to the American political system. In this unit, students will examine the roles that key American founders played in creating the Constitution, and the challenges they faced in the process.

This lesson plan is the fourth in the "Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community" series.It provides a video of the poet, Edward Hirsch, offering a little backstory, then reading the poem "Cotton Candy." The companion lesson contains a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.

Students examine the divided nature of Raskolnikov's character and personality. Then they uncover the divided natures of other characters"”a fact that becomes increasingly evident as the novel progresses to go beyond character analysis to comprehend Dostoyevsky's underlying themes. What does the novel imply about human nature? Dostoevsky clearly perceived that people are neither simple nor easily classified; they are often torn in opposite directions by forces both inside of and outside of themselves, sometimes with catastrophic results.

We know General George Washington crossed the Delaware River to attack Britain's Hessian army at Trenton on Christmas night in 1776. At the mention of this event, most Americans imagine a heroic Washington standing in a small boat. But, did this happen? How has the art of Emanuel Leutze influenced the telling of history?

This curriculum unit explores some of the most important arguments of those opposing or supporting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

This collection of free, authoritative source information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of many states and territories has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Teacher's Guide provides compelling questions, links to humanities organizations and local projects, and research activity ideas for integrating local history into humanities courses.

In this lesson, students analyze Jacob Lawrence'sThe Migration of the Negro Panel no. 57(1940-41), Helene Johnson's Harlem Renaissance poem"Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem"(1927), and Paul Laurence Dunbar's late-nineteenth-century poem"We Wear the Mask"(1896), considering how each work represents the life and changing roles of African Americans from the late nineteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance and The Great Migration.

Curriculum unit on the historical  context of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle and how the book helped reform efforts in Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

A curriculum unit of three lessons in which students explore Hopi place names, poetry, song, and traditional dance to better understand the ways Hopi people connect with the land and environment through language. The unit is centered on the practice of growing corn. Students make inferences about language, place, and culture and also look closely at their own home environment and landscape to understand the places, language, and songs that give meaning to cultures and communities

Many accounts portray the campaign of 1840 as almost exclusively about image, and manufactured images at that. This lesson gives students the opportunity to reflect on that point of view as they analyze campaign documents and accounts. Though intended for the teacher, all or part of the following background information may be useful for some students.

Poet. Orator. Actress. Activist. Writer. Singer. Phenomenal Woman. These and many more superlatives are used to describe the incomparable Maya Angelou. Gone too soon in 2014 at the age of 86, Dr. Angelou's legacy will live on through the words she used to eloquently, powerfully, and honestly express emotions, capture experiences, and spread hope.

Monroe brought a vision of an expanded America to his presidency"”a vision that helped facilitate the formulation of what has become known as the Monroe Doctrine. In this unit, students will review the Monroe Doctrine against a background of United States foreign relations in the early years of the republic.

Some of the most the most essential works of literature in the world are examples of epic poetry, such as The Odyssey and Paradise Lost. This lesson introduces students to the epic poem form and to its roots in oral tradition.

This activity asks students to examine and evaluate how the structure of a work can impact meaning and audience experience. Students are tasked with examining text structure, plotting events for a visual representation of the "highs and lows" of the story, and composing a formal paragraph explaining their findings/analysis. It is divided into 3 sections, which can be spread out and completed individually or it can be a single assignment. It should take students about 120 minutes to complete all parts.

This lesson invites students to reconfigure Meg’s journey into a board game where, as in the novel itself, Meg’s progress is either thwarted or advanced by aspects of her emotional responses to situations, her changing sense of self, and her physical and intellectual experiences.